A culinary pioneer blends memoir with a joyful inquiry into the ingredients he uses and their origins. What goes into the making of a chef, a restau­rant, a dish. And if good ingredients make a differ­ence on the plate, what makes them good in the first place. In his highly anticipated first book, influential chef Peter Hoffman offers thoughtful and delectable answers to these questions. A locavore before the word existed New York Times , Hoffman tells the story of his upbringing, professional education, and evolution as a chef and restaurant owner through its components everything from the importance of your relationship with your refrigerator repairman and an account of how a burger killed his restaurant, to his belief in peppers as a perfect food, one that is adaptable to a wide range of cultural tastes and geographic conditions and reminds us to be glad we are alive. Along with these personal stories from a life in restaurants, Hoffman braids in passionately curious explorations into the cultural, historical, and botani­cal backstories of the foods we eat. Beginning with a spring maple sap run and ending with the late-season, frost-defying vegetables, he follows the progress of the seasons and their reflections in his greenmarket favorites, moving ingredient to ingredient through the bounty of the natural world.