What month is this?
January, you say? Nope. It is Veganuary!
Which might not be a big deal for someone who’s been vegan for almost half her life like yours truly, but it might be a frightening experience for those who approach a plant based diet for the first time.
As soon as I embraced veganism as an optimistic teenager, I realized it was going to be a nightmare when it came to finding suitable food. Italy is not the most vegan friendly country nowadays, and sure as hell it wasn’t more than a decade ago. Vegan food was hard to find not only in restaurants but also in supermarkets. It is different now: we can find more plant milks beverages than we could ask for, frozen food, veggie meat substitutes, tofu, and seitan everywhere.
We had to make everything from scratch back then, from seitan (and by the way this book offers an easy recipe for that) to beverages. I have this cute picture of me somewhere in my backup drive, where I hold a bottle filled with the homemade hazelnut and cashew milk I used for hot chocolate.
And don’t make me talk about the recipes we used to find. You are lucky now! In need of something? A lot of content creators on all social media will come to your rescue in the blink of an eye, and you’ll have a blast in your one month journey. Well, 25 days now. You’ll probably keep drooling over your ‘gram feed all day long.
Hey, I do it all the time.
Wanna know a secret though? In 14 years as a vegan I’ve seldom found online recipes that actually worked. My latest mess? A Yule Log I tried for Christmas. The ganache came out so horrible that I was glad we were in lockdown and people wouldn’t come over.
Sometimes I feel like the food bloggers on the ‘gram would rather have pretty pictures than solid recipes. Social media, huh?
Fear not. If you are a beginner, The Everything Vegan Cookbook might be the right choice for you.
The recipes are really quick to make. I had my kids try their favorite ones and everything worked out smoothly. As a bonus, no kids were harmed in the process.
See? Real easy. It took us less than 20 minutes to make these crepes.
And we made blueberry muffins too.
We also tried the Squash and Lentil Curry, the Potatoes “Au Gratin” and the Southern Fried Seitan, although I cooked this one because kids and oil are a bad match.
Everything was good. Really good.
Truth be told, the recipes are simple, as the title promises. Maybe a little too simple, especially if you are already a seasoned vegan and have your own set of trusted recipes. But if you don’t, these ones work, as long as you have the right equipment. And the results are impressive.
This is a solid book. It really is. It’s going to help a lot of new vegans.
The only pet peeve I have is that the time when someone approached a cookbook looking for recipes only has long passed. In fact, most of the cookbooks I own are filled with these incredible, mouth drooling pictures that The Everything Easy Vegan Cookbook lacks. In this modern age, we all want to see what our meals could be, if only we had the time. Or if we were good enough at plating, lighting and so on.
Make us dream a little more.
All in all, this was a solid recipe book, and I think that V-curious and newbie vegans will have a blast in cooking these ones. My rating? 7/10.
Bookshelves & Teacups 