[00:00.00]Now for another in our Thanksgiving week food series: a profile of food writer and cookbook author Paula Wolfert, as she calls on her culinary skills to battle back against Alzheimer's.
[00:12.59]Paula Wolfert has the hands of someone who's been cooking a long time.
[00:20.10]What I'm going do is, I'm just going to fry this for flavor.
[00:23.40]In the kitchen of her Sonoma, Calif., home, Wolfert is preparing a cauliflower recipe she loves.
[00:30.95]This is an Armenian dish taught to me by a very famous Armenian cook. I actually like the dish because it's so simple to make.
[00:39.20]The 75-year-old Wolfert has been writing about Mediterranean food for four decades. 
[00:45.65]She authored nine cooking books and has won numerous awards, including five James Beards.
[00:52.55]Wolfert made her mark long before the rise of the modern-day celebrity chefs, but her commitment to authentic recipes and ingredients still influence many in the culinary world today.
[01:05.66]I like real food. I'm not a chef who makes up dishes. That's today's world.
[01:10.76]I was interested in real food of the countries that I had visited. 
[01:15.28]And I had visited all the countries of the Mediterranean by the time I got around to writing about the food. 
[01:20.38]And in writing about the food, you have to explain the people.
[01:27.94]Now, at that time, people didn't do that very much in cookbooks. 
[01:31.48]They just tried to make it look fast and easy and just get in there and make it. 
[01:35.28]But I was interested in how they really made the food.
[01:38.48]This is the very first clay pot I ever bought. 
[01:42.13]And I saw this, and I said to the woman, what is this? And she said, it's tripi¨¨re. And I said, what's a tripi¨¨re. And she says, it's to cook's tripe. I said, what's tripe?
[01:51.68]I think I was 19. I think I was 18. I didn't know what tripe was. You see, you put all the food in here. 
[01:58.08]I remember, Tunisia, there was about 12 women in the room and I said in French, who makes the best something.I can't remember the dish. And I could see all the heads turn. 
[02:08.42]The same thing in Greece. The same thing everywhere, in Sicily.
[02:12.42]I always got a bunch of women together, and then I would ask about rare dishes. And then I said, I want that -- that's what I want to learn.
[02:20.29]What should I have for low gluten?
[02:25.77]Most Friday mornings, Wolfert can be found browsing the Sonoma farmer's market.
[02:31.42]This is the best food in the country. The growing season is longer. The quality is here. The farmers care. For a cook, this is heaven.
[02:40.77]Wolfert lives with her husband, Bill Bayer, a bestselling crime fiction writer. 
[02:49.72]Several years ago as she was touring the country to promote her most recent book, Wolfert says she started to suspect she was having neurological problems.
[02:59.72]I knew there was something wrong. I just wasn't sure what it was. But I had memory problems. 
[03:06.57]I didn't understand sometimes when people questioned me with complicated questions even about things that I wrote about myself in a book I just finished.
[03:16.87]The first neurologist said is it's mild cognitive impairment. 
[03:21.02]But she did send me to this big scientist, because he does big tests, you know, these trials. 
[03:28.17]And he read it and he said, no, no, no, that's Alzheimer's.
[03:31.57]When Paula first started telling me, she says, I'm worried, I think I'm losing my mind, I can't remember anything.
[03:39.17]I was in denial, and I think most of the people who knew her. 
[03:43.12]There was one time she came up and she said, you know, I forgot how to make an omelet.She was standing in front of the stove. It was a very poignant time.
[03:50.96]Wolfert began reading everything she could about trying to slow the progression of Alzheimer's, and she turned to the thing she knows best to wage her battle: food.
[04:03.91]The kale, the avocado, the blueberries, the coconuts, these are the main ingredients.
[04:14.13]Every morning, Wolfert assembles a shake chockful of superfoods and supplements she believes are helping stave off further cognitive decline.
[04:25.31]Some of the ingredients have well-known health benefits, like leafy greens and nuts. 
[04:31.06]Some have not been proven scientifically to boost brain function, like coconut oil. But Wolfert says she's never felt better.
[04:40.77]It is tough going, because it's not delicious. I didn't make this to be delicious. I make this to be nutritious. 
[04:48.71]My grandmother told me -- my grandmother told me during the Second World War, we were sitting in the vegetable garden. 
[04:54.76]She said, if you want to win a war, you have got to be willing to fight. This is how I fight.
[05:00.71]Alzheimer's is just a crushing word. You don't want to hear that word. 
[05:06.27]But I have been incredibly impressed by the way she's handled this, because I think of how I might have handled it, and I don't think with anywhere near the kind of courage that she's shown.
[05:17.01]I have to look at my own recipe because I can never remember anything. 
[05:19.79]Lightly brown. Stir in the tomatoes, crushed red pepper, OK.
[05:25.50]Wolfert still occasionally cooks these days, but she now relies on her own cookbooks.
[05:32.69]I can't remember what I read two minutes after I read it. That's a real problem. 
[05:38.09]I know what the dish is supposed to taste like. I just don't remember the amounts. 
[05:41.69]I have to check the proportions, and I can't -- I can't remember. I can't remember from going there to here and back again.
[05:51.71]I just -- it's just -- it's not fair that these things happen, but they do, so I just to what I have to, do what I can. 
[06:04.03]If this works in making me nice and healthy, I will be buying it all the time.
[06:08.43]Who knows what the future holds and how this will play out. I try not to think too much about it, but, sure, we discuss it, too. 
[06:17.58]What will the future be? That's what's so scary about this, 
[06:22.24]and that's what everyone is very conscious of, because your memory is your self and your ability to recognize and ability to think.
[06:29.79]I miss the testing years, when you would be developing a wonderful dish. I understand why they're over.
[06:38.07]My husband, every once in a while, I couldn't eat like you. I would rather die. I said, no, you wouldn't. , you wouldn't. 
[06:44.98]I want to be here as best I can, and I can't do it about food. I did that for 50 years. That's fine.
[06:53.02]I loved it. I loved every moment of it. I love my friends. I love Alice Waters. But that isn't where my head is right now. 
[07:00.16]My head is with my children, my husband, my friends, and sharing with the Alzheimer's Association whatever I can share, because this is the most important thing I want to say. 
[07:14.06]The shame that people have about their memory loss is -- and the denial that exists and their friends saying, oh, everybody has -- you know, it's senior moments, forget it.
[07:29.26]And by the time they finally become like the old ladies or old men become, it's too far. You can't help -- those people can't be helped. It's too late. It's too late. 
[07:42.18]We have to come out the way people with HIV came out, the way people with cancer came out. 
[07:47.97]We're not going to get enough money from the government or from anybody else unless we stand there and say, hey, I'm not an old zombie. 
[07:57.08]I'm me, and I need help, and all the people around me who are suffering the way I am, we need help.
[08:04.02]But we have to come out and say it. We're worried. We need to do something.
[08:07.82]And we're cheering you on, Paula.
[08:11.62]Wolfert says she plans to do something by becoming a volunteer advocate for the Alzheimer's Association. 
[08:17.82]Her doctors say they haven't seen signs of any further cognitive decline in the past six months.