"People claim to know that plants are living things, but the system of food production, distribution, and consumption we have known in this country for the last forty years has attempted to deny that they are. If our food has lacked flavor - - if, in aesthetic terms, it has been dead -- that may be because it was treated as dead even while it was being grown. And perhaps we have tolerated such food -- and the way its production has affected our society and environment -- because our senses, our hearts, and our minds have been in some sense deadened, too."

Check out what Alice said during our live chat with her.

From The Farm-Restaurant Connection by Alice Waters, in Antaeus: Not for Bread Alone, Writers on Food, Wine and the Art of Eating, edited by Daniel Halpern. No. 68, Spring, 1992.