The splendidly meandering narrative reads like a long dinner party with plenty of wine as Madison tells of cooking for M.F.K. Fisher’s birthday and working with Mark Miller, Richard Olney, David Tanis, Judy Rodgers and Waters, with whom she remains great friends ... Madison’s personal account of the vegetarian movement, told in her gentle, engaging voice, is a collection of salient moments in a well-lived life.
... thoughtful and thought-provoking ... Madison writes evocatively about her youth in Davis, California, and a short stint in Japan ... The book takes on added piquancy when talking about Madison’s botanist father and wildly creative mother ... The book doesn’t digest other sections of Madison’s personal history as thoroughly, though, with more depth devoted to food-related facts. In fairness, Madison makes even nut loaf a pleasure to read about, but her reserve leaves the reader hungry for even more.
This disarming memoir, An Onion in My Pocket, is full of surprises. For a start, it’s not generally known that for almost 20 years [the author] was an ordained Buddhist in a monastic community. Or, that when she was a child, her parents refused to buy her Twinkies, so she stole them. She never had a TV dinner. She never had a TV ... Ms. Madison is not a die-hard vegetarian; she calls herself an omnivore. Above all, she doesn’t believe in imposing beliefs on others. 'I really prefer to be flexible enough to just say thank you for whatever appears on the plate.' A lesson learned from the monastery, of course, and one of many in this insightful memoir.
While Madison could not have known that her book would be published into a world changed by a pandemic, reading it in this context makes the frustration ever more urgent: If the person who has most famously advocated for a vegetarian diet can’t wholeheartedly endorse it, then what hope is there for significant change to the American obsession with meat? ... she provides a clear, thorough, and loving model for how to center vegetables on the plate and the ways in which that cooking practice allows us to be mindful, to appreciate those seventy-two labors, and to remember that it is the soil that gives us our food. That is why it’s so disheartening that she can’t argue against the taint of vegetarianism—that she would rather accept it, despite all the work she’s done showing us that it doesn’t have to be this way. What would an American food landscape in which vegetarianism is not considered a punishing alternative look like? Despite her work lighting the path from a bland idea of meatless cuisine to the plant-based bounty of today, it won’t be Madison who shows us.
... honest, beguiling ... Madison relays her life in a swingy style ... offers a layered, intimate look at Zen life, the making of a soulful, artful chef and the genesis and growth of a writer. It’s also an ode to nourishment, sustenance and gratitude for the earth’s bounty, vegetal and otherwise.
Madison, who opened one of the first vegetarian restaurants in San Francisco in the late 1970s, here focuses on her time practicing Buddhism as well as her growing interest in cooking and working in restaurants ... Madison is a prolific cookbook author, and this latest offering presents an intriguing and insightful look into how her upbringing influenced both her professional and private life.
As if her writing were a meal, she moves from topic to topic like a diner enjoying her segue from course to course. Readers will enjoy her amiability and learn much from her ruminations, including the advice to 'break your plans in the face of something wonderful and unexpected, like [discovering] morels. Let this food rule take over and push you here and there as it will.' ... A savory journey through kitchens, ingredients, meals, cookbooks, family, and colleagues—all composing the author’s heart.
Chapters covering the 'twenty missing years' —after [the renowned vegetarian chef] left the SFZC, Greens, and her monastic Buddhist life—build on the tension between abstinence and abundance, hunger and satiation, and anticipation and enjoyment of food and life. Madison’s richly told story will resonate with foodies of all stripes.
