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The Only Person Who Can Get Mark Bittman to Follow a Recipe Is J.D. Salinger

He wasn’t there, but his son’s presence did the trick.

Published June 18, 2021

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J.D. Salinger and his son, Matt. Used with permission from Matt Salinger.

My current offering isn’t a mystical story, or a religiously mystifying story, at all. I say it’s a compound, or multiple, love story, pure and complicated. — J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

When Matt Salinger was about 10 years old, his father, J.D. Salinger (known as Jerry), had hypoglycemia. He visited a homeopath in Colorado who rejiggered his diet and put him on raw foods. “It was really humiliating,” Matt — who looks a whole lot like his revered dad — told me, when I met him a couple of years ago. “We’d go to restaurants and he’d order lamb and he’d say ‘Almost raw. Blue!’”

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