Linda McCartney - Linda McCartneys Family Kitchen: Over 90 Plant-Based Recipes to Save the Planet and Nourish the Soul

Becoming veggie was and still is hugely important to me and my family and I cant believe how much things have changed since we first gave up meat. Back in the day, vegetarians were viewed as a bit weird, and what veggie food you could find was stodgy and boring. Today, plant-based eating is massive and its all about going vegan, not just vegetarian. I know that if Linda was with us now, she would love this plant-based revolution, and thats why we decided to take a fresh look at her legacy and her recipes and produce this book.

So why did our family decide to become vegetarian all that time ago? Linda and her family had always eaten meat and Id been brought up on very traditional British food. The centre of a meal in our house when I was growing up was meat a chop, maybe, or a couple of sausages with some potatoes and perhaps a bit of veg on the side, and I continued to eat meat as an adult. But one day, Linda and I were having Sunday lunch with the family at our farm in Scotland and gazing out of the window at the baby lambs in the fields nearby. We were saying how cute and beautiful they were, then we looked at our plates. We were eating leg of lamb. We were eating one of those little things running around happily outside. That was the turning point for us and thats how it all started. For Linda, being vegetarian was first and foremost an act of kindness and compassion it was about the animals. Any animal we saw, she would love even a creepy little frog. In fact, one of the things we always shared was a huge passion for nature.

Our children were all quite young at the time, but we sat them down and talked about it. Our daughter Mary remembers Linda and me saying that wed decided not to eat meat because we didnt want anything to suffer to be on our plate. We told the kids that they didnt have to become vegetarian too, but we wouldnt be cooking meat at home any more. It was fine there wasnt any resentment. No one found it difficult. There was a near glitch a while later when we were on holiday in the Caribbean and we went to a barbecue. The kids were saying, Daddy, theres chicken. Can we have chicken? And we said, Yeah, try it. But remember its those birds we have in the yard at home. They ate some chicken and didnt like it. That was a blessing. And to this day, all the children and their children are vegetarian.

At first, the thing for us was working out what we were going to eat, now that there was what we called that hole on the plate where the meat used to be. We had lots of fun thinking up new dishes. Then Christmas came. Obviously, we didnt want to kill a turkey, so Linda came up with a brilliant idea macaroni turkey! We made a big mound of mac n cheese, left it to cool, then sliced it so it took the place of turkey on the plate. Then we added all the trimmings roast potatoes, cranberry sauce and so on. Linda cooked them all amazingly, of course. Also, having the macaroni turkey still allowed me that traditional male role of carver. I wanted to do that because it was the tradition. I wasnt being sexist. I just liked the idea, and it didnt matter to me that I was slicing mac n cheese, not a turkey.

Whats more, everything that Linda cooked was delicious; her main aim was always to make food taste great. That was important, because if a veggie meal wasnt that good, you might ask yourself: But why should I be veggie? This was never a problem for us.

The idea of starting a food company came later on. Wed be travelling back from Scotland to London or somewhere and would find ourselves hungry, so wed call in at a stop-off. But there would never be much for us to eat. It was the same everywhere. Even in London I can only recall one vegetarian restaurant Cranks. Just the name tells you what most people thought about vegetarian cooking at that time! So, Linda decided to do something about it. She said, Being compassionate means well be saving animals. If we make burgers out of plants, lots of cows will be saved.