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BRAIN FOOD B RAIN FOOD BRAIN FOOD BRAIN FOOD B R A IN FOOD BRAIN FOOD BRAIN FOOD WHEN A CULINARY DREAM TEAM announced they were raising money on Kickstarter to self- publish a biographical cookbook called Unforgettable: Bold Flavors from Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life, food world illuminati rushed to back the project, rallying around Paula as word spread of her dementia. In Part 1 of the following story, cookbook author Peggy Knickerbocker shares tales of the making of Unforgettable and Paula’s influence on the country’s culinary awakening. In Part 2, we distill the emerging science from the next frontier in food—the gut–brain connection—and share a plan for what to eat for better cognition, focus, and mental health. We conclude with a tool kit of resources for anyone who wants to know more about the aging brain. Why now? Paula’s story inspired us to take a deeper look at Alzheimer’s prevention and advocacy through the lens of food. Too much about the country’s sixth-most fatal disease remains a mystery. A healthier diet is not a cure-all, but com- bined with sleep and exercise, it’s a great place to start. As Knickerbocker writes about her friend’s experience, “There’s hope in taking charge.” —HUNTER LEWIS NOVEMBER 2016 COOKING LIGHT 167 BRAIN FOOD PART 1 PPAULAAULA WWOLFERTOLFERT at the enormous kitchen island in her home in the hills above Sonoma, A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND California. A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND A RENEGADE’S LAST STAND CULINARY LEGEND PAULA WOLFERT FIGHTS A SPIRITED BATTLE AGAINST ALZHEIMER’S USING FOOD, FRIENDS, AND LAUGHTER AS MEDICINE. STORY BY PEGGY KNICKERBOCKER PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC WOLFINGER NOVEMBER 2016 COOKING LIGHT 169 pesto, for instance, or they might argue A DIAGNOSIS made an appointment with a nutri- At age seven, after her that a true Genovese pesto could only tionist, Sharon Meyer, an associate grandparents moved to be made with the tiny leaves of basil of Madison’s, who approved of Paula’s from Liguria. Paula would say to use [Bill Bayer] felt drawn well-researched regimen. Paula read Manhattan, she ran away what we had on hand and not to take to Paula’s strength, which blogs and newsletters in support of to their Midtown apartment pesto making too seriously. belied her vulnerability. her newly found dietary path. [See by riding the subway. Her While she never nitpicked the size “A Tool Kit of Resources,” page 190.] of a basil leaf, Paula went to pains- “She had children to Since no real cure has yet been grandmother lovingly taking lengths to document authentic support, and she’d made discovered, Paula did what she knew played along, “hiding” her recipes from the source. There was a a career out of basically best: She treated food as medicine. in the basement and telling gentle joke among her food writer Paula was never comfortable with friends that Saveur magazine had nothing,” he recalled. physical exertion. In 2000, you would her she’d feed her onion asked for 600 words on the canelé de “She was a powerhouse. have thought she had run a marathon sandwiches. (“They’ll smell Bordeaux, which she described as Aggressive, but not in walking a few blocks from our hotel in me out!” the young Paula “a magical bakery confection, a cake Bologna, Italy, to the opening ceremony with a rich custardy interior enclosed an off-putting way. There of a Slow Food conference. She begged protested.) But that night by a thin caramelized shell.” But was something about for water, her face grew bright red, and Bertha took her back Paula learned so much, having become her eyes. There was a she panted along the way. So when she to Brooklyn. Concerned friendly with a secret brotherhood told me recently she jogged daily for of Bordeaux bakers, that she sent in vulnerability in them, 30 minutes on a treadmill, I didn’t about her reckless behavior, thousands of words. which was at odds with believe her. “Not only that,” she said, her mother sent her to a She sought “Big Taste . food that her brassy personality.” “I also take yoga and qigong classes, preeminent psychiatrist, is deeply satisfying and that appeals to and I meditate.” all the senses,” as described in Paula EMILY KAISER THELIN, Unforgettable: Bold Paula also finds comfort in a social a relative, who told her Wolfert’s World of Food. As we became Flavors from Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life routine. She organized a local Memory parents, “She’s a renegade. close, we were both testing recipes for Café (a spot for people with memory Do not worry about her.” our cookbooks, my first and her fifth. loss to support each other and socialize), I’ll never forget bringing her a taste of NE DAY in 2013, Paula and she meets weekly with six women EMILY KAISER THELIN, Unforgettable: Bold romesco. She put the roasted pepper told me her memory had for “Lunch Bunch.” She traveled to Flavors from Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life sauce in her mouth, closed her eyes, O been perilously slipping, Washington, D.C., as a spokeswoman and said, “Are you in love with the so she’d gone in for tests. for the Alzheimer’s Association to flavors? I mean madly in love?” If I I called to hear the outcome: It was as discuss the importance of getting HERE WAS PAULA hesitated, even for a second, she’d say, she’d suspected. Catherine Madison, tested, taking medication to slow the Wolfert—queen of couscous, “Dump it.” The recipe stayed inOlive MD, a San Francisco neurologist spe- cognitive decline, and speaking out doyenne of Mediterranean Oil: From Tree to Table. She was oblivi- cializing in dementia and now director for a cure. “You can’t be ashamed; you T and Middle Eastern cooking, ous to the ways like this in which she of the Ray Dolby Brain Health Center, have to come out and fight,” Paula five-time James Beard Award–winning helped my career. She’d never let me detected mild cognitive impairment, insisted. She treated her diagnosis with author—disembarking my long flight call her my mentor because it carried a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease, in the same vigor she put forth when we to Casablanca, Morocco. Paula was my too much weight. Anointed by Paula, Paula’s MRI. traveled thousands of miles to Spain to Julia Child, M. F. K. Fisher, and Elizabeth Back home, we became fast friends. PAULA REVIEWS a recipe from her I was on a fast track to my master’s “I’m not one to feel sorry for myself,” track down the production of Bomba David all wrapped into one, and I was From the first time I picked her up seminal 1983 book The Cooking of degree in gastronomic writing. Paula told me then. “Besides, I’d rice, the ideal grain for making paella. standing beside her, by chance, in 1994, to go to a Spanish restaurant on Southwest France. And then after a few years, yearn- already done my homework and had She was serious about slowing down along with a couple hundred chefs and Russian Hill, where we both lived, ing for a taste of country living, Paula been studying alternative treatments the disease. food writers. I, the newcomer to food she was open and funny. I ate her and Bill bought a contemporary for dementia on the Web,” especially After the diagnosis, I put off visiting writing, was charmed to be listening to words. I loved her upbeat energy, cardoons. Alice Waters invited her to house in a wooded enclave above the work of Dale E. Bredesen, MD, because of my own self-centered fear. I her greet and gossip with her cohorts. her inquisitiveness, her immediacy. dinners at Chez Panisse and parties at Sonoma. She’d had it with San of the Buck Institute for Research on had some skin in the game, too: I’d seen “Hey,” she said, squinting at my Since she didn’t drive, I took her her house. “Why is everybody being so Francisco’s hills, the wind and fog. Aging and UCLA’s Alzheimer’s research my brilliant drama critic father’s debil- name tag. “We both write for the same grocery shopping and to the Ferry nice to me around here?” Paula, the She’d grown weary of all the dinners center. Paula immediately embarked on itating demise as a result of Alzheimer’s magazine.” She immediately made me Plaza Farmers Market weekly. There, former New Yorker, would ask. She sat and lunches, the constant chatter her own improvised dietetic therapy. In in 1985, and that, too, of his rosy- feel like a colleague. As the line inched young chefs timidly approached her to on culinary panels where she shared about food. She was ready to make her research on the effects of nutrition cheeked Irish mother in the mid-’60s. along, we found we were neighbors in extend an invitation to their fledgling generously and injected moments of new friends who didn’t cook and to on brain function, Paula contacted I’d been in an inter mittent state of San Francisco, where she and her restaurants.