Vegan Cooking for Beginners: 75 Quick, Cheap, and Easy Vegan Recipes
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About this ebook
When you're not comfortable cooking, the idea of going vegan and having to learn how to make meals you've never tried before can be intimidating and stressful.
If you live a busy life and don't have time for recipes with lots of ingredients and confusing directions, but you still want healthful, delicious meals for your family, you need Vegan Cooking for Beginners. Whether you're a beginner cook or a beginner vegan, or both, I've designed this for you.
This book walks you through some of the very basics, like how to make pasta, to putting together a balanced meal for yourself or to serve to guests. It includes vegan recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts that are healthy, quick, and simple. You'll learn how to saute leafy greens and how to put together simple vegan soups, as well as versatile and flavorful vegan pasta recipes.
Most of the recipes can be made ahead of time and split into smaller portions to take to the office, and the rest are easy enough to be made after a hard day at the office. No matter what you know about cooking now, after reading it you'll be able to cook a meal fit to serve in a restaurant.
Every recipe includes nutritional information and tips on how to make the meal quickly. Most of the recipes also have color pictures of the finished dish.
Cathleen Woods
Founder of Vegan-Nutritionista.com and author of:Baby Led Weaning for VegansVegan Christmas CookiesVegan Cooking for BeginnersA Fresh New Vegan YouVegan Meal Plans for Fall and WinterVegan Meal Plans for Spring and SummerThe Vegan Bread Box
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Vegan Cooking for Beginners - Cathleen Woods
Introduction to Vegan Cooking for Beginners: 75 Quick, Cheap, and Easy Vegan Recipes
One of the most common questions emailed to me is what to eat if you don't know how to cook and want to go vegan. While some of us are lucky enough to have the financial resources and amazing vegan restaurant options to eat out for every meal, most of us are not in the situation. If we want to eat fresh, homemade vegan food, we have to learn to cook it ourselves.
With our busy lifestyles and working parents, millions of people reach adulthood without even knowing how to boil water for pasta. If you're in this situation, you're probably comfortable admitting you can't cook and can laugh about it. But, somewhere deep inside you're probably also a little frustrated. It's time to take control.
I find immense pleasure in knowing that whatever I feel like eating, I can make myself. Of course, there are some things that would taste better if I ate them in a gourmet restaurant or another country, or even just if I didn't have to cook them myself. But, the point is: I can cook if I want to.
The truth is that I rarely cook anything difficult or time consuming. I've had people suggest I open a restaurant or catering business, but I don't cook because I absolutely love it or get to a zen state of tremendous pleasure when I'm in the kitchen. I cook because I like to eat and I want to do right by my body by eating healthful food. I don't want to eat junk from a box because when I do, I feel terrible.
So, simple math says:
1. I want to eat good, healthy, vegan food
2. I don't live in a city without enough options to eat out for every meal, and even if I did, I couldn't stomach the idea of paying for every meal
1+2= I need to know how to provide what I want for my family and me.
And I know you do too, because I hear about it all the time. Regardless of your skill level, you can get confident enough in the kitchen to put together a variety of amazing breakfasts, lunches, snacks, dinners, and desserts.
Vegan Cooking for Beginners is designed for people of all skill levels. I have a few guides on how to do things like cook pasta, cook whole grains like rice and quinoa, and I try to make the directions in every recipe very simple and straightforward. If you're confident in the kitchen already, you can just use the recipes as new options for very simple recipes.
If you're new to cooking or new to veganism (or both), I recommend starting with what seem like the very easiest recipes and working your way up. There are many recipes throughout this book that just require you to find ingredients and put them in a blender and then whirl until smooth. There are lots of others that you never have to cook; all you really do is assemble them.
Important Tools in the Kitchen
I don't believe you need to have a gourmet kitchen to make amazing food. In fact, after we got married and accumulated a wide array of appliances, it seems like we use even fewer tools.
There are a few things that I really think make cooking much easier:
A good set of knives
A cutting board
A blender
Measuring spoons (cheap ones work perfectly)
Measuring cups (again, cheap is fine)
A saucepan and a pot
A baking pan
If you have basic versions of all of these kitchen tools, you can make everything in this cookbook and most things in many other cookbooks.
Notes on Nutritiondata.com
As Vegan Nutritionista, I like to emphasize the health benefits of eating vegan, but I am not a nutritionist. I think of myself as an educated, enthusiastic amateur who stays up to date on the current research on nutrition. I include nutrition information in these recipes because it's one of the most requested pieces of information on my site. If you like to read labels, you'll love this section of the book.
I do have to encourage you to take the nutritional information with a grain of salt. When food is sold in stores and has nutrition information on the back of the package, everything in the package is the exact same every time (so they say), and it has been professionally tested. You can usually be pretty sure that information is accurate. When putting together recipes, there's a wide range of possible combinations of the same foods, so it can vary quite a bit. For example, I use nutritiondata.com's best estimate for canned tomatoes, whole-wheat pasta, and even fresh produce, but each brand makes it slightly different.
Many scientists speculate that even fresh vegetables and fruits can have widely varied nutrients, some of which increase when cooked and others that diminish when cooked. Many people believe organic vegetables from local farms are the healthiest forms of produce, and research supports this theory. Since nutritiondata.com has no way to estimate those variances, I am just going with the average produce from the USDA. Yours is probably better for you than what I list!
If you want to find out the exact nutrition information, I encourage you to enter the exact ingredients and amounts you use, including adding new foods that aren't listed on their site according to the brand you are using. It's tedious, but if it's important to you, you're probably used to going to this effort to ensure you eat exactly what you want to eat.
Vegan Breakfasts to Start Your Day With Punch
Your whole life you've been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I'm not here to tell you any different. I never, ever, ever skip breakfast. In fact, I count on a starting meal so much that I'm not a fan of brunch-- who can wait that long to eat?
I read a long time ago that you should eat within 90 minutes of waking to keep your metabolism humming. I've also read that if you eat breakfast, you're less likely to indulge on salty and sweet snacks throughout the day because your body is satisfied. If you're trying to lose weight, the worst thing you can do is skip meals because it will kick your body into craving mode to compensate for the lost calories and you'll end up eating more of everything, including junk food.
If you're not in the practice of eating breakfast, start slowly and work your way up to an energy-packed starter meal. I provided a wide variety of styles of breakfasts in this cookbook. I'm personally more likely to go for the pancakes and tempeh bacon options on the weekend and stick to the quicker breakfast options like green smoothies, oatmeal, and chia pudding during the week.
Chia Seed Tapioca Pudding with Fresh Fruit
Serves: 8
Preparation Time: 1 hour (includes 50 minutes fridge time)
The first time I heard of chia seeds as an adult was in the book Born to Run, in which the author discusses a chia gel eaten by world class runners that gives them abundant energy. I wondered, is that the same stuff we used to rub on our chia pets as little kids?
And yes, it is.
Chia seeds are an absolute powerhouse of nutrition; they are loaded with omega-3 fatty acids (tell your non-vegan friends that it has more than salmon) and omega-6 fatty acids, way more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, they're easy to digest, they help to increase endurance and prevent dehydration, they slow down the conversion of carbohydrates, they're packed with fiber, protein, and other minerals, and they're great antioxidants.
And here's an extra benefit: they're cheap. A tablespoon of chia mixed with water turns into ten times what you started with. You can buy a small amount in bulk at health food stores, or pick up a pound online that will last you a LONG time in the fridge. Note: Once you mix it with water, you should consume the gel within a few days because the seeds will begin to spoil.
Chia seeds are an excellent substitute for tapioca (which is vegan, by the way) because their waterlogged texture is eerily similar to tapioca balls. You can make this pudding with a variety of flavors, including cinnamon, vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry.)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup chia seeds
2 cups almond milk (or other nondairy milk)
pinch of sea salt
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 cup fresh fruit, cut in bite-size pieces
Directions:
This is a really simple recipe... Combine all of the ingredients except the fruit in a tight tupperware container and shake until the seeds are all wet. In a few minutes, shake the container again to prevent the seeds from clumping together. The seeds will expand and have a much less crunchy texture when they have absorbed all the liquid.
Give the container another shake and refrigerate the mixture until you are ready to serve them. They will stay fresh for about 3 days in the fridge. When you're ready to serve, divvy the pudding into individual bowls and cover them with the pieces of fruit.
Nutritional Information: 100 calories, 51 calories from fat, 6g fat, 15mg sodium, 6g dietary fiber, 1g sugars, 3g protein, 0mg cholesterol, 137mg calcium, 11.4mg vitamin C, 0.5mg manganese, 153mg phosphorus
Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal
Serves: 2-4
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Oatmeal is such a classic breakfast staple, but a lot of people seem to hate it. I think they consider it to be