Mini Reviews: The Main Street Vegan Academy Cookbook & The Colorful Kitchen

First things first: I love cookbooks. I love looking through them, I love the colourful pictures and I love being inspired by them. But I find reviewing them strangely difficult unless I absolutely adored them. Which is why today I am posting two mini reviews. I received both of these cookbooks curtesy of NetGalley and BenBella Books in exchange for an honest review. Given that BenBella has published my all time favourite cookbook I was very excited to be able to review these books. BenBella cookbooks are always extraordinarily well published with amazing pictures and an overall brilliant look.

I requested this mainly off the beautiful, stunning cover. As usual with BenBella, the book is wonderfully designed with wonderful pictures and brilliant layout.

The recipes are written by lots of different cooks and as such there will be something for everybody in here; but this also means that there will be recipes that do not appeal.

I maybe should have taken the title more seriously – because this is indeed more of book for people just starting out with both cooking and eating vegan. While I usually eat vegetarian, I often cook vegan as well and as such I am not really in need of indepth explanations. I still think the little tips (“coaching corner”) added throughout the book are going to be helpful for people trying to ease into a vegan lifestyle and I can see this being popular with a different customer.

Find it on Amazon (US).

This book is, simply put, stunning. The pictures are vibrant and made me want to immediately cook many of the recipes. This is a book I want to own.

There is something for everybody in here, I am sure. The recipes are easily replicated and you don’t need to hunt down rare ingredients. Still, Ilene Godosky Moreno combines ingredients in a way I find highly original and appealing. It is the kind of non-fuss vegan food that I adore.

One other thing that I like is how she breaks down the time needed to prepare the dishes into “total time” and “active time”. This makes planning so much easier and gives me an estimate on how my kitchen will look afterwards (that always depends on whether I can clean while I cook or not).

PS: I find the current obsession with kale slightly bemusing. In Germany we call it “Grünkohl” and it is such a staple that I cannot get over how hyped it is elsewhere (if that makes sense).

Find it on Amazon (US).

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