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The San Antonio Book Festival is proud to present “Get Lit with Mark Bittman,” author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Bittman will be joined in conversation by Emily Spicer, features editor and “The Spice of Life” columnist at the San Antonio Express-News. After audience Q&A, there will be book sales and signing courtesy of The Twig Book Shop. Join us for an evening of scrumptious conversation!
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; TICKET REQUIRED AS SEATING IS LIMITED
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Event update: The Pearl Stable is now offering valet parking for GET LIT attendees! Valet drop-off location – Pearl Stable
About the author: Mark Bittman is the author of 20 acclaimed books, including the How to Cook Everything series, the award-winning Food Matters, and The New York Times number-one bestseller, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. For more than two decades his popular and compelling stories appeared in the Times, where he was ultimately the lead food writer for the Sunday Magazine and became the country’s first food-focused Op-Ed columnist for a major news publication. Bittman has starred in four television series, including Showtime’s Emmy-winning Years of Living Dangerously. He has written for nearly every major newspaper in the United States and many magazines, and has spoken at dozens of universities and conferences; his 2007 TED talk has more than a million views. He was a distinguished fellow at the University of California (Berkeley) and a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists; he is a member of the faculty of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Throughout his career Bittman has strived for the same goal: to make the food, in all its aspects, understandable.
About the book: Ten years ago, this breakthrough cookbook made vegetarian cooking accessible to everyone. Today, the issues surrounding a plant-based diet—health, sustainability, and ethics—continue to resonate with more and more Americans, whether or not they’re fully vegetarian. This new edition has been completely reviewed and revised to stay relevant to today’s cooks: New recipes include more vegan options and a brand-new chapter on smoothies, teas, and more. Charts, variations, and other key information have been updated. And, new for this edition, the recipes are showcased in bright full-color photos throughout. With these photos and a host of recipes destined to become new favorites, this already classic vegetarian cookbook will continue to be more indispensable than ever.
Mostly because I saw the need for one. Partly because I wanted to experiment with “lessmeatarianism” — a way of eating that involved fewer animal products. (If I could have called this book “How to Cook Everything Without Meat” I would have, because that’s more descriptive than “Vegetarian,” but it’s not exactly a title that sings.) And partly — as I came to believe in the course of writing HTCE Veg (as I call it) — because lessmeatarianism is really the way of the future. (This line of thinking eventually led directly to Food Matters, which I write about here.)
I cannot tell you how much I learned in the course of putting Veg together, and how much I believe you would learn if you began to cook from it.
If you think, for example, that winter squash is boring, that whole grains take forever to cook (and that they’re all the same), that all beans are created equal (and take forever to cook), that you can’t be satisfied unless you eat meat, that vegetarian meals are never interesting… I assure you that cooking from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian will change your mind about all of these common misconceptions.
I wasn’t a vegetarian when I started writing Veg, and I’m not one now. But I have a far greater appreciation for the non-carnivorous world, an appreciation that doesn’t feel like a compromise but rather like an expansion of my culinary universe. In the world of cooking, the available plants are more numerous and arguably more interesting than the available animals, and they’re produced and consumed at far less cost to personal health, the environment, and the economy. Every good cook owes it to her- or himself to explore this world, and to make more of it available to his or her family and friends. Try some of the recipes if you like – they’re posted here.
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