Category: Cookbooks

Cook Book Review: Crock Pot Essentials 101 Recipes to Make with Your Slow Cooker, written by Anne Schaeffer

Mittens and Sunglasses

I had just bought a CrockPot Express second hand, and I was browsing through Netgalley’s offers on “read it now” cookbooks for slow cookers. It didn’t take long before I found the book Crock Pot Essentials 101 Recipes to Make with Your Slow Cooker, by Anne Schaeffer, and decided to give it a go. This is clearly not a vegan cookbook, but I thought that there might be recipes I could “veganise”. As I’ve mentioned before, I mainly use cookbooks for inspiration, and I thought that I could at least learn something about how to use my new device.

A tablet laying flat on top of a shawl, showing a tablet with the cover of the cookbook.
Photo: Mittens and Sunglasses © 2023

The beginning of the book started with how to calculate measurements. Fair enough, but not something I care too much about on a day to day basis. There were also a couple of pages on food safety, but after skimming through, I quickly saw it mainly concerned meat (yet another reason for eating plants?).

The book is really quite organised. It has sections for different recipes. It even has one for “meals for two”, which I thought was quite neat. The first section of the book is the section for soups and stews, which I think is a good choice. The slow cooker is perfect for these kinds of recipes! Also, in-between the main recipes there are recipes called “Delicious Due”, that contains recipes with side dishes or similar that goes well with the main dish.

There are a few recipes that are marked “vegetarian”, but I found at least one recipe that was marked incorrectly: It was a chicken soup recipe. I think this must have been a glitch, though, and I hope that this is corrected in the final version of the book. There was also supposed to be an index at the end of the book, but that seems not to have been included in this ARC.

A picture illustrating a chicken soup recipe being labelled as "vegetarian".
Classic Chicken Noodle Soup being marked as “vegetarian”.

I found quite a few recipes I think can be easily veganised, or that inspire me to make something vegan that similar. This book worked well, even for me who have never used a slow cooker before in my life.

Cook Book Review: Vegan Vietnamese – Vibrant Plant-Based Recipes to Enjoy Every Day, written by Helen Le

Mittens and Sunglasses

The cover of a cookbook. I can’t deny it: I’m a sucker for vegan Vietnamese food. Actually, one of my favourite take-away restaurants is Eat Happy Vegan here in Oslo, Norway. When Netgalley offered the cookbook Vegan Vietnamese – Vibrant Plant-Based Recipes to Enjoy Every Day, written by Helen Le, to review, I was not hard to ask. I had no knowledge of Helen Le before seeing the book on Netgalley, and had no knowledge of who she was or what she did.

I quickly learned that Helen Le is the creator of a popular Vietnamese cooking channel on YouTube called Helen’s Recipes. So before even looking at the recipes I wanted to check out her channel. It turned out that her channel is not at all vegan, and she’s not a vegan herself. This normally turns me a bit sceptical towards someone’s cookbook, but I decided to check it out with an open mind.

I use cookbooks mainly for inspiration, and hardly ever follow recipes. Though the book was nice enough looking, I never felt like any of the recipes pushed me to cook anything. I kept thinking “I should probably find a recipe and make something like it”, but I never did. Also, in my opinion, it was quite clear that it was made by a meat eater. It had lots of potential, but for me it didn’t make the right fit. I’m sure others, especially meat eaters looking into cutting down on their meat, will find it helpful. It for sure has it’s audience, I’m unfortunately not among them.

Cook Book Review: Nourishing Vegan Every Day, by Amy Lanza

Mittens and Sunglasses

Becoming a vegan was a long journey for me, quitting all meat but seafood and becoming a pescetarian in April 1996, and then going vegetarian in 2012. I think it was in October or November in 2015 I decided to go “semi vegan”, as in eating vegan at home and vegetarian if I went out or visiting people. I failed going “semi vegan” pretty quickly, though, as I guess this opened up my eyes to how the dairy and egg industry actually worked. I wasn’t able to close my eyes any more, nor turn my back to the cruelty that I saw. I chose vegan for Christmas/Yule/midwinter (or whatever you want to call it), and lot long after I went fully vegan, both inside and outside my home. I have never regretted that choice.

A tablet laying on a red blanket. On the screen you can see the cover of the book "Nourishing Vegan Every Day" by Amy Lanza.
Photo: Mittens and Sunglasses © 2022

Even though I’ve been vegan for about seven years now, I had never heard about Nourishing Amy, or Amy Lanza, before. Not until I picked up their new cookbook, Nourishing Vegan Every Day, on NetGalley. I knew instantly that I wanted to have a closer look at this book that NetGalley offered as a “read now”, as I love cookbooks. I mainly use them for inspiration, but I’m definitively open to try out a recipe or two (though I feel free to tweak them). The book will be published 3 January 2023.

This cookbook is even good for beginners, with its explanations of some terms in the beginning. Personally, having cooked vegan for many years (even before going vegan myself), I skipped this part. I appreciated the few American-English conversions, though (I didn’t know arugula was the same as rocket!)

The book has seven main parts or “chapters”: Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Dinner, Snacks, Sweets, and Celebrations. For me (a Norwegian), most of the lunch recipes could just as well have been dinners, but that’s just me being Norwegian and nitpicking. In general, the recipes are pretty basic, vegan dishes. Nothing wrong with that, and I think it’s really good if you’re brand new to cooking plant-based food.

One think I’m always worried about when it comes to vegan cookbooks, is if the dinners have no protein. A dinner that lacks a good source of protein mostly leave me very unsatisfied afterwards, and I get hungry again shortly after. Fortunately, this cookbook has plenty of recipes with tofu, chickpeas, and other legumes, and the recipes that don’t can easily be adjusted by adding some.

The book has a really nice layout, and the photos are appetizing. This cookbook can absolutely be recommended for any vegan, or anyone who wants to eat more plantbased.