Q&A: Myra Goodman riffs on her Straight from The Earth vegan cookbook.

Maybe you've heard of this little Earthbound Farm phenomenon.

They do a little lettuce 'round these parts and other plots around the planet.

But only just enough to make them the biggest organic operation in existence.

Less known is the blooming cookbook franchise EBF co-founder Myra Goodman is building.

Her latest is a lavish, nearly-100-recipe all-vegan tome called Straight from the Earth.

It comes in the wake of two other standouts, The Earthbound Cook and Food to Live By.

Becca Gerber introduces it with an eye-catching recipe and story, "Straight from the Earth is an all vegan, all-delicious cookbook," in the Weekly issue out today.

An exclusive Q&A between Weekly editor Mary Duan and Goodman, who co-authored this one with her daughter Marea, appears below.

Check out more recipes for summer pesto pizza and raspberry salad here.

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Here’s how you give birth to a cookbook: You give birth to a daughter who leaves home, goes to UCBerkeley, moves into an all-vegan co-op residence and becomes one of the house cooks.

That’s when, says Earthbound Farm co-founder Myra Goodman, she got “weirdly excited about vegan cooking”—through the experiences of her daughter, Marea.

“She would do these multi-course meals and I would call every Sunday and she would tell me, ‘Oh, I have to make this for you, I have to make that for you, I have to make this soup,” Goodman says. “That was the timing.”

The book is Straight from the Earth: Irresistible Vegan Recipes for Everyone.

Goodman and her husband, Drew, launched Earthbound Farm in 1984 on 2.5 acres in Carmel Valley. They started with raspberries, but by 1986, expanded to become the first company to pre-wash and bag salad greens. And within a few decades, Earthbound become the country’s largest grower of organic produce.  

Earthbound sold to WhiteWaves Food Co., maker of Silk Soymilk and Horizon dairy products, last December for an estimated $600 million.

In March, Goodman delivered a talk titled “In Praise of Big Organic” at the food-centric TedX Manhattan conference.

Her message, in short: Big doesn’t mean bad.

“I have been the face of small organic, medium organic and as-big-as-it-gets organic,” she says in the talk. “Every organic farm, from the tiniest local grower to the largest operations that supply our nation’s supermarkets, are an essential part of the healthy food revolution.”

The Weekly spoke to Goodman about the book, and why eating vegan for even a few days a week is great for personal health and the health of the planet.

The setting: a picnic table at the Carmel Valley farm stand that launched an empire.

Weekly: Besides Marea moving into the all-vegan co-op, what prompted you to do an all-vegan cookbook?

Goodman: I feel like we wrote a vegan cookbook for everyone. It’s mission driven in that it’s the book I wanted to write. Chad Smith, who worked for us at Earthbound, helped us to green our supply chain. While he was doing research for that, he became vegan; it’s the most efficient thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. And he said, ‘Myra, if you want me to help you with your next cookbook, it has to be vegan.”

Do you normally eat vegan at home?

I have low blood-sugar and I noticed some of my favorite recipes were vegan. The first title we proposed was It Just Happens to Be Vegan because anytime I asked Sarah [LaCasse, Earthbound’s executive chef], “Does this happen to be vegan?” it was vegan.

I ate vegan for a month [while working on the book] but it was much harder for my husband. He missed making his meatballs or his roast chicken. I’m not eating strictly vegan now, but the one area where I won’t compromise is not eating factory-farmed animals. I stopped going to my favorite Thai restaurant because of it.

I think I could make it without meat, but the idea of giving up cheese…

We’re not trying to make people vegan. [Laughs] You don’t have to give up your cheese! But you could try one day a week or three vegan meals per week. When I ate vegan for a month, I felt so good. We don’t have to make a big piece of steak or a big piece of chicken the center of the plate. I found that even after that month, I just ate less meat. But I think it’s whatever works for you.

That’s a remarkably non-preachy message.

I don’t want anyone to feel I’m trying to shame them. For me to support this is personal, but I don’t want to be preachy about it. I understand where political vegans are coming from, but I just think it’s in everyone’s best interests to try it.