Paul, Stella & Mary McCartney Release Linda’s Plant-Based Family Cookbook

Paul McCartney and daughters Stella and Mary plan to honor their late wife and mother, Linda McCartney in a new cookbook that will feature some 100 of Linda’s favorite plant-based recipes. Linda McCartney’s Family Kitchen: Over 90 Plant-based Recipes to Save the Planet and Nourish the Soul, by Linda, Paul, Mary, and Stella McCartney, is set to be published on June 29 from Seven Dials Press and will incorporate some of their favorite family stories as well as the plant-based recipes.

“Over 30 years ago, Linda McCartney first blazed the trail for meat-free cooking, and she shared the pleasure of eating compassionately around her family table,” the Orion imprint said. “Now Paul, Mary, and Stella bring Linda’s kitchen up to date, reinventing her best-loved recipes for the plant-based cook, alongside their favorite family stories and the dishes that they now eat at home.”

As both an animal rights activist and well-known photographer, Linda spent years creating and preparing vegetarian dishes for her family and friends. The cookbook aims to enhance Linda’s already delicious and inventive recipes. The three surviving family members compiled the book to remember Linda, who before her death encouraged the family to practice vegetarian cooking and dieting.

The crown jewel of the cookbook will be the stories that Paul, Mary, and Stella all share alongside the recipes. The intimate family photos and recollections will give any reader or home-cook an insight into the McCartney family and their kitchen.

“The original food pioneer, Linda believed in great tasting, wholesome, meat-free food, and embraced kindness and compassion in everything she did. Her legacy lives on in Linda McCartney’s Family Kitchen, a collection of 100 simple, fresh, and inventive plant-based recipes that fit perfectly with how we want to eat now.

“Years ago, before anyone had woken up to the idea of environmental and health and animal welfare issues, Linda was blazing the trail with vegetarianism, telling people about it and promoting it,” Paul said. “At home, she would cook for the family and these recipes have been now brought up to date for a modern audience, so they’re all now plant-based and fabulous.”

The family also mentioned that some of the dishes that she would regularly make at home were pad Thai, pulled jackfruit burgers, Panzanella salad, and crunchy pecan cookies. The cookbook includes Linda’s “American-style” pancakes, chili non-Carne, sausage rolls, and shepherd’s pie. With 90 recipes, the cookbook gives plenty of possibilities for the week’s meals.

“In the book, there are family photographs and stories from those days, and of course lots of great, beautiful-tasting healthy recipes,” Paul continued. “So I hope this book inspires conversations about sustainability and about modern living amongst people besides also just giving them some great recipes to eat.”

Linda’s inspiration lives in Paul and their two daughters. The three family members launched Meat Free Monday in 2009, and the campaign continues to spread globally, encouraging people to cut meat from their diets one step at a time. The family hopes that Linda’s recipes and the stories that come along with them will inspire people to make the same change they did.

As well as a food pioneer and activist, Linda McCartney was a well-respected photographer and the first female photographer to have work featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and exhibited in the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.