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Kate Whitehead

Executive chef Peggy Chan founded Grassroots Pantry six years ago and is a key driver of Hong Kong’s green-eating movement. Her restaurant serves organic, plant-based and nutritious food.
Here are five books she’d take with her to a desert island.

How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life
by the Dalai Lama, 2002
As an empath, I soak up people’s energies like a sponge, and as a teenager I didn’t know how to block out unwanted energies. Other people’s problems became mine, their sadness became my sadness, and my bitterness became 10 times more bitter. I stumbled upon this book written by the Dalai Lama during a traumatic phase in my life.
The story of China’s opening up told through one family’s history in Scott Tong’s A Village With My Name – book review
After having read and cried through the book in one sitting, this awakening, coupled with my studies in yoga, taught me a way to channel my energies and other people’s energies into compassion and generosity. It taught me to practise kindness, refrain from negative speech, thoughts and actions and, finally, to practise mental tranquillity.

Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson, 1962
In 2005, I first read about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the American agrochemical firm Monsanto in an article in Gourmet magazine. I began studying DDT and pesticides – what the government wants you to know versus what it does to destroy agricultural communities, environments and our health. I thought about how political the food industry had become over the past 50 years.
Silent Spring is a must read for environmentalists – Carson’s passionate work was instrumental in launching the environmental movement in the 1960s.

Healing with Whole Foods
by Paul Pitchford, 2002
I credit my know-how in natural remedies and balancing nutrition with this encyclopaedia of a book. My father suffered a stroke when I was dealing with some personal issues about food. By learning to heal through whole foods, I developed an appreciation of how to make every meal count.

Outliers
by Malcolm Gladwell, 2008
The odds are almost always against soft-spoken, petite Asian women in hospitality. I had never been a ‘Type A’ person. [At school I] was lazy half the time, especially with subjects I despised such as maths. I skipped 60 per cent of my classes in my final year of high school. I’m sure that none of my schoolmates or teachers thought I’d become successful.
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Outliers is one of those interesting reads that allowed me to learn more about myself and other underdog success stories. That shift in attitude and work ethic from the time I found my passion changed the course of my working life.

Goddesses in Everywoman
by Jean Shinoda Bolen, 1984
This book was recommended to me when I was 29. Jean Shinoda Bolen is a seasoned psychoanalyst trained at the Carl Gustav Jung Institute. The Jungian theory is a modern branch of therapy aimed at analysing the ego, where it is to be self-regulated, and dream interpretations to help unlock the subconscious mind.
In this book, Bolen introduces Greek goddesses as a personification of archetypal feminine patterns. The book taught me to appreciate individual self-worth and that parts of us fluctuate and change over time. Understanding that allowed me to grow into myself as a woman and to become a stronger, more assured leader.


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Books and literature

Peggy Chan’s desert island books: Hong Kong vegetarian chef’s five must-reads if she were marooned

Peggy Chan founded Grassroots Pantry four years ago in Hong Kong.

Whole Foods cover

Silent Sprint cover

Goddesses cover

outliers cover

How to Practice cover

Book review: Unrest – Singapore Literature Prize winner gets great English translation that’s well worth the wait

Since publishing Unrest in 2004, author Yeng Pway Ngon has written Trivialities About Me and Myself (2006), Art Studio (2011) and The Costume (2015).

Cover of Unrest

Tofu for sale at street stall

(FILES) This file photo taken in June 1966 shows Red Guards, high school and university students, waving copies of Chairman Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book" as they parade in Beijing's streets at the beginning of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos. / AFP PHOTO / JEAN VINCENT

Culture

Books

Grassroots Pantry founder’s favourite books are ones that have given her peace of mind, helped her develop at work, and taught her about making every meal count and the politics of food
