Mollie Katzen
Mollie Katzen (born October 13, 1950, in Rochester, New York, U.S.) is an American cookbook author and artist. She is best known for the hand-lettered, whimsically illustrated vegetarian classics "Moosewood Cookbook" (1977) and "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" (1982). Since then, she has written and illustrated a number of other books, including three highly regarded children's cookbooks, "Pretend Soup" (1994), "Honest Pretzels" (1999), and "Salad People" (2005). In 2007 the "Moosewood Cookbook" was inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame. In 2017 her notebooks, correspondence, and original hand-lettered pages were collected by the Smithsonian  Institution and are now permanently housed in the Archives Center of The National Museum of American History. Early life. Katzen was raised in Rochester, New York in a Jewish family. She has attributed her interest in vegetarian cuisine to her kashrut-observant upbringing. As a child, she attended the Eastman School of Music, where she studied oboe and piano. Katzen attended Cornell University and received her bachelor's degree in fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is the sister of former Boston Symphony Orchestra horn player Daniel Katzen. Career. With over 6 million books in print, Mollie  Katzen is considered one of the best-selling cookbook authors of all time. She was named by "Health Magazine" as one of the five "Women Who Changed the Way We Eat." From 2003 through 2011, Katzen served as a consultant to Harvard University Dining Services, helping design their groundbreaking Food Literacy Initiative. Over the years, she has collaborated on numerous projects with Walter Willett, M.D., Dr. P.H., of the Harvard School of Public Health. In 2013, Katzen published her last vegetarian cookbook, "The Heart of the Plate". Katzen now devotes her time to piano study and creation of new artwork  in many genres. She posts her drawings and paintings on Instagram @molliekatzenartstudio.