JJ describes herself as a "woman trapped in a man's body". Against all odds, in the face of anger and opposition from her family and of random violence from people provoked by her appearance, she remained true to her own identity. But she was frightened, alone and isolated until the day the Friends took her into their care, and gave her a home at the Turnabout Farm in Wales. There she met Rick and Jen, both carrying the scars of traumatic childhoods. They stayed together, supporting and encouraging each other to forge their separate careers, and realise their dreams.

At the Turnabout Farm they lived from hand to mouth. Meat was scarce, and JJ decided to do something about their monotonous and boring diet of vegetable soup and omlettes. She borrowed books from the library and started experimenting. She created a herb and vegetable garden, and started picking the wild foods around them. She introduced some of her more successful recipes to the restaurant where she had a part-time job as assistant cook. "Meat and two veg" was very much the norm of the Welsh diet - but she was lucky with her head cook, who allowed her to create one dish per week. It was the beginning of her career.

From that moment on, JJ's dream became to create a vegetarian restaurant. Her fascination for home-produced food continued, especially if it could be picked in the wild, but she found she had to make many comprimises along the way. As her career developed, so did her philosophy of food, and her range of international dishes, adapted to her own specific demands.

JJ's Recipes

In 1969, when JJ started out on her career, vegetarian restaurants were almost unknown, and vegetarian food was regarded as boring and fiddley. But JJ was no stranger to controversy, and had already shown her stubborness in staying so true to her identity. Through patience and sheer hard work, and a great deal of talent, she slowly forged herself a name that went beyond mere curiousity around her person.

In the nineteen seventies and eighties, the biggest challenge for JJ was to find the raw ingredients she needed for her restaurants. Work with a new restaurant always started with hunting up farms that were willing to pick nettles, ground elder and wild garlic, and provide ecologically produced vegetables, and herbs like rocket and lovage, and write contracts with them. She had to find nurseries that were willing to cultivate aubergines, and courgettes and shops that could provide the lentils, chickpeas, beans and spices she needed. Pulses and lentils were not available on normal supermarket shelves. There were no Asian stores in Scotland until WeeWoo came to Edinburgh in the nineties, and a great deal of her ingredients came from stores in Newcastle, with the accompanying risk of delayed deliveries.

JJ’s restaurants all followed the same pattern. The menu would consist of a very modest choice of dishes (two appetisers, one of which would be a soup, three main courses, and two desserts, one of which would contain fruit). The menu was changed every month.

JJ's partner Alan describes JJ's approach in these words:

"At our restaurant at home in Ormcairn, JJ cultivates our own vegetables, uses eggs from our own chickens that have been free to wander, and picks wild greens and herbs from the woods and meadows of the castle estate. JJ’s thinking around this, is that if we continue to industrialize the production of meat and vegetables the way we are now, we will reach a point where we are so out of contact with the origins of our food, that we will no longer care about the welfare of our animals, or indeed the welfare of the planet on which we are dependent. She fears that we will no longer be able to interpret signs that tell us that things are off balance and moving towards disaster.

It is the same holistic approach that moves JJ to create teams rather than simply employ individuals. She believes that the atmosphere at the restaurant is as important as the food, and that to achieve that, the staff must be able to work seamlessly together and must thrive with each other. The training of her staff is not just about the raw ingredients chosen and their preparation but also about promoting understanding and good communication between the members of her teams."