I am Vegan sometimes. Sometimes I’m Paleo. Every once in a while I’m a Dorito-tarian. (Don’t tell Jamie Oliver!) I love food. I dream about food. I consume it in ample quantities and I spend a lot of time thinking about what I do eat, what I should eat, and what I will eat.
One of my biggest goals is adding more vegetable into my life in a delicious and sustainable way. By sustainable, I’m not talking about composting and buying local. I’m talking about eating vegetables in a way that I’m willing to do over and over again till death do we part, which hopefully won’t be for a long time because, LOOK, I’m eating so many vegetables!
So I’m always checking out new cookbooks and I love vegan and vegetarian cookbooks especially because they focus so heavily on veg. I’ll take an awesome vegan casserole recipe and substitute chicken for beans or cheese for fake cheese. Because I like me some tasty animal products.
Mielle Chenier-Cowan Rose’s new-ish cookbook Veganish: The Omnivore’s Guide to Plant-Based Cooking speaks to the world of vegetable lovers who add in an occasional animal product for the health benefits. It’s pretty fabulous. The book has no pictures and a horrible index but the recipes and information are so good that I’ve gone back to it again and again. This is surprising if you know me and how heavily I rely on good indexing.
I worked through several of her recipes, cooking from it almost exclusively for a week and we enjoyed nearly everything. I think during that week I tripled my family’s veggie intake and not just for the meals I was preparing from her recipes. Veganish gave so many great veggie prep instructions and just plain motivation to live and eat healthier, that I found myself snacking better, sleeping better and drinking more water between meals.
In the introduction to the book, Mielle says she wants it to be more of a cookbook than a recipe book, to inhabit the nightstand as much as the kitchen. It did just that. I read it from cover to cover and got really fired up about eating better.
I’m sure you will too. If your New Year’s resolutions for healthy living are starting to fade, this book is a good refresher. I’m giving away a copy. Just leave a comment below, listing your favorite veggie and I’ll choose a winner the evening of February 6th. You need to live in the continental US to win, unless you want to pay the shipping. The winner is comment #5 – Valeri!
For those of you who don’t win the book, you get something too. By request, Mielle is sharing her Massaged Kale Salad with my readers. As a person who wants to love kale so I can feel superior to my spinach-eating friends, I was excited to find a salad that finally made this monster green palatable to me. I LOVE this salad. Maybe it’s because the kale is so happy and relaxed after its massage and happy food is tasty food. Whatever the reason, this one is a winner. I’ve made it for extended family dinners and neighborhood potlucks and it’s a crowd pleaser, among people willing to put kale in their mouths and chew. Enjoy!
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What a great giveaway! My favorite veggies are carrots!
Oh, love me some veg!! This book looks awesome!!
Just one veggie? What if I can’t narrow it down? I like zucchini and yellow squash, as well as butternut squash and sweet potatoes, and eggplant and okra and green beans, well, I just LOVE my veggies!
My favorite veggie is beets. I don’t eat them often enough though, but I ate them all the time right out of my dad’s garden- boiled with butter.
My favorite veggies are zucchini and summer squash cooked in garlic and onion foil packets on the grill!
You win!
Do potatoes count? Because I could live off those 🙂 But if not, then I guess I’d have to go with carrots, although I only like them raw. I really need to eat more veggies, so this book would be a great help!
My new fave is roasted brussels sprouts. Yum!
Vegan-ish. Now that’s my kind of vegan. Because I’ll never go all out, but I love me some veggies!
My favorite veggie is carrots because I can eat them raw. I really could use some help in livening up my veggie intake! 🙂
I think this looks like a fun book. I too have continued to increase my plant-based, whole foods intake, but constantly battle with my desire to eat meat and cheese. Veganish looks interesting to me.
Asparagus! -I got the liking of it honestly–from my MoM!
Butternut squash baked with margarine is the new wonder food at our house. Just one makes enough for several meals!
My favorites are all the ones my husband didn’t love, unfortunately. I’m thinking either cauliflower, artichoke, or asparagus would top the list
Snap peas!
I love sugar snap peas. If we plant nothing else in the garden, we get in spinach and sugar snap peas–easy and we’ll eat the peas as they ripen, most don’t make it inside. 🙂 (Runner up is cherry tomatoes picked from the garden….hmmmm! Ready for summer!!!)
Artichokes by along shot. And I just recently found out I could steam them whole in the microwave for WAY less time than on the stove, so I can eat them all the time! I’m definitely going to check out this book, since I need new ways to get the rest of the family to eat more veg.
The winner is comment #5 – Valeri!
Been reading cover to cover this week. Awesome info source for those of us wading in and trying to figure it all out! Thank you~ Valeri