Wholesome Herbal Food & Medicine

A Word Before We Begin

There is a moment, known to any cook who has ever stood barefoot on a cold stone floor at dawn, when the kitchen ceases to be merely a room and becomes something altogether more sacred — a place where the boundaries between nourishment and remedy, between supper and medicine, dissolve as quietly and completely as a sprig of thyme in warm broth. This book was born of that moment, and of a lifetime spent learning that the most powerful pharmacy I have ever known sits not behind a counter of glass and fluorescent light, but along my own garden wall, in the bundles of dried herbs hanging from the kitchen beam, in the slow amber pour of an infused oil, in the steam rising from a pot that smells of rosemary and ancient good sense. I have written these pages for the cook who suspects, as I always have, that feeding someone well and healing them are not two separate acts at all — that a bowl of something made with care and knowledge and honest ingredients is, in the truest and oldest sense of the word, medicine. These are not remedies to be feared or fussed over; they are ordinary, beautiful food, only with the wisdom put back in. Come to the kitchen, then, and let us begin.

— Agnes