Abby Mandel Meyer

Abby Mandel Meyer spoke to her followers in the language of oatmeal-banana hot cakes, succotash salad with edamame, and perhaps a lemon-glazed blueberry bundt cake.

She had occasion to quote Ecclesiastes when talking about food.

And bringing to Chicago a sustainable farmer's market that supports Midwestern producers was nothing short of religion for her.

So was her trusty food processor.

Mandel Meyer, 75, of Glencoe, the cookbook author and "Weekend Cook" columnist who founded the Green City Market, died Wednesday in Highland Park Hospital after a yearlong battle with mantle cell lymphoma.

"Her taste level in everything was very elevated—whether it was the taste of her food, the taste of her parties. Everything she wore, she did, the word 'taste' just pops out," said Nancy Brussat Barocci, owner of Convito Cafe & Market in Wilmette and a friend of Mandel Meyer's for more than 30 years.

But the Green City Market is her legacy, said Rick Bayless, chef/owner of Frontera Grill and a board member of the market. "She was just so tenacious about the mission of the market, staying positive and growing and promoting sustainability."

Green City, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this summer, remains the city's only sustainable—selling local products grown in a way least harmful to the earth—green market. This year, some 43,000 visitors have attended the market where 45 farmers and vendors bring their bounties every Wednesday and Saturday to the south end of Lincoln Park from May through October. That's more than twice as many as last year at this time, according to Lyle Allen, executive director of the market.

Cooking at age 8

Born in Holyoke, Mass., Abby Evarts got cooking at age 8 following the death of her father, when she assumed kitchen duties for the family. She did not pursue it professionally until she was in her late 30s and working as a homemaker and mother of two.

It was the early 1970s and she was chairing a benefit for her alma mater, Smith College in Northampton, Mass., where she got a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1954. (She received a master's degree in social work from Wayne State University in Detroit.) For that benefit, Mandel Meyer persuaded Julia Child to do a demonstration—and in the process, got turned on to cooking in a big way.

"I always adored cooking," Mandel Meyer told the Tribune in a 1979 story about people who made career changes. "I felt it was my own natural interest to pursue."

Mandel Meyer attended La Varenne cooking school in Paris and traveled back and forth across the Atlantic to train in top-notch restaurants in France, Switzerland and Belgium—a "schooling" she arranged for herself through her network of food friends.

"I came with her on at least one occasion to France. I think I was 9 and turned 10 that summer and we stayed with a French family in a chateau," said Holly Sherr, her daughter. "I would stay with the family. And she would wake up at 4 a.m." and go the restaurant to bake or prepare food. "She would come back at the end of the day exhilarated."

The haute side of the culinary arts was never Mandel Meyer's calling, though.

Mandel Meyer found her niche back home in the Midwest. Her focus was helping the time-crunched home cook make grace and elegance out of simple, fresh ingredients.

"I stole from her all the time, in any way I could," said Brussat Barocci, with a chuckle, noting that "a ton of food in my cases [at Convito] are Abby Mandel's" recipes.

From her North Shore home,Mandel Meyer did her culinary concocting, which she parlayed into sixcookbooks including an homage to the heartland, "Celebrating the Midwestern Table: Real Food for Real Times."

She wrote a weekly recipe column that appeared in newspapers throughout the country including the Chicago Tribune. Her "Weekend Cook" column ran in the Sunday Home&Garden section for more than 20 years.

"Abby had a vast and vocal following that always let their disappointment be known if her column was missing from a Home&Garden section. And they had good reason for their dedication," said Elaine Matsushita, editor of Home&Garden. "For years, she shared with them recipes that were accessible and interesting. They not only tasted great, they also made the cooks look good."

For Bon Appetit, Mandel Meyer wrote feature stories and a food-processor column that taught readers shortcut cooking techniques using fresh ingredients. That column ran for 15 years.

It was that whirring contraption that sliced and diced and grated and kneaded with the precision and speed of a racehorse that launched Mandel Meyer's star as a cooking teacher.

Cuisinart connection

In the 1970s Mandel Meyer worked with Cuisinart founder and inventor Carl Sontheimer to spread the news of his ground-breaking invention. She developed a series of Cuisinart cookbooks and held cooking demonstrations using the newfangled appliance. Culinary guru James Beard dubbed Mandel "The Queen of Machine Cuisine."

This was the era of Julia Child and Americans discovering the joy of becoming a home gourmet.

"People were becoming more familiar with cooking a little bit fancier for dinner parties," said Carol Mighton Haddix, editor of the Tribune's Good Eating section, noting the Child influence in the early '70s. "And then this machine came along and people embraced it totally."

"Abby was instrumental in showing people how to use this new gadget. She would take it out on the road and do demonstrations. She had a very good sense of what people needed to feel comfortable cooking."

In the late '80s, Mandel Meyer got comfortable with a fledgling green movement.

Under the auspices of The American Institute of Wine & Food, she founded The Best of The Midwest Market in 1989 to showcase produce and artisanal food from 12 Midwest states. It was an annual, one-day event that continued for 11 years and was held in several Chicagoland venues, ultimately landing at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.

In 1999, spurred by a growing concern for the environment and her desire to connect local farmers with chefs and average folks looking for sustainable food, she launched something more ambitious: Chicago's Green City Market.

It was Mandel Meyer's goal to turn the market into a yearlong event—which will happen for the first time this year to some degree, as the market moves indoors (albeit not always weekly) from November though April at The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park.

Launches foundation

Shortly before her death, Mandel Meyer moved to secure her year-round ambitions for the market: She launched the Abby Mandel Charitable Foundation, with a $1 million personal contribution. According to her daughter, the foundation's primary goal is to establish a year-round permanent location for the market.

Mandel Meyer racked up a number of awards including a prestigious James Beard Foundation Award in 1989 in the Quick Cooking category for her book "More Taste Than Time."

She was a former national board member of The American Institute of Wine & Food and a board member of the Chicago chapter of that organization, a member and former president of the Chicago chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier, a professional organization for women in the culinary profession, and president of Les Dames D'Escoffier International from 1999 to 2001.

But perhaps the achievement that touches the most families is the way Mandel Meyer made the esoteric world of food accessible to folks facing the question of what's for dinner tonight.

In her final "Weekend Cook" column in October 2005 (she signed off to devote more time to Green City), Mandel Meyer gave readers her e-mail address "should you have any questions, inspirations or problems regarding cooking in the future."

And she closed with two quotes including a happy admonition from Ecclesiastes: "A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, drink and be merry."