Cookbook Review: Easy Vegan Home Cooking

I've long been a fan of Laura Theodore (aka The Jazzy Vegetarian). Her PBS cooking show was one of the first vegan cooking shows back when veganism was still considered a weird hippie thing, and her recipes are always so simple and wholesome. 

I was sent a review copy of Laura's new book, Easy Vegan Home Cooking, which features more than 125 plant-based and gluten-free recipes. Now, I have nothing against gluten, but as a vegan, I know what it's like to feel excluded. So it's nice when recipes are both vegan and gluten-free so EVERYONE can eat them. 

Since this is "easy home cooking," Laura includes a nice pantry section featuring plant-based must-haves for quick meals, like rolled oats, canned beans, and tahini — all ingredients featured in many of her recipes. She includes a section on making your own cream sauces with cashews, cauliflower, or white beans, plus tips on how to select and prep tofu. Then she dives straight into the recipes.

I made a couple dishes; first up, the Savory Asparagus Tofu Scramble. This was a classic scramble, but I'd never though to use asparagus. That's a veggie I just don't eat enough of, and it's in season right now! The scramble also called for shredded vegan cheese, which made it extra special. I'm now inspired to start adding cheese to all of my scrambles.

Although Laura calls for optional vegan cheese here, she very rarely relies on processed foods. Her recipes call for fresh veggies, grains, greens, beans, nuts, and seeds. Her style is very old-school hippie vegan, and the recipes remind of meals I ate in my early vegan days before we had all the fancy vegan meats and cheeses and ice creams and other junk foods. Love those things! But I also love a healthy, wholesome meal. 

Next up, I made Laura's Buddha Bowl. This has BBQ tempeh, roasted sweet potatoes, turmeric quinoa (she uses a lot of quinoa in this book), shredded carrots, steamed kale, maple-y tahini, and toasted sunflower seeds. Bowls are my favorite thing to eat on a busy weeknight. They're super-healthy, and they digest well on nights when I go to bed early. For the BBQ tempeh, you make a homemade BBQ sauce that's maple-sweetened, which feels healthier than sugar. I especially loved the sweet and savory lemon tahini sauce!

Other recipes I can't wait to try: Confetti Potato Salad (it has green olives and red peppers!), Chicken-ish Salad (made with chickpeas), Chili Roasted Cauliflower Steaks with Crispy Mushrooms, and Hot Cha-Cha Tofu (a baked sriracha tofu). Her desserts are of the healthier variety, and I really want to try the Orange Creamy, Dreamy Pie (an orange pie made with blended cashews and tofu in a cookie crust) and the Peanut Butter & Chocolate Pudding Pie. There's even a Blueberry-Vanilla Soup with Orange Cream that sounds a little like smoothie bowl. Yum!