Friday, April 10, 2009

Hurray for another great vegan cookbook!

Yet another fabulous vegan cookbook! Do I love being vegan? Yes! With all these fabulous ideas and recipes and feeling good about being compassionate it's an all round good feeling.

Despite us not wanting to have more books or more anything, especially at this moving time, db bought a few more vegan cookbooks and I was so thrilled to see that he chose refresh as one of the books.

Fresh restaurant in Toronto is one of the things I miss about that city. It started out as a juice bar called Juice for Life and expanded from there.

On a side note I once applied for a job at the location on Queen St when I decided I should work in the restaurant industry again. I knew I couldn't go back to carrying plates of meat to people and sought out something that fit with my ethics. I didn't get the job and did end up catering and serving meat again, but at least I had red jane to work with so we could commiserate together and at least I'm not doing it anymore. I digress.

Okay, back to the book. There are two sections to the book: fresh food and luscious juice. I've only made the rice bowls from the book so far and found them incredibly simple to put together that contain ingredients that are easy to find. The recipes (again, I've only made the rice bowls so far) often have some prep required with sauces to be made or an ingredient to be marinated, but the recipe itself is quick to prepare. The key to Fresh's recipes is in the sauces and how they are used together in a dish.

As for the juices I haven't explored that section of the book but will once I unpack the juicer in the new home. Juice recipes are broken down into: energy elixirs, immune elixirs, wheatgrass elixirs, super power shakes, espresso shakes, fresh fruit smoothies and vegetable cocktails. The juice section is half of the book and I am really looking forward to sampling from each area and finding my favorites.

With luscious photos that leads into each section of the book and a simple presentation of all the recipes I highly recommend this book. Hmm, maybe I should have posted this on the Bookworm Collective? Maybe not since it's not really a front to back read through.

Anywho...

here is db's rice bowl dish he prepared from the book. I'm showing a photo of his dish because of his presentation. I had made some comment about how the presentation of a meal is part of the enjoyment of the eating experience for me. While db is not as concerned about presentation, he did bring the rice bowl to the table with a tofu triangle in the center and his grilled veg in symmetry. Perhaps he was poking a little fun at my statement? That said, he always does present a meal beautifully.

This rice bowl contained grilled veg, marinated tofu and a miso gravy. Oh my goodness it was delcious.

***

Once again a cat photo seems necessary. Gigi is in her favorite yellow bed in the cat lounge. Looks like a little cat bowl.

She just turned 3, but she's still a kitten to me. She'll always be the kitten that I one day found in my garden. Little Gigi Buffon.

3 comments:

Wandering Coyote said...

I totally think you should post this on the Bookworm site!

Karen said...

Me too! Great review. And it's a book, no? ;)

sp said...

Okay, you've both convinced me. Thanks.