2 Quick Book Reviews

I'd like to thank Book Publishing Company again for sending me some of these books.

The first book here is The 4 Ingredient Vegan by Maribeth Abrams and Anne Dinshah.

Actually, I wasn't planning on reviewing this book, but they sent it anyway. At first I skimmed through it, just browsing the recipes. And most have maybe 5 or 6 ingredients. The only downfall here, for me, is that a lot of the recipes use prepackaged foods, like packaged pierogies, frozen pizza, hummus, spaghetti sauce, and soups. I wish there had been some easy recipes for these instead. Even the hummus can be a 4 ingredient recipe!! I've been so busy, I really only got around to making one of the recipes, but I will definitely make some more of them when I have the time.

Harvest Mash:

Before

After

This was really delicious and so easy to make! Lots of healthy vegetables, seasoned with broth....and I had lots of leftover broth left to use for something else. Of course I spiced it up a little with my Creole Seasoning :)

The author does list all sorts of foods you should stock your kitchen with, but alas, it includes premade soups, vegan meats, vegan sour cream/cream cheese, and canned foods. I suppose if you're in a real hurry, perhaps you should have some of these on hand, but I try to minimize them. I do have vegan cream cheese and sometimes sour cream in the fridge, but I use them very sparingly. Just because it's vegan, doesn't mean it's healthy!

So if you're the kind of person that's always in a hurry and keeps lots of canned tomatoes, beans, etc, stocked in your pantry, you'll get a lot of use out of this book.

Sproutman's Kitchen Garden by Steve Meyerowitz

I'd been looking at this book for a while, so I was excited to get it. Yes, it's a bit old, in that it was published in 1999. But....I really wanted a sprouting book. This one has a lot of various recipes for things, from breads, to pies and snacks. I wish it had a little more info on the actual sprouting process. It does dedicate a small section in the back to sprouting beans, seeds, and grains, but I wish it had explained it a little more in detail.

I tried (and failed) to make the Sprout Bread. I'd always wanted to make sprouted grain bread. Well, this one didn't seem to work for me. It was more like a thick cracker. Although it had a nice sourish flavor. I think perhaps it was my food processor.....I need a bigger, more robust one. This recipe also only called for sprouted wheat. No yeast, no nothing else. So my next try will be the kind with yeast. If you really want pictures of my failure.....here it is:

The nice sprouted wheat (did I sprout them too long perhaps??):

On the pans, before baking:

After baking:

The bottom fell out:

FAIL.

Next recipe, with success: Party Sprouts

The sprouted lentils:

The baked:

These were really delicious! Although they didn't totally dry out in the oven....they did keep well in a container for quite a while. I'll make these again. Great snack!

And lastly, the Hotcha Zucchini

I baked these instead of using the dehydrator, as I don't have one. But they were pretty good too, albeit a bit salty for my taste. S liked them! And he hates zucchini!

The book has recipes using all sorts of sprouts and soon, I will learn to sprout more than lentils and alfalfa. If you're a sprout fan, you should check out this book!

Have you ever made 100% sprouted grain bread? With or without yeast? In the oven, or bread machine?

If you still want to help me out with trip suggestions, you can here.

If you're in the New Orleans area, don't forget to check out the NOLA VeggieFest 2011!!! I'll be there!

Eat smart,
T.

Book Review: Asian Fusion

Thanks again to Book Publishing Company for sending me a review copy of "Asian Fusion: A Culinary Odyssey of Vegan Recipes". If you want to win some awesome books during their Live Delicious, Eat Vegan campaign, click here!

The Book: "Asian Fusion: A Culinary Odyssey of Vegan Recipes" by Chat Mingkwan.

What a great idea for a book! I love Asian food, and often, it can be veganized easily. This book covers various parts of Asia, from Burma to Vietnam:

Burma
China
India
Indonesia
Japan
Korea
Laos
Malaysia
Philippines
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Vietnam

The first part of the book explains all the "special ingredients" used, like bean sauce/paste, herbs like galangal and fenugreek, Asian vegetables, and rices. Once again, you really need to have access to an Asian supermarket if you're going to follow these recipes exactly. I did, however, leave some out, as I just didn't have them.

The first recipe I made was the Tomato Salad, which was delicious! Very refreshing on a hot summer day (ok, it's already hot down here where I live) and I actually had all of the ingredients. Here is the recipe, with permission from Book Publishing Company:

Tomato Salad
Chung Sik Faan ke Sa Leut (from China)

3 large, rip tomatoes
3 tablespoons thinly sliced green onion, both green and white parts
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar, more or less to taste
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

Slice the tomatoes thinly and arrange them on a serving platter. Refrigerate to chill.

To make the dressing, combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl and stir to mix well. To serve, sprinkle the dressing evenly over the tomatoes.

The next recipe I made was also from China: Fried Rice with Vegetable Fu Yang. I always have cooked brown rice around, so this was a great way to use it.I left out vegetables I didn't have and added others I did have. And it seemed to call for this "vegetarian stir fry sauce" but I just couldn't get myself to buy the stuff at the grocery store. There were just too many ingredients and it just didn't look healthy.  So I added in some extra soy sauce. It was very good though and I'd make it again. Pretty simple dish to make.

And the last recipe I made was the Sweet and Sour Plate from Singapore. I happened to have some leftover pineapple so this worked out great. I cut down on the sugar and added too much Sambal Oelek! It was quite spicy, so I had to serve it over brown rice. S didn't like all the pineapple (but he really doesn't like this kind of "sweet and sour" dish). So maybe next time I'll puree the pineapple first, so you don't get all the extra sweetness in each bite. Again, I added the vegetables I had and omitted the ones I didn't have.

I'm excited to try some of the other recipes in this book. I do see that it does call for a lot of sugar and that "vegetarian stir fry sauce". I'll probably end up omitting the latter and really cutting down on the sugar part. I will have to see what I can get at my Asian supermarket. Not sure they have kaffir lime leaves, fresh curry leaves, abalone and oyster mushrooms, or fresh lemongrass.......

Overall, it's a great book if you want to cook up some good Asian food, vegan style. There are tons of different types of recipes to choose from. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure 90% of the recipes call for sugar. But, you can probably leave it out or replace it with something else. So go on over to Book Publishing Company and order yourself a copy! And don't forget to enter to win some cool free books too :)

......On another note, I still need your help on my upcoming trip. I need as many suggestions (foodwise) as you can give me, either on the places I'm going, or stuff to bring with me, so please check out my trip post and help a girl out!

Eat smart,
T.

Book Review: Becoming Vegan

Thanks again to Book Publishing Company for sending me some books for review.  If you'd like to win some of these books, visit their site here.  They offer lots of vegan, vegetarian, and raw books all in one place.

Today's review is for Becoming Vegan, by Brenda Davis & Vesanto Melina.

I wasn't sure what to think at first, as this book was published quite a while ago, in 2000.  And as you know, things change very quickly.  But I found, as I went through it, that most things in the book are still accurate.  Nutrition is always changing, as are "daily allowances" and new finds for foods with certain vitamins and minerals.  That said, there's really a lot of great information in this book. Yes, there may be more non-dairy milks on the market today, as well as more foods that are fortified with B12 and D2, but the general idea is the same.

The book discusses where you can find various vitamins and minerals needed in several chapters. And it really goes into detail on several accounts, from calcium absorption, to iron deficiency, and covers pretty much any vitamin/mineral I can think of!! It gives suggestions of what food sources you can find them in, as well as giving you the RDA (which over time, has changed).

Other big topics in the book cover veganism during pregnancy, as well as through adolescence. It also covers the later years in life and how your needs change. The chapters near the end cover being overweight and describe various "weight loss" diets, the good and the bad. Also mentioned, are the topics of being underweight and eating disorders.  These are always important factors when you're talking about nutrition.

There really are a lot of "numbers" in this book!  Tons of tables and lists of foods and their various nutrition information....maybe a little too much detail for me (as I'm not a nutritionist and don't really know what some of them mean).

I do recommend this book if you're considering taking on a vegan diet or even if you're already eating a vegan diet. There's a whole lot of information in here that can be quite useful, especially if you're really taking care to get every single vitamin & mineral that your body needs. Again, the book is over 10 years old and there have been more discoveries made since then and more vegan food has appeared on the market, so just keep that in mind.

If you'd like to win one of these books, go over to the Live Delicious, Eat Vegan campaign site and enter!

Eat smart,
T.

Book Review: The Natural Vegan Kitchen

First of all, thank you to Book Publishing Company for sending me some books to review. (Did you know you could win free books from them?? Find out how, here.)

The first book I'm reviewing is The Natural Vegan Kitchen by Christine Waltermyer.

This book just came out and I was really excited to start flipping through it to mark all the recipes I wanted to make (like I do to all new cookbooks I get)! This book combines vegan and macrobiotic cooking. Waltermyer includes a lot of gluten free recipes as well. In fact, I would say that most of the recipes are gluten free.

She includes recipes for every part of the meal, including breakfast, appetizers, soups, salads, grains, beans, and desserts. My first thought when perusing the pages was that it used a lot of ingredients that I didn't have.  I probably could get at least some of them at my local Asian grocery store, but there are some I wouldn't have access to.  This might prohibit some readers from purchasing the book, EXCEPT, that you can substitute other items for a lot these. So don't let that factor dissuade you from getting this book.  In fact, in some of the recipes I made this past week, I did have to substitute some things. (Waltermyer does have a glossary at the end of the book to explain all of these ingredients)

Some of those "hard to find items" are: xantham gum, gluten-free brown rice syrup (I subbed agave nectar), kombu, umeboshi vinegar, wakame, kuzu or arrowroot starch, wheat free tamari (I subbed soy sauce).

I'm sure there are also plenty of you out there that do actually have these ingredients or have easy access to them.  Great!

Now I do love a cookbook with lots of pictures in it....unfortunately, this has very few, BUT, the ones that are in there are wonderful pictures and they do make you want to make the food in there! They just look so delicious!

Here are a few of the items I made this week:

Peanut Sauce - excellent for pouring over cold noodles for lunch! I took these to work with me, mixed with udon, green onions, carrots, and cucumbers, it was the perfect lunch. First of all, I substituted almond butter for the peanut butter and then I substituted soy sauce for the wheat-free tamari and agave nectar, for the brown rice syrup.  I also used powdered ginger, as I didn't have fresh (but next time I will use fresh).  It was a bit runny, so I next time I'll add less water.

Lentil-Walnut Pate - I was actually quite surprised at the taste of this. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I loved it! I think the key is the balsamic vinegar...gives it a nice zing. Again, I substituted the same as above and used dried parsley, as I didn't have fresh.  And it's so easy to make....it all goes into a food processor and you're done!

Tempeh Mock Tuna Salad - Woa! This was amazing!! I loved it and will make it whenever I can....not so easy, however, to get tempeh in my local stores. But it gives you the option to use chickpeas instead, which I haven't tried.  It does call for vegan mayo, but in my opinion, it calls for way too much.  I guess I'm not used to really mayo'd up salads, but I would put half the amount in next time. (oh, and I added lots more celery. I love lots of crunch!)

Miso Vinaigrette - Another great recipe.  I made a batch and there's still some left. I used green onions instead of chives, because I didn't have any and I'd just gotten the onions from the farmer's market.  Only four ingredients in this dressing. Easy and delicious!

There are plenty of other recipes in there for me to try...I'll keep working at it.  If you want this book, you could win one free!  As part of Book Publishing Company's Live Delicious, Eat Vegan campaign this month, they are giving away some of these books we're reviewing.  Go check it out!

I'll have more reviews coming up, as soon as I can get more cooking (or uncooking as it may be) done in the kitchen :)

Eat smart,
T.

Quick Update & Happy Mardi Gras

First of all, Happy Mardi Gras!  We've been hunkering down in the burbs, staying away from ALL parade routes. Been there, done that.  No need to do it again, especially if you have to drive to get there.  But tonight, I'll be opening up a nice Stone brew to celebrate...you can visit me over on my beer blog to see about that later!

Today I've been working on several recipes from The Natural Vegan Kitchen.  So that will be my first review, and hopefully will be up in the next couple of days, although I'll be really busy at work this week.  We'll be taking some of the recipes with us to work for lunch tomorrow! So far....they've all been delicious.

Until then, 

Eat smart,

T.

Upcoming Book Reviews!

Between being sick and being busy at work, I haven't had a whole lot of time to blog.  (at least on my beer blog, it can be quick posts with pictures....easily done from my phone, on the go!)

I just wanted to let you know that Book Publishing Company has a great new campaign this month!

Live Delicious, Eat Vegan

You can enter to win free cookbooks and they've got a great video on the site too! Check it out here.  You can also visit their Facebook page here. They were kind enough to send me some books for review (thanks, Rick!) They have a ton of raw & vegan cookbooks....go check them out.

Some of the upcoming books I'll be reviewing are: 

The Natural Vegan Kitchen by Christine Waltermeyer

Becoming Vegan by Brenda Davis & Vesanto Melina

Asian Fusion by Chat Mingkwan

Sproutman's Kitchen Garden Cookbook by Steve Meyerowitz

Hopefully I'll be able to get to some of these next week.....I've been so busy, I haven't had time.

Eat smart,

T.

Sprouted Lentil Dip and a new cookbook

I've been sprouting lots of lentils as of late.  (I just tried chickpeas: MAJOR FAIL). They smell so bad, I'm going to throw them out.  I don't know what went wrong. They have long sprouts on them.  I wonder if I soaked them too long..the book said about 24 hours. But I'm reading around, and it says more like 8-12 hours. I rinsed them 2-3 times a day for 3 days. Maybe that's too long too. Anyone have experience with sprouting chickpeas/garbonzos?

On the other hand, my lentils are delicious! So here's a recipe for you:

Sprouted Lentil Dip:

4 cups sprouted lentils (green)
Juice from 1 lemon
1/2 tsp minced garlic
3-4 TB water (for texture)
salt to taste
dash of paprika


Blend everything in a food processor.  It may take a few tries, scraping down the sides, as the lentils like to stick to the side of the bowl. Add a little extra water if it's too thick for you. This has a very 'earthy' flavor. I find that sprouted lentils have a very different taste than cooked lentils, so try eating the sprouts first...if you like the strong flavor, you'll love this dip!


I made some raw mustard from one of my new raw books too! I can't even eat it. It's WAY too strong, like horseradish. S loves it, though.  Next time I won't let it "ferment" so long (2 days).

I recently downloaded the Happy Herbivore Cookbook for Kindle. This will be my last cookbook purchase for a while, as it's now time to save money. (if you're listening, DaCapo books or anyone else...you're welcome to send me cookbooks for review!!) Hahaha.....

Well anyway, this is a great cookbook. It's full of Fat-Free and Lowfat Vegan recipes and I've already made 3 things from it:

Red Lentil Dal:

So tasty! I served it on top of barley and kale.

5-Spice Harmony Bowl:

Wow, this sweet potato dish is delicious!! And pretty easy to make.

And for a quick dessert, Instant Cookie Dough:

Mmmm, just eat it by the spoonful!

Go get yourself this awesome new book, just released!!

And of course last Saturday was National Vegan Pizza Day, so here's what I made:

My whole grain pizza crust, made with Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat and 10-grain flours, topped with sauce, Daiya cheese,  and onions, green peppers, and tomatoes! So good! You can find my recipe for it here.

Speaking of Bob's Red Mill, my giveaway just ended....with a surprisingly low number of entries. Nonetheless, three winners will be chosen this week, so check back often!

On another note, it's 70 degrees and pouring today. It will be 33 degrees by 4 in the morning. Major weather changes are happening. This is pretty typical for this area this time of year.

Hope you guys don't have an overload of snow and ice...

Eat smart,
T.

Vegan Parm and lots more stuff

Before I forget, remember to enter my Bob's Red Mill giveaway! There will be THREE winners, so you've got a pretty good chance.

I have to catch up here....I even ran across a couple of photos I took of stuff I made and I can't remember what it was, because I never wrote down the recipe!! Hahaha....oh well.

First, I made up some awesome vegan parmesan:

Vegan Parm:

1 cup raw almonds
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
black pepper/salt to taste


Pulse in your food processor until almost in powder form (you still want a little bit of texture though). Store in a glass jar in the fridge. 

Next up, homemade sweet and sour sauce.  It was all for me, since S hates this kind of sauce :)

Sweet and Sour Sauce:

3 TB ketchup (I used Organicville with agave)

2 TB Bob's Red Mill date sugar (or any raw sugar)
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/2 cup water
3 TB arrowroot (or cornstarch) mixed with 3 TB water


Put the 1st four ingredients into a small saucepan and heat on medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.  Add in the arrowroot mixed with water and stir/heat until thick.

I finally sprouted lentils for the first time! They're so good....I put them on my salads:

I recently bought two raw "cookbooks":

"Raw Food For Real People" by Rod Rotondi and "Raw Food: A Complete Guide for Every Meal of the Day" by Erica Palmcrantz and Irmela Lilja.

Both are great books. From the second one I made a few things:

Pumpkin Seed Dressing (so good!)

Indian Cauliflower Mash (a good snack)

Ranch Dressing (which I put on potatoes, because it's so good that way-not raw, I know!)

From the first book:

Hale Kale Salad (amazing!!)

(same kale salad, but with my added sprouted lentils)

I really want to add more raw meals to my diet.  S doesn't like that idea. More for me :)

More stuff I've been eating:

My Kale and Tomato Barley Risotto

Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats (so good!!)

I recently found these "burgers" at the store and thought I'd try them, since they're soy-free:

They were pretty good...not a ton of flavor, but with the added "materials" on the sprouted grain bun, a pretty good lunch. I like the idea of a soy-free burger. Do you know of others?

Eat smart,
T.