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Cookbook Review: Veggie Burgers Every Which Way by Lukas Volger
Summary:
Far more than just your basic veggie burger, this cookbook offers up interesting varieties of veggie burgers plus veg*n versions of everything else you will need at your summer bbq.
Review:
This is such a pretty cookbook! Beyond gorgeous full-color photographs of the food, the recipes themselves are colorful with the numbers in blue and the headings in red or green. It’s not just readable and usable; it’s fun to do both.
This is a vegetarian cookbook, not a vegan one, but there are quite a few vegan recipes, and they are all clearly labeled with a green “V.” There are also some gluten free recipes labeled with a green “GF.” These labels are found in both the contents and on the recipes themselves.
The cookbook is divided into: Introduction, Veggie Burger Basics, Bean Grain and Nut Burgers, Vegetable Burgers, Tofu Seitan and TVP Burgers, Burger Buns, Sides: Salads and Fries, and Condiments and Toppings. I have to say while I was pleased with the inclusion of sides, I was most impressed by the inclusion of the section on burger buns. I also really appreciate the anti-processed food stance in the Introduction. It’s a nice touch, particularly for people who follow a diet that often leaves us wallowing in processed foods at friends’ bbqs, and we can’t complain because, well, they bought us veggie burgers, didn’t they?
One drawback to the cookbook is quite a few of the recipes call for ingredients that are kind of hard to find like: chickpea flour, bulgur, roasted chestnuts, Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), or arame. If you’re pushing for people to do fresh, whole foods instead of processed, you shouldn’t make the ingredients list so complicated.
I found about three recipes that intrigued me enough to add to my “to try” collection. So far I’ve tried one, Beet and Brown Rice Burgers on page 59. It’s a fairly straight-forward recipe: combine shredded beets with cooked brown rice and mashed up beans, along with a few spices. I made them all at once then froze them. I also added in vital wheat gluten, which Volger oddly doesn’t use in a lot of his recipes in spite of its binding qualities and protein content. I’m glad I did because the burger still had some issues staying together even with it in there. However, the flavor and textures are different from other veggie burgers I’ve made, so it was definitely worth the effort. I still think the recipes in the book in general need a bit of tweaking, particularly for flavor and stay-togetherness (shhh that is so a word). The burger was good but not great. It’s almost there….I do intend to try it out again and tweak it a bit.
So….out of the whole book I found 3ish recipes, have made one, it was different and interesting but needs some tweaking. Not exactly a result that would make me encourage others to purchase. I do suggest you borrow it or check it out from a library if my review has intrigued you at all. You may find it more useful than I did or perhaps enjoy the flavor combinations more or even just have more easily accessible oddball ingredients in your town.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Public Library
Cookbook Review: Eat Vegan on $4.00 a Day by Ellen Jaffe Jones
Summary:
This cookbook is a response to the myth that eating vegan must be expensive. Jones offers up recipes and a 7 day meal-plan where each day costs $4 or less.
Review:
The idea of this book is great, but the execution is poor, particularly compared to other eat cheap vegan cookbooks such as Vegan on the Cheap
The book features an interesting introduction on why veggies and fruits don’t get ad space, followed by chapters on financial planning for grocery shopping and veggie nutrition and cooking. Both of these chapters are kind of common sense, but I am fully aware a lot of adults, particularly young adults, are completely lacking in this common sense, so these chapters are good to have.
The recipes are divided into: breakfasts, soups, salads, salad dressings, entrees, spreads and sides, and desserts and snacks. Now, I have nothing against soups or salads, but to have three chapters really devoted to those two things (I mean, a whole chapter of salad dressings? Come on!) is not offering up much variety or doing anything to dispel the myth that vegans just eat salad. To top it off, the entree chapter starts with a chili and a stew, which are basically chunkier soups.
I also feel that a lot of the recipes are pure common sense. There is a recipe titled rice and beans. COME ON NOW. You make rice, stir-fry up some beans and veggies, boom, rice and beans. If you’re offering up a book on eating vegan on the cheap, don’t offer up recipes that we all already know anyway and that are commonly thought of as a poor man’s food. What a person looking at this cookbook wants is creative, cheap, delicious vegan recipes. What we are offered is basic stir fries, basic pasta and sauce, basic salad, etc… For instance, the salad “recipe” on page 50 just offers up a list of veggies and nuts then says “combine any five of these ingredients.” Gee, thanks, I had no idea that a salad is made up of a combination of veggies. What a help!
Now, I did try making a recipe in the cookbook, “Sweet Potato Muffins” on page 35. The pros: it was cheap and edible. The cons: it was barely edible and I felt like I was having hockey pucks for breakfast. There has got to be a better way to make vegan sweet potato muffins. There just has to be. And, side-note, I’ve been cooking long enough to know that when a recipe fails this badly, it is most likely not my fault. Particularly when I try it a second time, and it still fails.
So overall I suppose if you are an absolute complete beginner in cooking and wanting to eat plant-based, you might find this book moderately useful. I’d recommend to you that you get Vegetarian Cooking For Dummies
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Public Library
Book Review: Lemon Reef by Robin Silverman
Summary:
Jenna is a high-powered, newly appointed commissioner in San Francisco where she lives with her wife and their dog. Life is good, and Jenna tries not to think too much about her rough childhood and teen years growing up in Florida. But a phone call comes in. Her first love, Del, has died diving at lemon reef at the young age of 30. The mutual friend invites Jenna to the funeral, but when she arrives in Florida, she discovers that there’s more to it than that. Del’s mother, Pascale, wants her help in getting custody of Del’s daughter, Khila, instead of her father, Talon, who Pascale insists must have murdered Del.
Review:
This book was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster to read, which of course is a sign of a good book.
The plot structure is incredibly complex and engaging without ever being confusing. There is the mystery of Del’s death, but also (for the reader) the mystery of why and how Del and Jenna’s romance ended tragically, as it is evident it did. In addition there is the powerful emotions of a first love and first romance for a pair of teens who must grow up too fast thanks to the rough circumstances they find themselves in. Silverman handles the past reminisces intermingled with the current mystery and discoveries quite eloquently. I found myself admiring her talent in plot structuring throughout.
There are no easy answers in this book, and no one is easily demonized, including Talon. Every single character has flaws and good qualities. Del stands up for her siblings but won’t stand up for her love of Jenna. Jenna loves people but can sometimes get too caught up in her own world and her own needs. Pascale was an alcoholic when Del was in highschool but successfully quits in order to be able to spend time with her granddaughter. Del’s sister Nicole breaks a lot of laws (including breaking and entering and prostitution), but she is fiercely loyal and stands up for those she loves. The complexity of the characters and the situation is part of what makes it such an emotional read. There’s no one to easily blame for the problems these women find themselves in. I think this complexity points to Silverman’s experience both as a counselor and a lawyer. She clearly understands human psychology and how problems are not always black and white but can be very gray.
The writing is lovely and fills in the framing of the plot and the characters. There are lines that just totally grab you.
Because minds do blow and hearts do break. Those are not just sayings. And wolves and roaches are not the only creatures that chew off their legs to get out of traps—human beings do that, too. (location 3058)
I also really enjoyed that while Jenna’s coming out story (told in flash-backs and reminiscing) is rather typical, Del’s is much more complex. She is bi but is uncomfortable with the fact that she likes women too. She doesn’t want people to know, doesn’t say a thing about it to her sisters, denies it even. But we find out later that there were other ways in which it was clear she did identify as bi and part of the community. I won’t say how, because I don’t want to spoil the surprise. But I found this complexity interesting. It shows how for Jenna she had to push and come out because there was no other option. Del could sometimes pass but not always and clearly it was a struggle for her throughout her whole life. This shows an understanding of what it is to be bi that I honestly was not expecting, as it is hard to find that in novels.
There were, unfortunately, a couple of things that didn’t quite live up to the rest of the book. There were a few passages that weren’t as well-written or well-edited that detracted from the overall beauty of the book. For instance, there is a scene in which a character points a flashlight at a floor but the narrator calls it the ground. Things like that that are periodically clunky. I’m sure this will improve with time, though, as this is Silverman’s first work of fiction.
I also was disappointed that we didn’t get to see very much at all in regards to how this whole drama of the first love’s mysterious death impacted Jenna’s relationship with her wife. I was hoping this would be at least touched upon in the last chapter, but instead we just see Madison show up with Jenna for the funeral. Since I had come to care for Jenna, I wanted to know how such a dramatic, emotional event would affect her new life and marriage with Madison. It seems obvious to me that such an incident would at least lead to a few discussions and maybe difficult moments between a married couple. I wanted to see that and not seeing it made Madison and Jenna’s marriage to her feel more like a prop than an actual element of Jenna’s life.
Overall, though, this is a unique work of GLBTQ lit. Its themes of reconciling with your past, coming out, being queer, and first love are all beautifully told within a plot that keeps the reader invested and interested. I highly recommend it to GLBTQ readers, but also to anyone with an interest in stories addressing the complexity of human relationships and the long-reaching impact of first loves.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Netgalley
Book Review: Shadrach in the Furnace by Robert Silverberg (Audiobook narrated by Paul Boehmer)
Summary:
After a giant volcanic eruption led to chaos and the virus wars, the world came under a one world government led by Genghis Mao based out of Mongolia. The virus wars also led to everyone being infected with organ rot, a condition that simply spontaneously starts whenever it feels like it. Only those working close to the government get the antidote. Shadrach Mordecai, an African-American, went straight from Harvard Med to being the personal doctor for the world dictator. He has implants that allow him to monitor Genghis Mao’s health through his own body, plus he is overseeing the three projects pursuing a way to keep Mao alive forever. But when Project Avatar, which would involve implanting Mao’s brain into a new body, loses its prime candidate, Shadrach realizes his position as aid to Mao might not be keeping him as safe as her previously believed.
Review:
One of my all-time favorite books, The World Inside (review), is by Robert Silverberg, so I decided I should start working on reading all of his writings. So when I saw this Silverberg book on Audible, I immediately knew where my June membership credit would be going.
There are quite a few things that make this piece of scifi stick out. First, out of the four main characters, three are people of color. Shadrach is black, Mao is obviously Mongolian, the head of Project Avatar is Native American (Navajo, I believe), and the head of the project seeking to put Mao into a robot body is headed by a white European woman. It’s an incredibly diverse cast that I really enjoyed. Plus, Shadrach gets it on with both Nikki Crowfoot and Katya (Native and European, respectively). There’s also the fascinating fact that Mao, who previously only wanted a Mongolian body, is totally into the idea of putting his brain into the body of strong, young black man. You could read this one of two ways: either as a scifi slave narrative (Mao owning Shadrach’s body) or as a progressive future where skintone doesn’t matter but the leaders still manage to be totally evil.
The scifi in the book is incredibly strong. Silverberg obviously did his brain and infectious diseases research. It was akin to reading abstracts from medical journals when Shadrach was talking about the various medical things going on with Mao’s body and with organ rot in the general population.
Religion is dealt with in an interesting manner. Most people seem to be more religious. Even the “secular” government workers follow the new religion, whose name I can’t remember I’m afraid, that involves monks and taking hallucinatory drugs. It’s obviously an idea of a futuristic religion born out of the 1970s in which it was written, but it works within the imaginary future it exists within.
Central to the novel is Shadrach’s struggle with the Hippocratic Oath. He is sworn to repeatedly save the life of an evil dictator who is willfully withholding an antidote to organ rot from the general population. It’s obviously an intense moral dilemma and the scifi setting helps the reader look at it with less emotion than if, say, we were talking about a modern setting wherein Shadrach was working for a neo-Nazi or something.
One thing that does date the book is that Silverberg made the choice of giving an exact year for when all of this is going down, and that year is 2012. I did find it an odd bit of serendipity that I just so happened to pick up this book in 2012. In a sense, then, for the modern reader it’s more like reading an alternate history. What *would* have happened if a huge natural disaster had occurred in the 1990s? Whereas in a book like 1984, it’s still the same book for modern readers as for the original readers (you just ignore the date), here the date actually has an impact on the reading of the story. The reading is different now than it probably was for people in the 1970s, but it still works. Just in a different way.
I did feel the pacing is a bit off in the book. It’s a bit up and down. There were a couple of moments earlier in the story that had the intensity level of almost a climax, whereas the climax feels….less climaxy. It took some of the tension out for me, even though I was pleased with the ultimate ending. This did make it ideal for an audiobook, though, since it was easier to come and go from it as I had time to listen. Related to the pacing issue, although most of the book is third person Shadrach’s perspective, there are a few chapters that are first person Mao’s perspective. Those threw me a bit. I’m still not sure how I felt about them. I honestly think it would take a second read in print to get a real vibe for that dynamic.
Speaking of the audiobook, the narrator, Paul Boehmer, does a phenomenal job. He gets many different accents spot on without ever seeming to be racist. He also does a great job differentiating between who is speaking and thinking and what have you. He also did an admirable job narrating the sex scenes. The tonality of his voice is spot on for the intimacy and excitement. I would gladly listen to another book he’s narrated.
Overall then this is an interesting piece of scifi that was originally written as futuristic and now reads as alternate history. It features a diverse, three-dimensional cast and provides a great setting for the moral dilemma of helping those who would harm others. I recommend it to fans of scifi that addresses moral issues.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Audible
Book Review: Thieftaker by D. B. Jackson (Series, #1)
Summary:
After spending over a decade serving hard labor in the Caribbean for mutiny and conjuring, Ethan has finally made it back to Boston. He now makes his living as a thieftaker, essentially a private investigator who hunts down stolen items, using his conjuring where necessary to help him out. But the year is 1767 and trouble is starting to brew in Boston. The Stamp Tax has been enacted, and the people don’t like it. There are even riots in the street. Against this back-drop, Ethan is asked to find a brooch that was stolen–from the body of a dead girl. He doesn’t usually take on cases involving murder, but this one is different.
Review:
It’s probably hard to tell from this blog, because they’re hard to find, but I am a real sucker for a good Boston during the American Revolution story. So when this title showed up I snapped it up. I’m glad I did because it’s an interesting take on the Stamp Act Riots.
This is an interesting piece of historic fiction, because it’s more like urban fantasy historic fiction. Is that a genre? Can it be? What on earth would we call it? In any case, I was in heaven, because I love BOTH urban fantasy and history so having both in one book was heaven. I mean first it’s breeches and three corner hats then it’s look at this illusion of a creepy little girl. Brilliant.
I struggled a bit with Ethan, which in retrospect wasn’t a bad thing. That shows he’s a realistic, well-rounded character. But let’s be honest. I’m more of a Sam Adams revolutionary type. Ethan served in the British Navy and is all “oh these hooligans.” This bothered me a lot! Especially when I got suspicious that the book as a whole would lean Tory. But! This all ends up being part of the character development, which in the end is what makes the book stronger. Ethan isn’t sure about protesting and fighting the aristocracy at first. But he changes his mind with time. This makes for a great plot-line. I like it. I do hope in the sequel we will get less of this hemming and hawing about owing things to the crown and yadda yadda. DOWN WITH THE KING. Ahem.
As a Bostonian, can I just say, I haven’t seen a book so intent on giving actual street names and buildings before, but it worked. They are totally accurate. I could completely visualize not just the streets but the entire routes Ethan was walking along. Granted, it was as if through a looking glass, since when I walk them they’re a bit different than in 1767, but still. It was very cool. I also really appreciated the depiction of the South Enders, since I spend quite a bit of time in Southie. Seeing the historical versions was really fun.
The magic portion of the book was also unique. Ethan has to cut himself to get blood to work the more powerful spells. The less powerful ones he can work with surrounding grasses, plants, etc… This makes the interesting problem that people struggle in fist-fighting him because if he bleeds he just uses it to work spells. It’s a nice touch.
So with all this glowing, why not five stars? Well, honestly, Ethan bugged me so much for the first 2/3 of the book that I kept almost stopping in spite of all the good things. He’s just such a…a…Tory. For most of the book. Instead of being angry at the man for putting him in prison for conjuring, he blames himself. Instead of being angry that the rich just keep getting richer while he struggles to pay his rent, he blames himself. You get the picture. Being irritated almost constantly by Ethan kind of pulled me out of the world and the story, which I wish hadn’t happened, because it really is such a cool world. I get what Jackson was trying to do, character development wise, but the payoff in the end was almost missed because I kept stopping reading due to being irritated with Ethan. Perhaps if his change of heart had started to show up a bit sooner it would have worked better for me.
Overall, though, this is well-researched and thought out version of Boston during the Stamp Act Riots. Fans of historic fiction and urban fantasy will get a kick out of seeing the latter glamoring up the former.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: NetGalley
Book Review: The Bay of Foxes by Sheila Kohler
Summary:
Dawit is a twenty year old Ethiopian refugee hiding out illegally in Paris and barely surviving. One day he runs into the elderly, famous French writer, M., in a cafe. Utterly charmed by him and how he reminds her of her long-lost lover she had growing up in Africa, she invites him to come live with her. But Dawit is unable to give M. what she wants, leading to dangerous conflict between them.
Review:
This starts out with an interesting chance meeting in a cafe but proceeds to meander through horror without much of a point.
Although in the third person, we only get Dawit’s perspective, and although he is a sympathetic character, he sometimes seems not entirely well-rounded. Through flashbacks we learn that he grew up as some sort of nobility (like a duke, as he explains to the Romans). His family is killed and imprisoned, and he is eventually helped to escape by an ex-lover and makes it to Paris. This is clearly a painful story, but something about Dawit in his current state keeps the reader from entirely empathizing with him. He was raised noble and privileged, including boarding schools and learning many languages, but he looks down his nose at the French bourgeois, who, let’s be honest, are basically the equivalent of nobility. He judges M. for spending all her money on him instead of sending it to Ethiopia to feed people, but he also accepts the lavish gifts and money himself. Admittedly, he sends some to his friends, but he just seems a bit hypocritical throughout the whole thing. He never really reflects on the toppling of the Emperor in Ethiopia or precisely how society should be ordered to be better. He just essentially says, “Oh, the Emperor wasn’t all that bad, crazy rebels, by the way, M., why aren’t you donating this money to charity instead of spending it on me? But I will tooootally take that cashmere scarf.” Ugh.
That said, Dawit is still more sympathetic than M., who besides being a stuck-up, lazy, self-centered hack also repeatedly rapes Dawit. Yeah. That happened. Quite a few times. And while I get the point that Kohler is making (evil old colonialists raping Ethiopians), well, I suppose I just don’t think it was a very clever allegory. I’d rather read about that actually happening.
In spite of being thoroughly disturbed and squicked out by everyone in the story, I kept reading because Kohler’s prose is so pretty, and I honestly couldn’t figure out how she’d manage to wrap everything up. What point was she going to make? Well, I got to the ending, and honestly the ending didn’t do it for me. I found it a bit convenient and simplistic after the rest of the novel, and it left me kind of wondering what the heck I just spent my time reading.
So, clearly this book rubbed me the wrong way, except for the fact that certain passages are beautifully written. Will it work for other readers? Maybe. Although the readers I know with a vested interest in the effects of colonialism would probably find the allegory as simplistic as I did.
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Netgalley
Counts For:
Specific country? Ethiopia. South African author.
Book Review: The Mount by Carol Emshwiller (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
Charley is an 11 year old Seattle and wants to be the best mount there is for his owner, Little Master. He eats his dry cakes, practices on the go-round, and behaves well. Little Master mostly likes their lessons. His ears wiggle, so Charley knows he’s giggling. But one day Wilds attack the village. They say that people are meant to be people, not mounts for Hoots. But the Hoots say the mounts were made for them, see how the primate species are perfectly designed for riding? It’s all very confusing for Charley.
Review:
It doesn’t take much guess-work to figure out how this wound up on my TBR pile. It’s a rather obvious allegory for animal rights, although instead of apes enslaving people like in Planet of the Apes, it’s an alien species with cat-like ears and weak legs enslaving humans. The concept is a good one, but the execution fell short for me, which is sad, because I wanted to love it.
The structure of the book is problematic. The first chapter is from the perspective of an entirely random Hoot who we never see again. Ever. We also never see his mount again. This is just weird. The rest of the book is told from the first person perspective of Charley, except for one random chapter narrated by his father. I don’t mind switching perspectives, but there should be some sort of consistency about it, and we should have at least a vague idea who the character in the new perspective is.
I also found myself completely baffled by Charley. In spite of being enslaved by the Hoots, he still wishes to use a bit one day and other things that drive his father nuts, and one cannot help but agree with his father. He never seems to really learn better through the book either. He persists in loving his Hoot and being a mount for his Hoot. That doesn’t work as an allegory for animal rights or slavery.
Emshwiller does show how teenage boys clash with their fathers very well, however. Charley’s relationship with his dad, Heron, is well fleshed-out and intriguing. They want to connect and love each other but struggle with how, exactly, to do that when they are so different yet so similar. Looking back, this relationship is what kept me reading. It shines in spite of the other oddities in the book.
I won’t spoil it, but the ending bothered me as well, and I found it profoundly confusing. In fact, I’d say for the book as a whole I am simply left perplexed by it. I feel like I missed something or didn’t quite get an accurate picture of the world they are living in or something.
Overall, it’s a very different take on humans being enslaved by another species, but its execution is rather disappointing. Recommended to readers with a marked interest in scifi depictions of human slavery.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Book Review: Beyond the Misty Shore by Vicki Hinze (Series, #1)
Summary:
Maggie Wright comes to the cozy Maine bed and breakfast, Seascape, not for a vacation, but to investigate the mysterious death of her cousin, Carolyn. Carolyn’s artist fiancee, TJ MacGregor, just so happens to be staying at Seascape, but a mysterious force is preventing him from leaving. Despite the tragedy standing between them, they start to fall for each other.
Review:
This is obviously a romance with a dash of mystery and a touch of ghosts. Maine is a wonderful setting, particularly for a paranormal romance. This one just didn’t work for me, although I can clearly see how it will be able to find an audience.
I found the writing, particularly the romance, to ring a bit….old-fashioned and conservative. The characters all seem to speak in the same speaking style as the elderly woman who manages the inn. That works for her, and she is definitely my favorite character in the book, but it doesn’t work so well for TJ and Maggie who are both young and from New Orleans. I’m sure some readers would find the clean, conservative manner in which they talk a bit of fresh air, but to me it was dull and felt like a book my grandma gave me to get started out in romances when I was in middle school.
Similarly, the way the entire town is willing to appease the local pastor when it comes to things like alcohol and condoms kind of enraged me. For instance, the convenience store will only sell condoms to married couples upon the request of the pastor. I mean WHAT?! That is just not even LEGAL. But. As a book reviewer, I can definitely see that a more conservative crowd would appreciate the idea of a town where that sort of understanding could exist.
So, ignoring the fact that this book is far too conservative for me, there is one other issue that bothered me. I found the mystery of Carolyn’s death entirely confusing. At first I thought that Maggie came to Seascape to investigate the death because Carolyn died up there, but toward the end of the book, it sounds like she died in New Orleans. Which was it? And if she did die in New Orleans, then why did Maggie go to Seascape in the first place? Also, people think the car crash was mysterious because the painting she had with her was undamaged, but then toward the end of the book they say no the undamaged painting wasn’t found at the car, it’s just that it had disappeared and reappeared. Or something. I’m still very confused about everything about Carolyn, which is problematic given that this is the central conflict keeping our romantic couple apart. The mystery should be mysterious but not illogical.
Overall, this is a romance novel that was not for me, but will appeal to more conservative romance readers. People looking for an old-timey style romance with a touch of ghosts will appreciate it.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Netgalley
Cookbook Review: Vegan Vittles by Joanne Stepaniak
Summary:
A farm sanctuary is a farm whose sole purpose is to save animals from farm factories and slaughter. The Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York was started in 1986. In this cookbook, one of the proprietors has gathered vegan recipes inspired by farm life. Think down-home cooking that is cruelty-free.
Review:
As a country girl, I was delighted to find a down-home cookbook free of animal products. Everything about the cookbook hearkens back to classic American cookbooks from the layout to the simple black and white pictures at the beginning of each section to the layout of each of the recipes themselves to the sayings peppered throughout the book. (The sayings are veganized versions of classic American ones).
The cookbook starts with an intro to the Farm Sanctuary, followed by a very personal explanation for her veganism by Stepaniak. This is followed by the more scientific explanations for eating vegan and how to do it properly. Substitutes and special ingredients are explained, and the intro is rounded out by a sample weekly menu.
The recipes themselves are divided into: tips and tails (hints and basics), beverages, breakfasts and breads, uncheeses butters and spreads, hearty soups and stews, salads and dressings, sandwiches, the main dish, sauces gravies and condiments, and happy endings (desserts). Each section starts with a photo of one of the rescue animals and their story. It’s a sweet, light-handed approach to veganism that I appreciate.
So what about the recipes? They are definitely geared toward beginner plant-based cooks with a desire to replace their animal-based recipes with similar tasting ones. There’s a plethora of traditional American recipes with the animal products simply switched out. As a long-time vegetarian, I found this focus not quite my style, but I can see it being enjoyed by newbies or when hosting omni friends and family or to find that one thing you still really miss like bacon or meatloaf. Personally, I found the dairy substitutes far more useful and interesting, since these can be expensive to buy, but are far healthier for you then the dairy norm.
I was able to find quite a few recipes of interest to me that I copied out. So far I’ve only been able to try one, but it was amazing! I tried Chuckwagon Stew on page 89. Seeking to replicate a hearty, country stew without the meat, the stew is built around tempeh. The ingredients were easy to find (I got everything at Trader Joe’s), cheap, and the recipe was a quick one to make. I fully admit I inhaled half of it that very evening. I am eager to try the rest of the recipes, particularly the Crock Cheeze on page 74 and the Seitan Salami/Pepperoni on page 40.
Overall, this is a country style, omni-friendly vegan cookbook that lets the animals and recipes shine for themselves. The recipes predominantly use grocery store ingredients, the exceptions being vital wheat gluten and nutritional yeast, which are easily ordered via Amazon. They are also simple enough that any moderately skilled cook should be able to follow them with ease. I highly recommend it to omnis and veg*ns alike, as the recipes are happy, healthy, and friendly. Personally, this is definitely going on my to own wishlist.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Public Library
Buy It
Note that the second edition has a different subtitle and more recipes.
Book Review: Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares (Series, #5)
Summary:
The Septembers are all 29 years old now and spread out all over the globe. Bee is expending her energy biking up and down the hills of San Francisco while Eric works as a lawyer. Carmen has a recurring role on a tv show filming in NYC and is engaged to Jones, an ABC producer. Lena teaches art at RISD and lives a quiet life in her studio apartment, except for the one day a week she practices Greek with an elderly woman. Tibby took off to Australia with Brian months ago, and everyone else is in limbo waiting for her to get back. They all feel a bit disconnected until Tibby sends Bee, Carmen, and Lena tickets to come to Greece for a reunion. What they find when they arrive is not what anyone expected.
Review:
You guys. You guys. This book shattered me. I am not a crier, and I actually had tears fall while reading this book. I read it in one day. I could not put it down. As someone who grew up with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I found the sudden jump forward in age (we used to be about the same age, and now they are older than me) a bit disconcerting and unexpected, but nowhere near as unexpected as the rest of the book.
I complained to anyone who would listen at the beginning that I hated it. That I hated what Brashares was doing, and omg why would she do this. But as the story progressed, she swept me along, and suddenly I realized that yes this is tougher by far than the earlier books. It’s not the light girl power read the first or even the second one was. But it shouldn’t be. They’re 29. They’re older. Their problems should be bigger and more adult, and the lessons here hurt more to read because they’re tougher ones to learn. It’s precisely the direction the books should have taken. The girls change and, dare I say it, actually grow the fuck up unlike a certain other foursome that have a tv show.
I won’t tell you what made the book so powerful, because that’d spoil it. But I will tell you, my fellow fans, to push past the first quarter of the book where you’re angry and want to throw it across the room in a Carmen-like rage. Give Brashares the chance she earned with the first three to gradually show you what she’s doing. It’s an emotional journey that’s well worth taken. Fans might be frustrated at first, but those who stick it out and love the series for what it really is will love this entry. I don’t doubt it at all. Plus, Brashares hinted that there might be still more to come.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Netgalley
Previous Books in Series
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood
Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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