Veganomicon: An Essential for every Vegan

Let’s be real: veganism can get boring.

Between devouring hummus and chomping on carrots, there soon comes a point where you long for pizza. And creamy pasta. And, at times, something a little more ‘meaty’.

It’s not that we have any real desire to eat animals or their products; it’s the texture, the taste, the associations.

Now, of course, in this “day and age” finding vegan alternatives to “normal” foods is an easy task for us veganos. But what happens when you want to make something a little more complex and curious, like Black-Bean Burgers, Tofu Florentine or Green-Tea Icecream Sandwiches?

Lucky for us, we have books like Vegan with a Vengeance, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and, my most favourite, Veganomicon.

Now, before I go anywhere, I’ve got to admit to you that I’ve not tried a huge amount of recipes yet.

That’s not to say that the recipes are necessarily long, cumbersome or difficult to produce. Rather, I’m lazy.

What I CAN say is that every. single. recipe. I’ve tried so far has come out FANTASTICALLY.

Like, you know when you recipes and see the pictures and are all like “Yeah, but they had 10 people on hand to help them make it and had all the perfect ingredients and no doubt cooked 3 of the same things and then took a picture”? Well, that’s what I am… with all recipe books, no matter what.

So imagine my SUPREME delight when, on my 6th recipe, even with a couple of Matt-style substitutions (as in, “I prefer the taste of this more even though it won’t go with the recipe”), the food survived!

Time and time again the recipes have come out on top — so much so that my own meat-inhaling dad decided that he wanted some of my ‘funny vegan stuff’. True story.

The fact is that Veganomicon is the most elaborate vegan cookbooks I have ever encountered in my time as a vegan (coming up to 3 years around April). Whilst I wouldn’t necessarily call it ‘exhaustive’, there are easily enough recipes in there to be cooked and adapted to last, quite literally, almost a lifetime.

On the same fantastic vein, if you have any specific deitary requirements such as a soy allergy, gluten intolerance, dislike for fat, or if you only have access to a Plain Jane supermarket, every recipe is counter-marked against if it’s soy-free or can be made under 45 mins. Nifty or what?

Naturally, I have a few grips with any cookbook — Veganomicon is no different.

My biggest gripe had to be the curious style of recipe categorization. Instead of listing the recipes in typical “Breakfast”, “Lunch”, “Dinner” or “Sunday Afternoon Food”, “Finger Food”, “Hearty Meals” format, they instead went for the main ingredient of the dish as the categories. For some people that might be well and good, for me it’s a little bit of an inconvenience. I enjoy being able to use a cookbook in the same way I would use a shop window: to browse what catches my interests. Unfortunately, with Veganomicon, that liberty is somewhat lacking.

Likewise, because Veganomicon is a US-written book, all of its measurements are in cups and ounces. As I currently live in the UK I find it somewhat difficult to judge how much of what I need to put in as I don’t have a set of measuring cups (as they aren’t standard kitchen equipment over here). Consequently, sometimes I ‘eyeball’ how much of an ingredient I need or use mugs to measure. Albeit every recipe has come out beautifully so far, I can’t help but feel a little precarious just chucking in ingredients without knowing how much I’m using.

Overall Veganomicon is a fantastic cookbook which, despite my little gripes, I would warmly recommend to any vegan peeps who don’t already have this sacred tome of vegan deliciousness. It’s expansive, comes with lots of little tips (along with a how-to guide on cooking vegetables and a section on low-fat cooking) and contains a fantastic range of recipes that are so good you would wonder why you ever ate meat in the first place!

I award Veganomicon a vegany 8.5 stars out of 10!

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