Deborah Madison is the author of nearly a dozen books on vegetarian cooking. Although not a vegetarian herself, since the publication of her first book in 1987, The Greens Cookbook, Madison has had significant influence on the way Americans eat and cook with vegetables.

In her new memoir, An Onion in My Pocket, Madison traces her path to the forefront of the vegetarian movement of the ’80s and ’90s. That path includes growing up San Francisco’s counterculture and decades spent