Julia Gets Wise with Alice Waters

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On today’s episode of Wiser Than Me, Julia welcomes legendary chef, author, and farm-to-table pioneer Alice Waters. They discuss Alice’s incredible career at her groundbreaking restaurant Chez Panisse and turning 80. Together, they explore the philosophy of age, food, and beauty. Julia also asks Alice about the meaning she finds in moments of pause, and later talks with her 90-year-old mom, Judith, about the victory garden she grew up with during World War II.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Mommy, Alice Waters, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  00:00

This is a favorite poem of mine. It’s called Flash fFrozen. Here it is. My mother grew up in a homemade world. Her mother stitched Sun bonnets one stitch at a time for five little girls. Carried pears, beans, tomato squash in her apron, from the garden to the kitchen, where steaming mason jars with wide open mouth stood at the ready to receive. Jars lined the cool basement shelves like picture books, wild with color, waiting for another season a huge gray pot, quiet on the stove, made soup for the week in winter, root vegetables bounced, softened in water, fragrant with the earth. Clarence, bird’s eye, born in Brooklyn, practiced taxidermy before joining the Department of Agriculture as a naturalist posted in the Arctic there, he learned a thing or two, watching the Inuit make holes in the ice, drop lines and bring up a fish frozen straight through in the blink of an eye. Clarence brought that thought home in a system that packed food into waxed cardboard cartons, flash frozen, nearly fresh. My mother’s freezer was as big as a car. Thursdays were poker night, she could whip up a meal in 20 minutes once she unwrapped the box. How about that? So that was actually written by my mom, Judy Bowles and good God Almighty. I do love that poem. The grandmother who stitched the sun bonnets and carried pears and beans and tomato and squash from her garden to her kitchen was my mom’s grandma, Bessie, my great grandmother. She was the original farm to table chef. Well, I mean, I guess everybody who didn’t have a staff and a cook, which is most people, was a farm to table chef. Not so long ago, my mom and my sisters and I all hold great grandma Bessie in a kind of magical, sainted place. We all really want to be a little bit more like grandma Bessie, especially in the kitchen. I’m very lucky, because my little sister Lauren lives in Los Angeles, and whenever we get together, which is very often, making food delicious, food is at the center of what is always a joyful time. She is a baker, I mean, a crazy, great baker of amazing breads and muffins and bagels. And we are both obsessed with baking desserts. And I make things out of the food that I grow in my garden, like tomato sauce and pickles and jams and marmalades, and it’s all pretty goddamn good, if I do say so myself, the thing that my mom catches really so beautifully in that poem is the physical, tactile contact with the ingredients that make meals so delicious, and the melancholy in it is the loss of that contact. Of course, the poem is about a lot more, too, family, caring, nourishment and other kinds of loss. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about how as we speed forward and technology dominates more and more of our day to day lives, we touch the things that matter less and less. I mean, think about it, we don’t hold the newspaper. We look at it on a screen. We don’t put pen to paper very often. We don’t rest the stereo needle carefully in the groove of a of a cherished record album. We’re a step back, it seems, from touching things that matter. I mean, life is easier, yeah, sure. But even when we go to a beautiful place now, we immediately stick a phone between us and the sunset. God, you know, I mean, there’s a loss there too. So maybe that’s why cooking beautiful, healthy, yummy meals with my sister and her family made with vegetables and hand picked fruit right out of the garden, or stuff that’s carefully chosen at a farmer’s market, and spending hours together, you know, working out the menu and working with our hands and our hearts means so, so much to me. Food. Yeah, I mean, it’s the basic it’s the most basic thing of all. And so how lucky then that today we get to talk to Alice Waters.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  05:00

I’m Julia Louis Dreyfus, and this is Wiser Than Me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  05:23

I remember what American cooking was like before Alice Waters. We ate stuff like frozen fish sticks and banquet fried chicken TV dinners and those were treats. I mean, that’s what we look forward to when our parents went out to a party. It was, it was a dark time for taste buds everywhere, but our guest today knew there was something better. She is the founder of the groundbreaking Chez Panisse, a Berkeley, California based restaurant where she delved deep into the connections between environment, culture, food and politics by paying close attention to ingredients, not just in how they’re prepared, but in how they’re produced, she is a pioneer of the farm to table movement, maybe the Pioneer. And most importantly, she championed the concept that food grown with care and treated with respect in the kitchen could be transformative. And of course, delicious. Our guest has served up everything from delicious Harry coat ver and sun ripened peaches to, believe it or not, a braised pair of Werner Herzog’s boots and a pot of Richter duck fat. We can talk about that later. It blows my mind. How many renowned chefs trained with her, basically everybody. The truth is, her impact on American cooking is immeasurable, and it doesn’t stop in the kitchen. She’s a tireless advocate for sustainable agriculture, food, justice and education reform. Through initiatives like the Edible Schoolyard project, she has provided hands on experiences that connect students to food, nature and each other, while addressing the crises of climate change, public health and social inequality at its heart is a dynamic and joyful learning experience for every child, and you can actually download the lesson plans. Alice is the recipient of some of the highest honors in both food and life, including seven James Beard Awards, The National Humanities Medal and the French Legion of Honor, please join me in welcoming and author, cook, activist, mother and woman who is, oh, so much wiser than me. Alice Waters, welcome Alice Waters, what a treat to have you with us.

 

Alice Waters  07:34

Thank you so much. Wonderful to talk with you.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  07:38

I’m happy you’re here.

 

Alice Waters  07:40

I’m a little tearful about that introduction.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  07:43

Oh no, well, it’s such a celebration, and you have so much to celebrate about yourself, and I personally am honored to talk with you today, because I’m a ginormous fan of yours. Are you comfortable if I ask your real age?

 

Alice Waters  07:58

I just turned 80.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  08:00

Nice, and how old you feel?

 

Alice Waters  08:03

You know, I’ve never thought about age as being, you know, something I was looking forward to, or something I look back on. It’s strange that when this happened this year. I mean, everybody else was concerned about me. They were well, worried that I was getting old. And I really feel like age is about how you feel about yourself. And I had a great aunt who lived to 102 nice and she was a wonderful inspiration to me my whole life, her whole life. And I’ve watched how she lived.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  08:57

So when you say you watched how she aged your aunt. What are you witnessing? What are you inspired by?

 

Alice Waters  09:07

I guess I’m inspired by their joie de vivre. Yeah, they’re wanting to be present. They’re wanting to communicate what they know with everybody else, and I heard so generous with that.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  09:23

Yeah, that’s so wonderful, Alice, I have to tell you how our lives connected. So I’m very close with my sister in law, who’s a conservationist and environmentalist in Northern California, and she did an auction for the trails forever dinner that was thrown by the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy, and one of the prizes being auctioned was you and I, because it was a hike. Yeah, it was a hike with me and a picnic by you. Yeah, honestly, I’m gonna tell you right now, I don’t remember anything about the hike, and I love to hike. Okay, I’m a big hiker. I don’t remember a thing, but I remember that goddamn sandwich was so good, Alice and it was asparagus and prosciutto. It was on a baguette. There may have been butter, there may have been arugula this, I can’t recall, but all we did was talk about this sandwich. I’m not kidding. I don’t remember a thing about the hike, and it was a big hike. So then I went home and I tried to recreate it, and it was complete crap. What I made. It was terrible. Because, tell me.

 

Alice Waters  10:41

I think it had aioli on it, garlic, garlic mayonnaise. And we make that with wonderful olive oil and a real sweet garlic. And garlic is a main ingredient, not only for taste, but for health. Have you seen the film garlic as as good as 10 mothers? No, but I’m gonna watch it tonight. Okay, les plank made a film called garlic is as good as 10 mothers.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  11:17

That’s a great title. So you made a garlic aioli. I’m gonna now try this again, because everything was off. The prosciutto was off, the asparagus was too stringy, you know, whatever. But I did try anyway. This is this how much I loved it. I have so much work to do today, because I’m gonna do this garlic mayonnaise. You know, you are known, of course, for making the everyday experience elevated, so I wanted to dig into your daily routine. For example, what do you have for breakfast?

 

Alice Waters  11:49

Well, I always have my Puerh tea because I had high cholesterol, and I asked all my friends what I should do, and I had many of them tell me drink the fermented Puerh tea, a Chinese tea, okay, a dark tea and eat whole grains. And I absolutely was rigidly adherent to that prescription, and my cholesterol went down 100 points.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  12:26

Get the hell out of here.

 

Alice Waters  12:29

No, really, it really did.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  12:32

Wait a minute. Did you take medication too?

 

Alice Waters  12:34

No, I didn’t want to take medication.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  12:37

Fucking god, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It’s true.

 

Alice Waters  12:40

And now I’ve become kind of a puerti sales person.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  12:44

How do you spell puerti? Because I’m paying for my husband?

 

Alice Waters  12:47

P, U, E, R, H.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  12:49

puerti. Is it tasty?

 

Alice Waters  12:52

I think it is. I make it very dark. I used to be a kind of Francophile in my breakfast, I drank a cafe Hola. I had a piece of toast with some jam of that kind of early morning. And now, when I’m drinking that tea, I want something savory. So I had this morning. I had a little bit of salad, but I scrambled an egg.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  13:22

Do you still cook each day? Do you plan your meals?

 

Alice Waters  13:25

Well, I always want to have the ingredients at my house so I can cook something if I need to or want to. So I always have salad. I always have great farm eggs and a lot of this I just get from Chez Panisse, because I want everything from my organic, regenerative farmers. Yes, the things that I have to have at home are salad and fruit and I want Meyer lemons, and I have a tree out back. I have herbs all in my backyard, so I can always get rosemary and sage and fry them. I can always make something tasty at the last minute.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  14:21

I have a Meyer lemon tree too, and it is such an unusual taste. And I always have lemon water in the morning. And if my lyre Meyer lemons are ripe, I have my Meyer lemon water, which is an elevated lemon water experience. There’s just no way around it. And I just recently, by the way, going off topic a little bit. I just started to make ice cream, and I made lemon ice cream, and I now I’m thinking, Oh, I’m excited to try to make Meyer lemon ice cream, because I think that’ll be yummy, right?

 

Alice Waters  14:50

Guess what? 53 years ago? No 52 not in the first year of chernivs Lindsay, who was the. Chef at Chez Panisse started making Meyer lemon ice cream and Meyer lemon sherbet. And I have to say that that was a wake up, not only for us in kitchen, but for everybody who came to Chez Panisse. It was the dessert that they wanted again, and it was a long season so and we got them from people who brought them or exchanged them for a lunch at the restaurant. They would bring them from their backyard tree. I loved it.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  15:39

God, I wish I lived near you. I would bring you Meyer lemons, just so that I could eat that right now, you describe beauty as an essential life force. By the way, I put my dahlias here today for you.

 

Alice Waters  15:52

I saw those. First off, good.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  15:55

I’m so happy. You notice them.

 

Alice Waters  15:57

First thing, I thought, Oh, how beautiful.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  16:00

Thank you. Oh, that makes me happy. Then Mission accomplished, because those are from my garden, and I just wait every year for those things to pop up, and they’re going crazy right now, and I’m gonna post a picture of this on our socials so people can see but you describe beauty as an essential life force. How do you bring beauty into your life every day? What is there practice that you have? I think you’re very like me. You’re very into flowers. But talk to me about that.

 

Alice Waters  16:33

Well, I always want flowers in my house, and of the moment in time, I don’t want tulips in the middle of the winter, yeah, and the lilacs. I want them just in the spring when they’re happening. And it keeps me connected exactly the way food does with where I am and time and place. It’s all of those subtleties that I’m so connected to. Have you always been like that? Well, when I was little, my great aunt and my mother used to go out always in the spring and in the fall to look at the trees, and we put drive on roads all in North New Jersey, and see these glorious explosions of flowering trees and bushes. We had a hedge of lilacs that I always wanted to go by, but, that’s kind of, I think, been in my life since I was very little. And of course, everybody had victory gardens during the war, and I’m sure that that really gave me a taste for strawberries and corn and tomatoes that I’ll never, ever forget, those are really hot weather vegetables and fruits and no matter how delicious ours are here, yeah, quite as good As New Jersey.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  18:19

Isn’t it interesting, too, how smells can be. So as you’re talking about like the lilacs and the tomatoes, and I’m I’m growing tomatoes right now, and the smell of a tomato plant is very specific. You know, when I’m nipping the leaves that I don’t want there, my hands get that my hands get that smell. And I love that smell.

 

Alice Waters  18:46

I think, I think, you know, I’m a Monet sorry. Teacher, yes. And I was trained in London in 1968 and she, of course, believed way back in the 1880s that our senses are the pathways into our mind. And I think, of course, in this tech world that we live in, that we’re all sensory deprived because we aren’t touching and smelling and tasting and listening to things that are beautiful and looking at the world the nature around us.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  19:32

Yes, totally, There’s even more wisdom from Alice Waters coming up after this break.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  19:53

I was watching you talking on the with Julia Child, and you made the. Mushroom and fennel and parmesan salad with olive oil and lemon. And I thought, and I was at the market yesterday, and I thought, Oh God, I’m gonna try that. That looks so divine. And so I bought the fennel and the mushrooms, and I took it home, and I started to, I don’t have a mandolin, so I started to slice as thin as I could, and then I had a bite of fennel, and I thought, oh shit, I I hate fennel. I’d forgotten that I hate fennel. I don’t like the taste of licorice.

 

Alice Waters  20:31

I know I could get you to love fennel, but you need to get a little Japanese mandolin, because that is an essential little equipment that I have for my kitchen. I mortar and a pestle, and I have a mantle in they’re very inexpensive. You have to be careful that you do it slowly. But it’s not like the big French one that’s hard to use and you really could hurt yourself, but when you eat a big chunk of fennel, I wouldn’t want that, but if it’s shaved thinly and mixed with greens and a great vinaigrette on it with garlic, it’s delicious like that, because it’s a little tone of an herb.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  21:20

I think What’s becoming quite clear to me is that, is there any house in your neighborhood for sale? Because I have to move next to you. You have to be my neighbor.

 

Alice Waters  21:29

I helped you a house.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  21:31

I need a house. Alice, okay? I need a house next to you. Did you get to know Julia Child?

 

Alice Waters  21:38

You know, I did. I knew her from year two, maybe near one of the restaurant, and she came and she had the fixed price dinner, because that’s all we had it again, yes, 395 for four courses, and you had to eat.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  21:59

$3.95 to be clear, yes.

 

Alice Waters  22:01

Yes, and when I come over to the table, she said to me, this is not a restaurant. This is like eating in somebody’s home. And I think she meant it a little bit as an insult, no little bit of what are you doing? And I thought it was the greatest compliment, the greatest compliment. And then we became good friends after that, and she always acted as sort of a big sister to me in that respect, the one show that we did together. I was just so embarrassed that I was doing something so foolishly simple, but she was so generous about oh, it’s so fascinating. However you crack an olive open when she knew perfectly well how to do that. I didn’t, and I’m acting like that is something special. I’m communicating to people, and it was so tender, the way that she took care of me.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  23:16

I have a Julia Child confession story, because I live in Santa Barbara, where, of course, she lived at the end of her life, yes, and she was very close friends with our neighbor at the time, dal del army. And she would often, of course, as I’m sure it happens with you as well, people would send her food. People would send her meat. And dal, our neighbor was a wonderful barbecue. And so she would bring meat to him, and then he would barbecue it, etc. And so one day, our neighbors said, Oh, Julia’s coming over tonight for a cocktail. Come over for a cocktail. And I said, Oh, okay, this is, by the way, oh, this is quite a long time ago, and our kids were really young, you know, this, by the way, does not reflect well, on me. So just heads up about that. And so then it, you know, it was around that time, and I was like, oh my god, I can’t go to somebody’s house. We’ve got too much to do, and the kids and blah, and we didn’t go. We didn’t. And I it, I’m gonna tell you that if somebody said to me, do you have any regrets in your life that would top the list because we didn’t go and we missed the chance to meet that icon and good human being. So anyway, I’m confessing to you my my priest, Alice Waters, and I hope that you’re going to tell me that you forgive my sin.

 

Alice Waters  24:42

I do forgive your sin because I understand completely about taking care of a child and a family at home around dinner time, and my new grandchild is a. Absolutely adorable, but she takes full time attention, and I want to be there for her, especially around dinner, and I understand the the issues for parents to leave at that time. And I think one of the great things that’s going on right now are that men are connected with children and are cooking for the family. And I just love it. It’s about sharing the work.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  25:38

Right? Sharing the work. It’s not just women’s work in the house. It is not. It is absolutely not.

 

Alice Waters  25:45

That’s the beautiful thing that’s going on in this next generation, and we’re finding out about the passions of each other and the gardening is the same way. Why aren’t we all planting Victory Gardens? Why aren’t we planting wherever we can, and growing food?

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  26:09

By the way, my mother’s 90, and she had her own very own victory garden as a little girl. And the word Victory Garden is so beautiful, I think I have to make a sign and put that on my garden that says Victory Garden.

 

Alice Waters  26:22

I did that during the pandemic, and neighbors came over and said, How do you keep the deer away from your vegetables? And I never had talked to my neighbors before. All of a sudden, they’re.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  26:36

How do you keep the deer away? And by the way, how do you keep the bunnies away, the bunnies, these fucking bunnies in my they’re making me crazy.

 

Alice Waters  26:46

Well, I figured out how you plant something for them to eat that they like, and that’s over there. And so the things that you want are over here. And what do they like? What do bunnies like? Probably carrots. I presume. I’ve never had the problem with bunnies. I’ve just had the problem with deer.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  27:10

Well, I guess I’m gonna have to plant carrots all over my house, because I’ve actually turned into farmer McGregor. I mean, I’m thinking, like, I gotta, I gotta trap these things and eat them or something. I want to switch gears to ask you a question about motherhood, actually, specifically, because I was really interested in your memoir, you talked about your mother’s postpartum when nobody had would discuss postpartum and her help, receiving help was considered a taboo, and the arrival of your first period, which you felt you couldn’t mention, even with your pregnancy, it struck me how little women were supposed to know, or were allowed to know about their bodies when you were growing up, and I’m wondering, how did that sort of culture affect or influence the way you raised your daughter? Were there things that you found you had shame about that you had to find a way to get over? I’m curious about that because I think, frankly, my mother had the same experience about that challenge.

 

Alice Waters  28:25

Well, I did. I was in Berkeley in the 60s, yes, right. So there’s a that that opened up my mind in so many ways, yes, but I still had those taboos in me, and I think that, you know, in some ways, Fanny’s father did not have the those in his life, or didn’t, didn’t feel that way About nakedness or just the the parts of you know your body that are just not to be talked about. And Fanny opened up my mind, in a way interesting she did. She helped me to really accept myself in that in that way, she wasn’t afraid of those words, yeah, and still can’t say them really strange. No, I can’t, I can’t say them quite I can think them, but I can’t say them interesting. I believe in it. I believe in having having skeletons that we learned from in our science class in fourth grade, we had that we don’t know anything about anatomy anymore. Where is our gallbladder? I had to ask when I went to the doctor, where is that?

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  30:00

I mean, why don’t we know? And what is it doing, by the way?

 

Alice Waters  30:04

What is yes, and what is it?

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  30:06

I mean, people get rid of their gallbladder, don’t they?

 

Alice Waters  30:08

I know we don’t know anything, anything about the functioning of our bodies, yes, and I mean, it was only Kennedy that helped us learn about exercise and what our muscles did and who, and he encouraged us all to exercise and and, and that was the beginning of my, my, really sort of passion about it. But, you know, we didn’t, we thought, and we still do things of exercise as hard.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  30:53

Yeah, as opposed to just a pleasure yes.

 

Alice Waters  30:56

I mean, it’s like walking out at night and seeing the stars, yes, watching the sunset. Even if you’re in a city, it’s like you get to move and breathe in a kind of air that’s different. And I just think that we have such a wrong understanding. Well, it goes with the food too. It’s completely misunderstood what is good for us and what is not.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  31:33

Yeah, indeed it really is. I would love to shift here and talk about your life as a mother. You had your daughter at age 40, which is just phenomenal, by the way. I love the name Fanny. Can you talk about that transition? Because of course, you had been running Chez Panisse at that time. And then talk about what you did once Fanny was born, and how you managed that. I’m going to say transition.

 

Alice Waters  32:08

Fanny was a child of the restaurant. I did bring her there very early on, yes, and the waiters she would call around in the dining room, and I wrote a book about her when she was 10 years old and making her pizza upstairs in the restaurant with micelle, and all of those experiences she had at a very early Age. But I wanted her to understand that that food was right of the moment and needed to be eaten, you know, from from the garden to the table, that experiences so we had a garden out in back of the house. But another great story, which I might have told one time, was she and her friend wanted to have blueberry pancakes. And I said, this isn’t the time. It’s winter time. There’s no blueberries. She said, I’m going to go to the story 18. I said, organic blueberries. Remember that. So she comes back with a little organic label on the blueberries. I said, Where did she get that? And in the end, she had to admit that she stole the organic label from another package and that put them all in the curse.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  33:44

Did she confess in the moment or or later?

 

Alice Waters  33:46

No, just a few moments later, about 10 minutes later.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  33:51

Bless her heart, this is a child rebelling against Alice Waters that Alice, but explain how I mean, as you you, as you acknowledged, you know, being at home at dinner time, putting a child to bed, that doesn’t, that doesn’t, shall we say, Jive very well with running a restaurant. So can you talk about that balance, how you managed it? Did you? Step back a little bit.

 

Alice Waters  34:21

Did you well, I did. I knew we were open for six days, and I knew that I couldn’t work six days, but maybe I could work three days and have another chef work three days and they would get paid for full time, but they would only work three days, and it worked so well because they were inspired. They brought another viewpoint to the restaurant that I decided to do that. For the cafe chefs and for the pastry chefs. And we’ve done this since I had my daughter, you know, 40 years ago, and I mean, and it changed the life of the restaurant because the people who were working on the menus could go out and eat, could take care of their families, could go on vacation. The other chef would cover for them, right? And everybody who worked at the restaurant would have several opinions, you know? They would learn how to make that salad that way and this way, with different chefs. And so I am convinced that spending that money in that way is what has kept the restaurant alive for these 53 years.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  36:02

Well, I think it’s interesting because it kind of, it really does overlap with what you were saying earlier, and that is the connection to the people with whom you’re working, the almost ensemble work that you’re doing as a restaurant. And that is, of course, there is so much respect built into that way of working that it is so ingrained. There is nothing but respect there. And people respond to that. People. It brings out the best in someone and and that’s a great life lesson. It can be applied to so many things. It certainly I can. I do apply that to the work that I do when I’m working in an ensemble, which is my favorite thing in the world to do, and that kind of give and take and the ability to listen and the ability to share in a moment. It’s a great life lesson. It’s time to take another break. We’ll be right back with Alice Waters in just a moment.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  37:29

Before we stop talking today, but I would like to talk to you for hours and hours.

 

Alice Waters  37:33

I have so many things.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  37:36

Yes, well, you must, and I want you. One thing I’d love for you to tell is the the Werner Herzog story with the boot. Would you mind explaining the genesis of that? It’s such a good story.

 

Alice Waters  37:50

Well, it’s a story about two filmmakers, Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, and they were both people I knew because of my dearest friend, Tom Lani, yes, and he came. He used Chez Panisse as his dining room. So I met, you know, George Lucas and Coppola and and Kurosawa and everybody came to Shea because of Tom, and Tom encouraged a film to be made about Werner Herzog making a bet with Errol Morris, referring to a film That Errol Morris was going to make. Verna said, if you do make this film. Errol Morris, I will eat my shoe. Then Tom Lu said, Oh, well, Alice will will cook the shoe. Alice will cook the shoe. And Furna brings by a a walking boot that he had a big old tough boot. And I said, Verna, I’m not sure I can cook that. He said, cook it. And I stuffed it with garlic, and I tied it all up. And I figured it was a little bit like cooking a duck coy. Cook it in the fat. Cook it in duck fat.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  39:27

I’m assuming it was leather.

 

Alice Waters  39:28

It was leather. Oh, god.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  39:30

Yes, they’re not cooking some sort of gore tex situation, yeah.

 

Alice Waters  39:37

But anyway, I started cooking it and cooking it. And funny, Tom came by to get the shoe to take over to the auditorium where Furner was going to eat the shoe, because Errol made the film. And I. Could not really make it up, but Verner and his enthusiasm started to eat the shoe. I watched him eat about he had a very sharp scissors that he cut it with, and he did chew it up, and he didn’t eat the whole thing, but he he did a good job.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  40:27

And did he go straight to the emergency room after that? But I think that is so remarkable.

 

Alice Waters  40:36

It’s a testimonial to really believing in what you’re doing, and believing in film to that degree, to understanding the value of a certain filmmaker, knowing is important hit the films he’s making. And that is, I guess the way I would feel too I’m not sure I would eat a shoe, but I might have to do something that I didn’t like because I wanted to show people that it was that important to me.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  41:19

Yeah, I get it. I have to say that was an extraordinary story. And speaking of Tom Luddy, I know that he passed away last year, very sadly for our listeners. Tom lutty was a film producer who co founded the Telluride Film Festival. And I wanted to ask Alice, actually, if you don’t mind, about the things that change as we age. And I’d like to talk about how you deal with grief and loss, because you’re so community oriented in the most healthy and magical way, really, how do you rebuild the community as you move through grief, as you have lost people? I mean, this is a part of life. How, how? What? How do you do it?

 

Alice Waters  42:14

Well, I wouldn’t have beliefs that I could do it. Really, I was afraid of death, and I had my four dear friends die within six months, four, Alice, four, all four. Tom lutt, who was my friend, 50 years. 55 years, I had Fritz strive who wrote every book with me, wrote every letter to a president for me. He walked with me every morning, and I haven’t been able to imagine my life without him, and then Steve Crumley, who was the first waiter at Chez Panisse, he was the head of the cafe, at the top of the stairs. For every one he was Chez Panisse, and the fourth one was, of course, David Goins. And David had a stroke, and he was paralyzed. And David is somebody who always did things the way he wanted coffee with cognac. You know, that kind of person always knew what he wanted, and there he was in the hospital, paralyzed, and I knew he wouldn’t be there long. And even though his sister’s daughter wanted him to to stay in love and go through rehab, he said, I want to go home. Said to his best friend, Richard from the printing press days, I want a blueberry muffin and a rye whiskey. He ate the blueberry muffin, drank the rye whiskey and died. Wow, that was it. I learned so much about dying. Some did it poorly that they couldn’t help it. They didn’t plan for it. They didn’t think it was going to happen. And some had partners who helped them really be with their friends right to the end, who had their favorite musicians come and play music and fight and Chez Panisse into their house. And then there were people that wanted to do it in private, and did it when their partner, you know, left on a trip and and. And they were all so different in the yeah and and I saw what it was like when you don’t have your wishes written down and notarized before you die. You can’t count on friends and family to do that because they may be stricken with grief, and they Yes, of course, families that want to do something other want to have cremations. I’ve already told Fanny that, you know, I’ve got a backup for you if you don’t do what I want and I want to be buried in the ground, because there are now cemeteries where they’re trees, yes, a green burial. No casket, just I want to be part of regenerative agriculture. I want to nourish the soil. Don’t want a casket just in there. And I, I can’t, probably do it in my backyard, so she could have a lettuce garden there. But I really think it’s important just think of the way that people have been buried since the beginning of time, and I’m sure that that was part of of what kept the soil so rich with all of the nutrients is the burials.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  46:30

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that, you know, we all have in common, the fact that we’ve been born mystically, magically, born in this moment, and we all have in common that we’re all going to go yes. But isn’t it interesting that people really push away that fact Yes? And to your point about, can we say dying? Well, that there’s a denial in place that is an obstacle to dying?

 

Alice Waters  47:01

Well, yes, I think there is huge obstacle. Even the people that are very committed about it, somebody’s got questions for them that they can answer, and it goes in different directions. But I I saw that that I, I need to prepare myself, and not just mentally, but physically and and I, I just appreciate the cultures that care about this, yes, like the Japanese culture, particularly, I’m so interested in the way they treat children and schools and and how they treat older people and they care for them. I’ve always wanted to commune right to the end for my friends. I promised that from the time I was 30, I just thought, what if we all just live together? Yeah, until we go and Ruth Roger was asking about where that commune was today, yeah, and maybe it’s Santa Barbara.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  48:15

Maybe, can I join it, by the way? Oh, thanks. I’d love to be in it. I’d love to be in it. I want to ask you quick little questions before we go. Is there something you’d go back and tell yourself when you were 21?

 

Alice Waters  48:36

Pause, oh, really, don’t just tear through your life so quickly. I mean, I was hard, you know, of the free speech movement and, you know, the whole drinking and living and the sexual freedom times stop the war, I mean, and we were so kind of starved for connection with each other, but it’s very difficult to do when we aren’t really encouraged and taught in college about what the bigger world is about, and that was something that Mario Savio taught me at Berkeley during the free speech movement. He said we need to learn from other people who have other ways of living.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  49:39

Pause and pay attention. Pause and pay attention.

 

Alice Waters  49:43

Now, of course, I’m running like crazy right now trying to change the world.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  49:48

I know, I’m running too, but it’s something I have to tell myself as well. In fact, yesterday, I was taking my dog for a walk, and we walking through the garden, and I was actually. Wiring some plants that are in bloom. And then I saw a hummingbird land on a little, tiny, tiny branch of this particular plant. And I just stood there watching it, and it was clear that this is a bird who’s guarding a nest. Cannot see the nest. You know how tiny these things are. And I thought, Oh, I’ve, I’ve got to, I have to take the dog to the vet. I’ve got to meet with this person. But I just stayed there, and I sort of been thinking about that ever since, just sort of watching the hummingbird sit and so I’m take, I’m I, I’m thinking about your that advice. I think we would all benefit to pause and pay attention much more often than we do, particularly in this country.

 

Alice Waters  50:47

Well, that’s exactly the kind of walk I take every morning. I’m just looking what’s growing, and I’m just fascinated by it, and it’s happening everywhere. I mean, you don’t have to go to Central Park, no. I mean, the birds are everywhere, right? And flowers are everywhere, and they’re changing all the time, yeah, of course. And so you you notice things, even in the dandelions that are in the little space between the sidewalk and the street.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  51:24

Alice. I wanted to show you the picture of the hummingbird that I took yesterday.  Can you see that?

 

Alice Waters  51:31

Oh, I love it. I’ve got some pictures just like that for you.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  51:36

Yeah, it’s pretty fun to see them. Just Oh, hanging out, incredible. Isn’t that dear?

 

Alice Waters  51:41

Yes.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  51:42

Yeah, yes. Alice Waters, I can’t thank you enough for generously giving us so much of your time today. I’m indebted to you. I hope that someday we get to spend time together.

 

Alice Waters  51:54

Now there’s always a seat for you.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  51:57

Bless you. Thank you for everything today.

 

Alice Waters  51:59

Thank you for asking me.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  52:09

Wow, well, what a beautiful conversation that was with Alice. I just can’t wait to talk to my mom about this one. Let’s get her on a zoom right away. Hi, Mom.

 

Mommy  52:23

Hi, sweet.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  52:24

Mom okay, I just had the most wonderful conversation with Alice Waters. Oh, what an extraordinary woman she is.

 

Mommy  52:33

What a huge impact that she’s had on this world.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  52:36

Yes, we have her to thank for the farm to table movement and regenerative farming and sustainability. You know, she brought that into the four.

 

Mommy  52:47

Absolutely and and got us away from SpaghettiOs.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  52:50

Yeah, got us away from SpaghettiOs. And that’s what you grew up on, Spaghettios and banquet fried chicken dinners. We love that. I happen to mention that in my intro of her but don’t worry, Mom, it’s all good, it’s all fine.

 

Mommy  53:04

Yeah, well, you look okay.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  53:06

I hope so far so good. Yeah, she talked about her parents victory garden. And just to be clear, the Victory Garden idea was brought about by President Roosevelt, right? Mom, right during World War Two, he encouraged people to plant gardens and call them Victory Gardens in support of the war effort. Can you talk about your victory garden? What was the idea behind it, sort of nationally, and then, what was your thinking about it when you were a little girl?

 

Mommy  53:40

Oh, I mean, I thought it was gigantic. I mean that if you plan, if you planted your vegetables and you had your family eat them, that you would win the war. It was just as simple as that, and it was just a victory. And every family would never have to go to the store because you had all your own vegetables and made you independent and and made made us win the war. So I, I had a fairly small plot that was out the side door. I was a good, Sunny corner of our house, the backyard, and you were about seven, seven or eight, right, exactly. So I got hold of seeds, but I planted them way too close together. I didn’t quite understand how much space each one needed. Well, at any rate, not too much happened in that garden, except for carrots. And I remember very well one day riding my bike up the side driveway and seeing these little green tops coming. Yeah. And I thought, Oh, we’re winning the war. This is so great. It was so excited. And I tried to keep watching, but I got too excited, so I started to pull them out enjoy. They were, like, little hair carrots. So they’re like, little, I mean, you could barely see them. They were so. Darn. And so anyway, then I tried to leave some in there, but I just kept getting excited every time I looked at them. Did my harvesting way too early.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  55:09

So they were like little tiny, like hairpins coming out exactly.

 

Mommy  55:13

Hairpins.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  55:14

I bet they were tasty, because they were so baby.

 

Mommy  55:17

Yes, right very sweet. But all those things that we did the scrap metal, and then tin cans that you gathered, and then you took them to the scrap metal center, and you bought victory stamps. And all of those small things that we did seemed to me to be crucial. And I really, as I had my red wagon who was gathering up tin cans, I was convinced that that was going to win the war, mom. And wasn’t there rationing too? Oh yeah, there was rationing of sugar and butter. And we didn’t get any butter, but we got OLIO margarine, which was sort of a white stuff, and then you added yellow dye to it. Oh, dear. Oh, it’s just terrible. It was awful.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  55:57

And the what was the idea of the Victory Garden? Just what was the idea politically? Why did he suggest that people plant gardens?

 

Mommy  56:06

I don’t know. Somehow, I think probably I’m imagining that was Eleanor Roosevelt, yeah, because he was very influenced by the work in Cornell. And Cornell was the place that had the first really home economics. That was not just stupid. I mean, it was very scientific.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  56:26

So here’s what my exterior brain, my phone is telling me about why Americans were asked to plant Victory Gardens. Officials reminded Americans that a well planned Victory Garden was not only patriotic, but could provide a family with nutritious and tasty food. America had a reputation as a land of plenty, but World War Two challenged the nation’s ability to grow and distribute food, because obviously the distribution of food is an expensive undertaking, so that’s a really fascinating idea, and I know it was such a formative part of your life, and it was a formative part of Alice’s life as well, which is just so interesting. Oh, sure. Anyway, I hope that our paths cross again, because I really, really like Alice. She’s just a lovely person. All right. So you’re lovely too, and now I’m going to say goodbye to you.

 

Mommy  57:23

Okay, well, I will say goodbye to you too. I love you. Thank you for talking to her and talking to me.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  57:29

Okay, love you, Mommy. Have a wonderful day.

 

Mommy  57:31

Okay, thanks. You too, bye.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  57:44

There’s more Wiser Than Me with lemonade premium on Apple, you can listen to every episode of season three ad free. Subscribers also get access to exclusive bonus interview excerpts from each episode. Subscribe now by clicking on the Wiser Than Me podcast logo in the Apple podcast app, and then hitting the subscribe button, make sure you’re following Wiser Than Me on social media. We’re on Instagram and Tiktok @wiserthanme, and we’re on Facebook at Wiser Than Me Podcast.

 

CREDITS  58:14

Wiser Than Me is a production of Lemonada Media. Created and hosted by me Julia Louie Dreyfus. This show is produced by Kryssy Pease, Jamela Zarha Williams, Alex McOwen, and Hoja Lopez. Brad Hall is a consulting producer, Rachel Neil is VP of new content and our SVP of weekly content and production is Steve Nelson. Executive Producers are Paula Kaplan, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me. The show is mixed by Johnny Vince Evans with engineering help from James Sparber. And our music was written by Henry Hall, who you can also find on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music. Special thanks to Will Schlegel, and of course, my mother Judith Bowles. Follow Wiser Than Me wherever you get your podcasts. And if there’s a wise old lady in your life, listen up.

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