Go ask Alice

I agree. But, some things I've noticed. First of all, it's not easy to do this. I'm a writer so I have a lot of free time. I can take Tuesday afternoon off and go to the farmers' market. So it was relatively easy for me to do it compared to someone who has to punch a clock. What do those people do?

I think there are lots of ways, actually. I think you have to decide you're going to work at this a little bit. To begin with, you set aside a day that you might want to eat with your family. It doesn't have to be a dinner or a complicated thing -- it could be an afternoon tea. It could be a Saturday lunch. It could be a breakfast. But hopefully you will decide the following week you can do it twice a week. That's the beginning.

I think you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday and I'm buying for family and friends I'm thinking about what I'm going to eat on the weekend but also about what I'm going to make for the following week. You know those tomatoes, I'm not getting them dead ripe unless I'm eating them for lunch -- I might get them a little firm so that by Wednesday I can have them in a salad. I've always got something in the pantry -- I talk a lot about what you can cook when you just have a closet full of pasta and grains.

So how often would you go to the farmers' market in a week?

Twice. I mean, if I could I'd go every day, but I go on Saturday when I can buy a lot of things, and on Tuesday. And then I'll go get other things in the regular market as a sort of backup.

You recognize, though, that it takes more time to do it this way than going to the store.

I do absolutely recognize it takes more time. But this is all part of fast food values. Let's do it quickly. Let's get it over with. Let's let the machines do it for us, because kitchen work is drudgery and so is garden work. Let somebody else do that.

Get out of that mind-set and tell yourself cooking is a meditation. I like to do it. It's relaxing for me to come home -- it truly is! -- and wash the salad. I love to see the salad in the sink. To spin the salad. I like to dry it. I like to pound to make a vinaigrette with my mortar and pestle. I enjoy grinding coffee and putting it in the filter and warming up the milk. It's part of a ritual that gives my life meaning and beauty.

I feel particularly like this on my book tour, that this is a crazy kind of life. It's over before you know it. And so you have to find ways of slowing it down. And this is an everyday delightful way to slow it down. Take time. Take a moment. The most important value of this book aside from nourishment is that there's pleasure in the doing. It's pleasure in work. It's something that we don't understand in this country. Work is over there and pleasure's over here, and we work our whole lives so that we can go on a cruise ship. It's just insanity, and some people don't even make it to the cruise ship.

So we have to figure out about everyday pleasure. It's trying to bring people back to their senses. Put the smells in the house. Make the chicken stock so it makes people hungry. Burn the rosemary, make the farro, make the bread. These are all aromatic ways to bring people back to the table.

In addition to time, it's costlier to do it this way. One of the reasons that people eat fast food is because that's all they can afford.

For some people that is true. But I would say that you have to decide -- it's not going to be cheap but it can be affordable. And that's where this book comes in. When polenta costs $6 for a hundred portions, I'm pretty certain that I can make something tasty for less money than a fast food dinner for my family.

So you're saying it's more but it's not prohibitive?

That's right. You just decide, OK, well, maybe I won't rent that DVD.

I was struck often in making the recipes by how simple they were. So the buying of the food was more time-consuming than the cooking --

That's right. When you spend time buying tasty things you hardly have to cook them. You just slice a little piece of fig and some fresh cheese, and, voilà!

We have to demystify this whole idea -- many restaurants are complicated for the sake of complication. And I think that leads people to believe that they can't cook it. I'm trying to empower people in the kitchen. It isn't anything but slicing a tomato. You can do this. You can do this.

What do you make of the mass-market, luxury organic food movement -- people getting their organic food from places like Whole Foods?

They're trying to use fast-food values to eat organic food. They're trying still to do it in a minute, and they're not thinking about what it really means. Going to the farmers' market, being present, talking to the farmers, reporting back on how the produce was, encouraging them so they stay in business.

I've heard you describe yourself as an optimist about this stuff but from the way you're discussing it, it doesn't seem that you're very optimistic.

I've been a little pessimistic today. But I am an optimist because I see the potential of feeding children in the public schools. And with good food comes the values that could change the world.

I'm focused on the next generation, because I think it's very hard to break the habit of adults who've got salt and sugar addictions and just ways of being in this world. It's very hard even for the most enlightened people at famous universities that are very wealthy to spend the money that it takes to feed the students something delicious.

We've been working in Berkeley with the Edible Schoolyard for 10 years, and we have a sister program in New Orleans. It's the idea of teaching gastronomy -- "eco-gastronomy" if you will, edible education. It's changing the pedagogy of public education with an interactive school lunch program.

Way back when, the president of the United States said, We want our children to be physically fit, and he put physical education into the core curriculum of the school system. We built gymnasiums, we hired teachers, we got equipment, and every child had to take it. And they got credit for taking it. And now we want them to take eco-gastronomy and get credit for eating it.

Because when they grow it and they cook it, they all eat it -- that's the lesson of the Edible Schoolyard. They want to do it because it's a kind of pride in the process. They have been involved in it since the seed when it was in the ground. They love to give it to their friends. It gives them a kind of pleasure.

Next page: Should food be the No. 1 issue in the presidential race?