Novato resident’s new cookbook inspired by Grateful Dead food culture
Kind veggie burritos. Grilled cheese with garlic salt. Ooey, gooey quesadillas.
For Deadheads, there are certain foods that transport them back in time to when they’d wander down Shakedown Street, an informal parking lot pop-up where fans would serve homemade dishes before and after concerts, often prepared on hot plates or mini grills in the back of a van.
It’s a tradition that’s continued for Dead & Company shows to this day, including its recent Golden Gate Park run in August to celebrate the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary, and other Dead cover shows.
The food was a part of the greater Grateful Dead culture, one that embraced kindness and more plant-based, Earth-friendly and sustainable living. These ideas live on in “Dead in the Kitchen,” an official Grateful Dead cookbook created by Novato cook and author Gabi Moskowitz, with help from David Lemieux, Grateful Dead legacy manager and archivist.
“When my friends and I were traveling the U.S., Canada and Europe seeing the Grateful Dead, we were always searching for healthy, nutritious and sustaining food to keep us energized to dance for hours nightly while seeing the Dead perform,” said Lemieux, who shares his favorite recipes from the book in the afterword. “It’s a thrill to now add to my cookbook shelf a new vegetarian and vegan cookbook inspired by Grateful Dead music and culture and our shared love of the planet.”
“Working with Gabi has been inspiring, as she is as passionate about this type of food as the best Deadhead cooks are, and she’s the most creative cook I’ve known,” Lemieux said. “This book is filled with healthy, easy-to-make recipes that are great for your well-being and conscious of the fragility of the planet. This is the cookbook I’ve been waiting for 35 years.”
Mollie Katzen, whose legendary “Moosewood Cookbook” helped make vegetarian food more accessible for the masses, wrote the foreword. In it, she details cooking late-night meals in the San Francisco restaurant where she was working at the time and bringing them to Keystone Korner for Jerry Garcia’s midnight jams.
Moskowitz, who produced Freeform’s “Young & Hungry,” a comedy based on her life and writing, and created the BrokeAss Gourmet food, wine and lifestyle blog, will discuss her new cookbook with Marin resident Mike McClure, the host of the Grateful Dead podcast and video series “Guess the Year,” at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Book Passage in Corte Madera. Register online at bookpassage.com. Donations of nonperishable items for the North Marin Community Services are requested.
Q: Did this cookbook feel different from the other ones you’ve written?
A: Yes, thematically, it’s different because I haven’t written any other Grateful Dead cookbooks. On the other hand, it’s similar to the way that I like to cook and eat. We eat mostly vegetarian food. I grew up in Sonoma County, and the health food and vegetarianism that came out of the ‘60s and ‘70s and the hippie era that the Grateful Dead was such a big part of very much informed the way that I grew up eating, and so it very much informs the way that I cook. That can definitely be seen in the recipes. This is the first book that I’ve written since having kids, now 4 and 7, which changed the way that I cook. There are food preferences, dietary restrictions and after-school activities, so being able to think on my feet and adapt as needed has become a really important part of cooking for me. And I try to bring that to the book as well.
Q: When did this idea come together?
A: I’m really lucky. This book actually came to me. Grateful Dead Productions has wanted to do a cookbook for a long time. Food is very much a part of the Grateful Dead and Deadhead culture. There’s a whole ethos that goes along with Deadhead food and Deadhead food culture that informs it: kindness, kindness to the Earth, kindness to animals and kindness to our bodies. Many people would set up camping stoves and make communal foods like curries, soups and stews. That kind of food, that communal hippie culture food, really changed the way Americans eat. The whole health food and vegetarianism movements had a lot of components, but Grateful Dead parking lots were a big part of it. People would go back to their homes after a Dead show or after however many months or years spent touring with the band, and they would bring with them that way of eating, and it would become more and more widespread.
Q: When did you realize this connection with the Grateful Dead and food?
A: I grew up in Sonoma County, and my parents were not Deadheads, but I grew up eating this way. I was the only kid with tofu in my lunchbox. This felt like home cooking to me. I don’t know that I ever specifically thought to myself, this food that I grew up with, this is Deadhead food. The two were just intertwined.
The Grateful Dead for me feels like home. I grew up going to Camp Tawonga in Yosemite, and before I got into live shows and before I got into listening to an album from start to finish, my relationship to Grateful Dead music was an entire cafeteria dining hall of children singing “Friend of the Devil.” The music, the food, the people, the feeling — it just all always felt like home.
Q: How did you approach this project?
A: We wanted it to flow like a Dead show.
We had a big party at Greens, and we had an incredible live band. We did kind veggie burritos wrapped in foil. People kept coming up to me and saying: This is like time travel. I’m eating a kind veggie burrito and listening to live Dead music.
That was the idea, like make these dishes, put on a Dead album and conjure that feeling. But it was really important to me that this book not just be merch. I wanted this to be a really usable cookbook.
Q: Any recipes special to your heart?
A: There’s nothing like a grilled cheese with garlic salt. It’s sustaining, it’s cheap and it’s portable. The first time I had grilled cheese with garlic salt, I vowed to never make it differently. I don’t think my kids have ever had grilled cheese without garlic salt because it just gives it that special je ne sais quoi that just makes it unlike anything else. I am extremely proud of the mushroom bacon grilled cheese in the cookbook, because for those who don’t eat bacon, this mushroom bacon really gets the job done. I am particularly proud of that recipe.
Jerry Garcia very famously used to talk about how in order to improvise, you actually have to be incredibly prepared. I come back to that all the time. To me, cooking is being incredibly prepared, which means having a well-stocked pantry and good techniques as well as trusting your intuition and throwing out the idea of what food or eating is supposed to be. That’s when the magic happens.
Q: Were you interested in cooking at a young age?
A: Yes, I cooked on my little Fisher-Price stove from the time I was little.
I wasn’t into pretend cooking for very long. I loved helping my mom in the kitchen. I became a vegetarian. I’m not still 100% vegetarian. We mostly eat vegetarian, but I became a vegetarian when I was 7 or 8. Making my vegetarian alternative to what my family was having was one of the ways that I got into cooking.
Q: What else would you like to share?
A: I would really welcome people to, if they love the book, if they love the Dead, if they just love food and taking care of their community, please try to carry the message of this book, which is love and kindness through food, and let’s do everything we can to make sure people in our communities are fed, whether that means starting a pantry in your community or your local school or donating to food banks with either goods or money.
There are so many stories of someone who saved all their money to get a bus ticket to a Dead show and needed food and a place to stay. Deadheads take care of each other, and I hope we can take that energy and that feeling and that sentiment and bring it to our immediate community and beyond.