If you’re new to vegan cooking:
Quick Fix Vegan by Robin Robertson – One of my all time favorite cookbooks is Robin Robertson’s Quick Fix Vegan. I want to get more of her books, but I’ve still only made about half of the recipes in this book so I have to keep my cookbook addiction at bay until I’ve made 75%. Anyone who is looking to incorporate more vegan meals into their schedule should consider this as a starting point because most of them are really fast and they are all tasty.
Chloe’s Kitchen: 125 Easy, Delicious Recipes for Making the Food You Love the Vegan Way – These recipes are fairly easy and look very familiar for those who are worried about missing out of their favorite foods. This can help ease the transition but I warn you that a lot of the recipes are very decadent! There’s a reason she won Cupcake Wars and it’s because the pumpkin cupcakes in here are phenomenal.
For the more advanced vegan chef:
Candle 79 Cookbook: Modern Vegan Classics from New York’s Premiere Sustainable Restaurant – These recipes are well worth it if you have the time and you’re not a novice chef. The crepes are out of this world and are my go to recipe if I want to make something really nice for mother’s day or a birthday. If you’re in Manhattan, it would be a crime to not visit this restaurant. I miss it already!
General recommended reading:
Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life – I’m only about a third of the way through this and I’ve made a couple recipes and I’m hooked and can’t put it down. It’s all about nourishing your body and explaining how processed foods stress our bodies. It’s by Brendan Brazier who formulated Vega which I’m also hooked on. This should be required reading for anyone who eats food!
Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us – this book by Michael Moss, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting of Pink Slime, writes a whole book on how the brain reacts to salt, sugar and fat and how the food giants take advantage of the addictive qualities of these. This is a phenomenal book and I just couldn’t put it down. If you want to be an informed consumer and you need any extra motivation to put down the vegan potato chips and oreos, this book will help you to look at processed food with disgust. This book is to junk food what Fast Food Nation (anther favorite of mine, by the way) was to fast food.
Eating Animals – This part philosophy, past investigative book by Jonathan Safran Foer (author or Everything is Illuminated. Remember the movie they made with Elijah Wood?) is what I started reading right after I made the commitment to a vegan diet so that I could make sure to keep my self motivated. It’s not overly preachy because you’re reading his thought process about whether or not he feels comfortable eating animals. During his personal research, he relays some stories about animal abuse that have still stuck with me. You won’t be able to smell roasted meat with any kind of desire after this. One part had me in tears and I had to go hug a dog and tell him that I would never eat him. My only regret is that I bought the Kindle version so I can’t lend this book out to people. I may buy the paperback soon just for that purpose.
Vegan for Life – This is a great reference for new vegans so you can be sure to keep nutrition in mind. It’s a book that every vegan should read.
Vegan in Cleveland 