Eating for Beginners: An Education in the Pleasures of Food from Chefs, Farmers, and One Picky Kid

Summary of Eating for Beginners

1. 1

   When Feeding Your Child Becomes a Philosophical Crisis

   

   00:00

   00:00

   Standing in the grocery aisle with my one-year-old son Jules, I froze. Grass-fed or organic? Local or sustainable? Was I prioritizing my health over climate change by choosing California lettuce? Sixty-one percent of Americans share this confusion, but with Jules-someone who'd never tasted MSG or artificial butter-the stakes felt crushing. I wanted to nourish him perfectly while still letting him experience childhood's simple food joys. This paralysis led me to applewood, a small Brooklyn restaurant where owners David and Laura Shea practiced sustainable agriculture without preaching. Their philosophy was disarmingly simple: feed everyone the way you'd feed your own children. Inspired, I spent a year working in their kitchen, visiting farms, and even joining fishing expeditions. What I discovered wasn't a rulebook for perfect eating, but something far more valuable-an understanding of the messy, beautiful web connecting our plates to the land, and ultimately, to each other.

2. 2

   Butchering Ducks and Illusions About Professional Cooking

   Start Listening

   My first day at applewood began with duck butchery - slitting backbones, scraping breastbones, removing legs for confit. Surprisingly, it was easier than trimming my toddler's fingernails. Unlike parenting's endless uncertainty, duck butchery offered clear completion: when a duck is butchered, it's butchered. I was stationed at garde manger, responsible for cold starters I'd never made - pea shoot salad with crawfish, marinated yellowtail with beets, house-made charcuterie. Despite my inexperience, I'd be serving paying customers that evening. David, tall and broad in Buddy Holly glasses, wasn't fazed. Unlike typical restaurant kitchens filled with tempers and hierarchy, applewood operated without macho attitudes. Even the grill was run by Sarah, who chose applewood because "everyone was calm" during rushes. David and Laura were perfect counterparts - he silently worried while she worried loudly; he ran the kitchen, she ran the front. Their vision originated at Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, where they grew nearly everything they served. For Chicago-raised Laura, the transformation was profound: "Once you pull baby spinach out of the ground and eat it, warmed by the sun, it never tastes as good any other way." At applewood, they prioritized "clean local food" over strict organic certification, valuing farmer relationships over labels.

3. 3

   Miss Carbohydrate Meets Her Match

   Start Listening

   Nicknamed "Miss Carbohydrate" for my childhood belly, my first word was "cookie." I'd refused all sauces until my teens, even hating McDonald's for their pre-applied condiments. Jules displayed identical stubbornness, making me feel I'd failed at nourishing my loved ones. Unable to please my son, I channeled my feeding instinct toward strangers at applewood, my zeal manifesting in mandoline injuries and vanishing fingernails. Jules cried at dinner every night in June, surviving on yogurt, bananas, nuts and crackers. When I asked Laura her secret for raising good eaters, she surprised me with sympathy. Sophie had eaten everything until age four, then restricted her diet to mainly chicken. "They're people," Laura shrugged, "and sometimes it's a political protest and sometimes they really don't like it." Unexpectedly, candied orange peel connected me to my late father. When Jules tried a piece, his delighted "Like it! More!" revealed my father in his expression - showing me that connections survive through food even after loss.

4. Chapter 4

   The Living System Behind Artisanal Cheese

   Cheese arrived at Applewood in ordinary UPS boxes. I visited Cato Corner, a Connecticut dairy farm where caramel-colored Jersey cows grazed behind wooden fences. In a small gray shed, Cheryl and Dianna wrapped cheese in white galoshes and plastic aprons. A poster read: "Homeland security. Buy local. It matters." Mark Gillman, the red-haired cheesemaker, led me into the ninety-degree cheesemaking room-air so rancid it felt like "getting inside someone's dirty sneaker." That day we made Hooligan, a soft, washed-rind "stinky cheese." One day's milk from thirty cows would produce about 200 one-pound wheels. Raw milk required less starter culture than pasteurized because it contained "millions of micro-organisms" from the grasses, flowers, and weeds the cows ate. In the fifty-degree cheese cave, hundreds of Hooligans filled wooden shelves, progressing from yellowish-pink to deep sticky orange. Outside, I met Elizabeth, Mark's mother, who rose at 2:30 every morning to tend her herd across forty-two acres. She'd just secured USDA protection for her land-crucial in a state that had lost twenty-one percent of its farmland in two decades. "We're about the animals," Mark said. "We're a farm." Cheese was merely the means to preserving the land.

   Chapter 5

   The Hidden Labor Behind Every Leaf of Lettuce

   At Lucky Dog farm, dawn brought the bean-sorting machine-an *I Love Lucy* conveyor belt demanding sharp eyes and fast hands. Then came the freezing fields: insulated boots, plastic pants, and knives in hand, we harvested baby spinach and lettuce varieties-Berenice, Cocarde, Magenta, Vulcan, Galactic-each requiring precise cutting in freezing mud. Standing amid vast leafy crops, I recalled Emily Dickinson's poem about "this whole Experiment of Green." Back at the barn, Ashley washed over a thousand lettuce heads while Micah packed labeled boxes. I returned to sorting thirty-two crates of beans-monotonous work that made coworker Val exclaim, "This makes you feel like you could go insane"-yet it felt luxurious compared to the frozen fields. Potato harvesting meant crawling on our knees gathering Russian Banana fingerlings and discovering rotten potatoes with their cottage cheese-like goo and putrid smell. Finishing at 5:20 PM, I reflected on Wendell Berry's distinction between isolating harsh work and restorative work representing "one of the forms and acts of love." This experience clarified my food choices-not about perfection but making the right choice whenever possible.

   Chapter 6

   The Messy Reality of Running a Sustainable Restaurant

   As winter arrived, the restaurant's produce turned to earthy browns and yellows with occasional red beets and cabbage. When Florida lettuce appeared at my station, I questioned it. David defended the "localish" biodynamic lettuce as necessary - customers won't come for only rutabaga and garlic, the Hudson Valley's winter offerings. His philosophy: "as local as possible" while acknowledging compromises. He compared it to buying California produce for Jules or enjoying "the gyro platter from the dirty diner." During a surprise health department inspection, David moved me back to the fish station. I cooked perfect scallops amid chaos - hidden drinks, rearranged utensils, staff running downstairs to check animal carcasses. Behind Applewood's charming facade lay a different reality. Laura and David opened the restaurant when Laura was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with Tatum. Laura struggled transporting two young children home late every night. Once a self-righteous stay-at-home mother who judged parents with nannies, her perspective transformed completely. The Sheas survived by embracing "the whole messy, impossible package."

   Chapter 7

   Finding Sweetness in Imperfection

   After months in the kitchen, I finally worked in the pastry section when August needed help. Though intimidated, I found comfort in familiar ingredients like chocolate sauce and mascarpone cream. August, only twenty-six, had discovered his calling in pastry after starting as a line cook, creating desserts he often didn't taste before serving. My greatest triumph came when August needed to repurpose leftover bread. I spontaneously suggested prunes. His eyes lit up: "Yeah. That's going to be good." He told me to "write down that today you invented the Melanie Bread Pudding." Though I missed the restaurant afterward, I'd gained a deeper understanding of food and community that transformed how I shopped and cooked at home. Behind every ingredient lies a complex web of human relationships, environmental considerations, and economic realities. Most importantly, food connects us - across generations, cultures, and even across the dinner table with a picky toddler. In a final triumph, Jules suddenly announced "I like chicken" one night and actually took a bite. As David would say, "Give more when in doubt and all will be well."

   Continue Reading