Vegan Family Favorites
December 6th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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My wife, Erin, has recently released her new cookbook, Vegan Family Favorites: Tasty and Satisfying Recipes Even Your Kids Will Love. It’s an all-vegan cookbook that contains recipes from her own collection and recipes contributed by readers of her magazine, VegFamily.com. This is a real printed book, not an e-book. Here’s a description from the back cover:
This is not a gourmet cookbook with gourmet ingredients written by a gourmet chef. These are down-home delicious meals perfected by other vegan families that your own family will love. Fast and easy preparation with easy-to-find ingredients make this the cookbook you’ll reach for first.
Recipes Include:
- Filling Breakfasts, including Fluffy Pancakes, Quiche Lorraine, and Comfort Casserole
- Bountiful Breads, including Maple Morning Muffins, Country Biscuits, and Pumpkin Bread
- Tasty Sandwiches and Wraps, including Pesto Flatbread Sandwich and the Reuben Sandwich
- Fresh Soups and Salads, including Creamy Coleslaw, Tomato Soup, and Hot Potato Salad
- Delicious Dips and Dressings, including Spinach and Artichoke Dip, and Guacamole
- Savory Side Dishes, including Mexicali Corn, Herbed Quinoa, and Cheese Potato Casserole
- Enticing Entrees, including Veggies and Dumplings, Chili Con Veggie, and Creamy Pot Pie
- Decadent Desserts, including Peanut Butter Pie, Chocolate Lovers Cake, and Waffle Sundaes
Plus:
- Sample Menus for special occasions like birthdays, baby showers, holidays, and brunch
- Recipe Quick Lists for when you’re short on time or need something impressive for potlucks
- Ingredient Substitution Guide that is extensive and informative
- Vegan Baking Tips written by a professional vegan baker
Obviously I’m biased since this is my wife’s book, but what’s unique about this book is that my wife called on her readers to submit their favorite family recipes. Then she had other families test each recipe and rate them, and finally she selected the best ones from those. So these aren’t just the recipes of a single chef — the book is a compilation of the best vegan family recipes.
I was involved in testing many of these recipes over the past year. I usually eat very simple foods (like plain fruit and brown rice), or I go all-out and make complicated gourmet dishes. It depends on whether or not I want to take the time to make something really flavorful. I found many of the recipes I tested for this book provide a nice bang per buck — lots of great flavor for very little time involved. I like that because it’s more efficient than making gourmet dishes that take twice as long.
Partly my wife decided to write this book because so many other vegan cookbooks focus on gourment-style recipes with hard-to-find ingredients. So she wanted to make something that didn’t require you to become a gourmet chef but that also was more useful than, “eat a banana.”
The process my wife went through to create this cookbook gives me an idea for something similar I could do for personal development “recipes.” What if I called on each of you to submit your very best piece of personal development advice — the most important growth lesson you’d learned in your entire life? Then I had another group of readers review those tips and select only the ones they thought were the very best. Then I’d put together an ebook containing just the top 100–200 of them. Would you pay $20 for that? I would if someone else were to do it.
Anyway, a number of people have been asking me about vegan recipes, so my wife’s book would be a good place to start if you want to casually try some tasty vegan recipes that don’t require you to become a vegan chef to prepare them. You can visit www.VeganFamilyFavorites.com to learn more. You can even browse through photos of every recipe in the book. Since all the recipes are vegan, they’re naturally 100% cholesterol-free as well (cholesterol is only found in animal products).
