Jeremiah Talks about

THE MORNING I COOKED WITH NANCY OAKES FOR THIS BOOK was when I really started to know her. Up to that point I had met Nancy only at charity fund-raising events, and only then in a crowd of chefs all determined to pull off the impossible—great food in a tent or someone’s parking lot for charity benefits. There I had seen those blue eyes fixed on the tasks at hand, but I had never seen them twinkle while looking—like a mother looking at beloved and well-behaved children—at perfect ingredients picked that morning by someone she really liked. A friend had just walked into the Boulevard Restaurant kitchen with a basket of greens from her Berkeley garden that brought tears to my eyes even after all these years of tender lettuces, and a sigh of contentment from Nancy.