Newman's Own Daughter - actor Paul Newman's daughter Nell Newman has organic food company - includes recipes

Vegetarian Times, April, 1999 by Christina Waters

The child of two famous actors plays a starring role in a burgeoning organic food enterprise

If you look around the kitchen in the small Santa Cruz bungalow that Nell Newman shares with her husband, you can't help but notice that everything from the vintage Fiestaware to the dish towels matches the antique mint-green Wedgwood stove that occupies center stage. But the resounding success of her brainchild, Newman's Own Organics (the organic division of her father's company, Newman's Own), means she doesn't spend quite as much quality time standing over the stove as she once did. She's too busy creating new and healthy food products.

One look at this attractive, blue-eyed blond makes it clear that she's an energetic combination of her parents, actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Despite her Hollywood pedigree, however, she couldn't be more down-to-earth. She is her own person, and the company she started in 1993 with partner Peter Meehan is anything but a sequel. A passionate environmentalist and fearless critic of what she calls the chemical industrial complex, Nell Newman does her own sourcing and development of products, which back up her values by supporting sustainable agriculture. "We use as many organic ingredients as we can. Our product line is between 87 percent and 92 percent organic," she says. "It proves that organic, natural foods don't have to be heavy.

"Essentially I wanted to focus on foods for middle America, and I figured that they might eat organic items if they tasted familiar. So I thought, why not pretzels?" The Newman's Own Organics pretzel line she developed is now the top-selling organic pretzel in the natural foods industry. After the pretzel came chocolate bars made from Costa Rican cacao beans grown in the rain forest, followed by Fig Newman's, the first bars to be made with organic figs. As Nell likes to tell it, all it took to convince the president of Nabisco to allow the playful spin on the venerable Fig Newton name was a phone call from her dad.

Though Nell now calls California home, growing up in New England left her with a streak of Yankee ingenuity--and a Yankee work ethic. Both served her well while developing her company's fourth product, Champion Chip Cookies. "It's hard to make a good packaged cookie," she laments. "The price of butter was sky-high when we started, so we searched for an alternative. We finally found an organic palm oil. It's not hydrogenated, it's low in saturated fat, has no cholesterol and makes a cookie taste like the real thing," she says triumphantly.

With all this success, the amount of time Nell can devote to cooking has become increasingly limited. But she tries hard to make room for these precious moments in her schedule. "I love to shop the farmers markets," says Nell, who finds inspiration in fresh seasonal ingredients. "I grow lots of my own food. In my tiny garden there are peaches, pears, apples, artichokes and always tomatoes and greens.

"I learned to cook from both my parents. We always went to the farm stand but also had our own vegetable gardens and chickens, which meant lots of fresh eggs." During her college days in Maine, where she earned a degree in Human Ecology, Newman avidly clipped and pasted recipes into files.

"Now I don't have time to clip; I just mark pages in food magazines." When she gets a chance to stand over bubbling pots and pans at her cherished Wedgwood stove, she relies on favorite recipes, several of which she shares with you on the following pages.

Vegetable Pot Pie

6 SERVINGS OVO-LACTO

Though this dish makes a satisfying supper on its own, you can also serve it with crusty bread or a green salad.

1 cup peeled, cubed boiling potatoes
4 tsp. vegetable oil
1/4 cup whole wheat flour or white flour
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 Tbs. nutritional yeast flakes
  (see glossary, p. 119)
2 tsp. soy sauce
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Dough for two-crust 9-inch pie (homemade
  whole wheat pastry is best,
  but you can substitute a store-bought
  crust)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup small broccoli florets
1/2 cup diced carrot
1/4  cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen
1/4 cup frozen peas

Preheat oven to 350 [degrees] F. Cook potatoes in lightly salted boiling water just until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and set aside. Meanwhile, in medium saucepan, heat oil over low heat. Stir in flour and cook, stirring, until mixture is very thick, about 1 minute. Gradually add broth, stirring constantly. Add nutritional yeast, soy sauce, salt and pepper, stirring constantly. Remove sauce from heat and set aside.

Roll out bottom crust and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Scatter potatoes and remaining vegetables over crust and spoon sauce over them. Place top crust on pie, crimp edges and make a couple of slits in crust for steam vents. Bake until crust is lightly browned, about 1 hour. Let stand 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

Per serving: 372 cal.; 6g prot.; 21g total fat (5g sat. fat); 40g carb.; 0 chol.; 419mg sod.; 3g fiber