review 10 vegan cookbooks

I confess, I haven’t tried any of the recipes in this book yet. But what I like, as I read through the book, is the number of comfort foods that appear in the pages. It’s like the cookbook my mom would have had, if she’d been vegan (which she oh so definitely wasn’t).

One little thing I considered an oddity of the text, was the “veganisms” she includes in the pages: traditional proverbs and sayings that incorporate animals, which she’s rewritten from a vegan perspective. Her explanation was that she wanted to remove any sayings that were disrespectful to animals. So I can understand her wanting to change a phrase like “Running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” Someone who doesn’t slaughter animals wouldn’t ever have that experience. But one phrase she altered was, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” I’ve been trying to get my head around how that phrase implies cruelty to horses. Hm. Anyway, her suggested alternative is “You can water a fertile seed, but you can’t make it grow,” in case you wanted to know.

That aside, she has a number of intriguing recipes I want to try, and I do like her explanation of substitutions and so forth. I can see this being a worthwhile book I would consider adding to my bookshelf.

My feeling about this book, is that it’s gentle foray into vegan eating for someone who is just getting started in animal-free eating. It’s a nice, general cookbook, which doesn’t feel very hardcore vegan. A number of recipes feel like they could be in any cookbook – like chili, stuffed zucchini, vegetable stew, bruschetta… recipes that would make you say, “Hey, vegan eating isn’t so different!” And she includes some muffin and cookie recipes that demonstrate how favourites can easily be made with vegan ingredients.

It’s not a bad recipe book by any means. Probably a good one to recommend to someone who wants to dip their toes in vegan eating. But if you’re already a devoted vegan eater, this book probably won’t add much to your existing repertoire of recipes.

I got this book in hopes that it would give me some more ideas of things to pack in my kids’ school lunches. But I found myself turning the pages and saying to myself, “No way would my kid eat that. Nuh-uh. Not that one either.”

I guess it’s a personal thing. If you have kids who enjoy a diverse range of foods, perhaps you could put some of these things in their lunch, and they eat them. My kids are particular; plus, school lunch is an “optional” meal for them – that is, I’m not there to make them eat it. So I really have to ensure that what goes in their bag is something they like, otherwise, they will go hungry rather than eat it.

If your kids are picky like mine, this book would probably be no good to you. But some kids are adventurous eaters, or may have been raised from the start with different food expectations, and these kids might appreciate the sorts of ideas Vegan Lunch Box offers.

I know it sounds noncommittal, but my comment on this book is simply, “Not for us.”

I bought this one for DH for Christmas, because it looks interesting. Whereas the Moskowitz books have more of an ‘ordinary day’ feel to them – stuff I’d actually make for a weekday dinner – Extra Vegan Za has a more upscale bistro kind of feeling to its recipes.

The recipes themselves don’t look all that complicated when I read through them. The method is usually pretty straightforward. I think what strikes me is the titles, which feature multiple ingredients (like “Sweet Pepper Coconut Corn Chowder” or “Banana Carob Almond Coconut Muffins”), or more exotic ingredients or unusual combinations thereof (like “Lemon Lavender Blueberry Muffins”, “Strawberry Jalapeno Corn Muffins”, “Rose Icing”, “Vegetable Chocolate Chili Mole” or “Pumpkin Seed Fig Pie Crust”).

I am anxious to try the “Chocolate Red Velvet Cake”. I once made Martha Stewart’s recipe, which featured about a litre of red food colouring; this one gets its redness from beets and beet powder; instead of regular flour, it uses spelt flour; and instead of sugar, it calls for maple syrup.

DH made spelt chapatis from this book the other night, and they turned out well.

This book strikes me as one to have on hand when you want to do something a little different for company, or if you want to shake up your boring every day menus. There are, for instance, 12 different varieties of pie crusts (from standard “Flaky Pastry” to “Almond Lavender Crust” to “Pecan Barley Coffee Crust”).

But I have to say, I’m more of a traditionalist when it comes to food, and I’m not likely to replace my standby old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies with Peppermint Oatmeal Carob cookies!

Okay, you’ll probably soon realize that I’m a huge Isa fan. When DH and I first started arguing about food, my complaint was that his “healthy” foods didn’t taste good to me. And granted, having been raised on a diet of white bread, white sugar, and all things rich and fatty, I definitely had to retrain my taste buds a bit. Because, to a degree, “good” is what you’re used to.

But as I was slowly won over to his crazy brown bread granola ways, I maintained that it had to be possible to create healthy foods that were actually delicious. And I feel that Isa shares my philosophy. She’s a vegan eater, who likes delicious food made from scratch. And so far, we’ve been having lots of success with her recipes.

To prove that vegan eating doesn’t amount to a bunch of salads, Moskowitz did not include a single salad recipe in this recipe book. She does include recipes for vindaloo, pad thai, stroganoff, pizza, spanish omelet, gnocchi, and sweet potato crepes, plus cookies, desserts, finger foods and brunches. Plus I like her sense of humour.

Two thumbs up!

Veganomicon is awesome. I love this book. I can spend half an hour just paging through the recipes and getting hungrier and hungrier.

One thing I found disappointing when I first starting exploring vegan/vegetarian recipes and restaurants, was the number of “veggie” foods that incorporate fake meat (ie, a manufactured soy-based product that is made to look and taste like meat). This was my beef (pardon the pun) with the Skinny Bitch in the Kitch cookbook. It’s like, on one hand, the non-meat eaters are saying it’s not natural or ethical to eat meat – and yet, they can’t imagine a meal that isn’t meat-centric.

Enter Veganomicon: the book that celebrates plant-based eating, and doesn’t leave me feeling short-changed because there’s no meat. Although the authors do vegify a few traditional meat-based favourites, they do so in a way that makes you feel the meat was never necessary in the first place. Plus, they incorporate a wide variety of dishes from many cultures, which makes me feel like eating vegan is liberating rather than restrictive. Plus, I like the offbeat humour that peppers the cookbook’s commentary.

For a sampling of what you’ll find in Veganomicon, check out Moskowitz’s Post Punk Kitchen website

If you love baking, here’s the cookbook that will tell you how to do it all, using only vegan ingredients. Patrick-Goudreau identifies herself as the “Compassionate Cook”, who has embraced veganism because she feels it’s morally wrong to eat any animal product. Subsequently, she has created recipes for the traditional favourites – from pie crust to cakes to puddings to muffins to confectionaries – using all vegetable-based ingredients.

I would say that, in general, I prefer the approach of Fran Costigan (see review below), who has tried to make her recipes not only vegan but also as healthful as possible. Costigan, for instance, recommends using oil for baking, rather than non-dairy butter, because it is less processed, and her recipes tend to include whole wheat flours, etc. Patrick-Goudreau, in contrast, states that her goal is to prove that vegan desserts are not inferior to regular desserts; she asserts that desserts are not healthfood, and so she apologetically uses regular sugar and unbleached flour etc., without feeling the need to “healthy up” her ingredient list.

I would say that The Joy of Vegan Baking is a great resource – if you merely want to make a recipe vegan (in my case, dairy-free), this book will tell you how to do it. She explains how to substitute for eggs and dairy in baking recipes, and still get the results you expect.

Personally, I would like to take it one step further, like Costigan, and try to make the ingredients I bake with as healthy and unrefined as possible: while I agree that desserts aren’t necessarily healthy foods, I can only see benefits from using the healthiest possible ingredients.

So I will probably use a lot of Patrick-Goudreau’s recipes as a starting point, but continue to modify them to include whole grains, alternative sweeteners, pureed fruits, etc.

*Note: recipe measurements in this book are given in both Imperial and metric

This is a blog, not a cookbook, but I recently discovered Vegan Dad, a blog about a guy trying to cook vegan meals for his family. Some interesting ideas in here that I’d like to try out on my kids!

This book is fabulous. I bought it, and I love it.

The author is a professional chef in NY, who tells about how she grew up in a baking family and loved to prepare desserts, but eventually discovered that dairy, eggs and white sugar in her diet were making her feel lousy, tired, gave her stomach aches, etc. For a while, she went without all desserts, and felt better – yet missed the foods she used to love to prepare. At last, she began to experiment with making traditional recipes with natural ingredients, and without dairy, eggs or white sugar. Her first chapter discusses alternative sweeteners, as well as ingredients such as agar-agar and kuzu.

She then goes on to teach the reader to make great desserts with alternative ingredients. Homemade jello made with fruit juice and agar-agar, instead of the sugar and artificial colour stuff from the store. Puddings, cakes, pies, cookies, muffins… all sorts of things DH thought he might have to give up when he was told not to eat any more dairy or refined sugar.

I made “The Chocolate Cake to Live For” on DH’s birthday, and it was awesome – moist, chocolately, hard to say no to a second piece.

Two thumbs up!!

This book is written by two former models, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, who discovered vegan eating and now coach other celebrities in the way of living without meat. Their Skinny Bitch books are apparently a product of that.

What I liked about the book: the title. It’s catchy. It sounds no-nonsense. It made me reserve the book from my library while knowing nothing else about it.

What I didn’t like: in their effort to convince omnivores to go vegan, the authors seem to be focussed on providing meat-free translations of all your favourite meat dishes. They use a lot of vegan meats and vegan cheeses – which, fine if you like that stuff. Personally, I have yet to taste a vegan deli product I thought was worth eating. And if you are going to be all ethical about not eating animals (which they refer to in their book as “dead rotting carcasses – ew!”), doesn’t it seem like a double standard to turn around and try to make all your vegetable-based foods taste like meat? Plus, I want to get away from eating foods that have been processed beyond recognition – and you’ve got to believe that any plant product that looks and tastes like sausage has undergone some substantial processing.

So basically, if you want to say that you’re eating vegan, but don’t want to give up the (pseudo)flavours of bacon, chicken, sausage, beef, cheese, etc. this is the book for you. These ladies will teach you how to make “chicken” panninis, “tuna” sandwiches, and “meatloaf” with mashed potatoes and gravy, with “cheezecake” for dessert.

I’m not saying that aren’t any recipes in this book worth trying, but I think I’d rather move on to a book that celebrates plant based foods for what they are, rather than trying to make them taste like something they’re not!