Danny Fields: On a summer's day in 1984, my housemates Susan Blond and Roger Erickson and I piled into Roger's neat Alfa Romeo and drove from our beach bungalow in the Sagaponack neighbourhood of East Hampton to Linda's brother's house a few miles to the east. Susan, Michael Jackson's publicist, had just flown back from the first dates of his world tour and Paul was most interested in knowing everything she could tell him about Michael, at that moment arguably the biggest star in the world. He was also fascinated with the Alfa, and how I'd managed to get myself into the tiny cavity that served as a back seat. James frolicked on the lawn, and a pleasant time was had by all. As always, since around 1982, Linda had greeted me with, 'Have you gone veggie yet?', and as always I told her that I was a little more veggie than the last time we had seen each other and that I was getting there, gradually. That made her happy. During our visit, Linda suddenly asked me if I liked bacon. Was this a trick question? 'Mmm,' I replied, trying to duck having to give a direct answer, 'I've enjoyed it in the past . . . it's been a while, I think. I'm trying to remember when I had it last.' 'You can admit that you like it,' she said. 'I have a reason for asking. They're making vegetarian bacon now, and Paul and I are really interested in someday putting out something like that and making it available to everyone. So I wish you'd try this.' She went into the kitchen and came out with a stack of cartons of veggie bacon. They were made from something called TVP, or textured vegetable protein. Sounded yummy! 'Try this,' she insisted, 'and you'll never eat real bacon again.' We put the bounty in the little space that remained in the boot of the car and were starting to drive off when Linda, who'd been waving goodbye to us with Paul, called out, 'Just a minute!' and dashed back into the house. She came out with her arms full of more vegetable things disguised as meat. 'We're getting on a plane in a little while and there's plenty here for my brother and his family. Besides, I didn't give you enough; here, take these,' she said. 'Oh, they've got so much, Lin,' Paul pointed out, as I mumbled something like, 'Gee, the boot is kind of full, what with the car cover, and Roger's cleaning fluids, and 'Well, here,' she persisted, 'you hold on to them,' dumping the boxes into the 'back seat' so that only my head rose above the ocean of packaged food.
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We waved goodbye anew, or at least Roger and Susan did, because my arms were nowhere to be found. When we got home, we stuffed the freezer with as many shiny little boxes as it would hold, where they stayed for days, unopened. 'I know Linda is going to call to ask how we liked this stuff,' I said from time to time to my friends in our bungalow. 'We have to try it.' We'd pass around one of the packages, examine it with great interest and put it back in the freezer. Finally I decided, 'Let's do it!' Roger and I unpacked the 'bacon' and stared at it, blinded by its orangeness and perfect symmetry. Into the pan the strips went; as they fried, they turned a deeper, different shade of orange and stayed perfectly flat, never curling or crinkling or even making much of a sizzling sound. Except for the colour, and a vague crispness, they didn't look too different from the raw product; they tasted OK, if a bit weird, but not at all like bacon. 'What did you think of that frozen food?' Linda asked when next we spoke. 'Very impressive!' I responded. 'Now you keep eating that, even if you don't go completely veggie for a while,' she advised, 'because every time you do, that's one less animal that had to be killed so that people could eat meat. Let me know when you run out, and I'll have more sent to you.' That was the idea behind it all - eating this 'bacon' was saving the life of a pig. It would have been better if the food were fabulous but, meanwhile, it was a pound of flesh not slaughtered. We had been given a prototype of what would become, six years later, Linda's own line of frozen vegetarian food.
