Ann Gentry - Real Food for Everyone: Vegan-Friendly Meals for Meat-Lovers, Vegetarians, and Vegans

Real Food for Everyone

Copyright 2015 Ann Gentry. Photography copyright 2015 Sara Remington. Originally published in 2011 byAndrews McMeel Publishing of Kansas City, Missouri, asVegan Family Meals. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC
an Andrews McMeel Universal company
1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106

E-ISBN: 9781449470487

www.andrewsmcmeel.com

Design: Julie Barnes and Diane Marsh
Photography: Sara Remington
Food Stylist: Robyn Valarik
Food Stylist Assistant: Mara Dockery
Prop Stylist: Dani Fisher
Prop Stylist Assistant: Bella Foster
Camera Assistant: Shawn Corrigan
Editor: Jean Z. Lucas
Art director: Julie Barnes
Production editor: Maureen Sullivan
Production manager: Carol Coe
Demand planner: Sue Eikos

Photography on pages 28, 216, 220, 228, 232 courtesy of iStockphoto.com

Cover design by Julie Barnes
Cover photography by Sara Remington

www.realfood.com

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Contents

I t takes a village to raise a cookbook. I have much gratitude to my village: my immediate family, friends, business associates, employees, and guests at Real Food Daily who contributed to the raising of this book.

Many thanks,

To Rochelle Palermo, my recipe editor and tester for both my cookbooks, who transformed my culinary ideas into coherent, executable recipes for all to enjoy.

To writer Laura Samuel Meyn, who came through at every juncture in this process with laserlike attention to detail and made sense of my half-baked or sometimes overcooked words and ideas.

To Sara Remington and teamyou can come over to my house any time to prep, cook, style, shoot, and make magic turning my recipes into beautiful photographs.

To the team at Andrews McMeel, starting with publisher Kirsty Melville, who once again opened a door for me; Jean Lucas, my editor, who was always available and kept me on point; and Julie Barnes and Diane Marsh, the fantastic design team who created the right frame for my recipes and Saras photographs.

To my Real Food team, Kacy Hulme and Beth Griffiths, my assistants who held my work space togetherthank you both for the support you gave me in writing this book. And to my chefs, Shelly, Ivy and Romualdothanks for answering all my persnickety questions.

To Robert Jacobs, my husband, for his unwavering support and belief in what I do.

And to our children, Halle and Walker, who are the future faces of a world where more people will eat delicious, balanced, organically grown real food.

W ant your family to enjoy delicious, healthful meals and snacks? Feel and look their best? Improve their long-term health? Help the environment? Vegan food makes an incredible difference, for our bodies and for the world around us. Ive been experimenting with various vegetarian and vegan cuisines for three decades, starting as a young actress struggling with my weight and appearance, and today as a working mother with two children and the proprietress of Americas leading organic vegan restaurants, Real Food Daily. Ive learned in order to stick with a plant-based diet, one must cook at home, with simple recipes. This book is filled with flavorful and satisfying recipes that support everyones health, personal ethics, and the environment that we all share.

ITS NOT NECESSARY TO BECOME VEGAN OR VEGETARIAN TO ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF EATING PLANT-BASED MEALS. Dont let an all-or-nothing attitude turn you off: Its well worth the effort to consume less meat and dairy even if you dont eliminate it entirely. In fact, my own diet is just shy of 100 percent vegan. On occasion, I eat a small amount of fish and dairy.

After a childhood spent eating a typical American diet, Southern-style, and later surviving on sweets and cigarettes in college, my life took a profound turn in my twenties. I was an aspiring actress in New York City, waiting tables at a vegetarian restaurant in Greenwich Village. Whole Wheat n Wild Berrys was a place percolating with energy and information about how to eat differently. I quickly eliminated meat and dairy from my diet.

Inspired by the budding natural foods movement, I experimented with fasting, juicing, and megavitamins. But conflicting information and impractical dietary regimes left me feeling lost and confused. After wading through most of the natural foods stores offerings, I found macrobiotics, a diet based on whole grains and vegetables, to be the most sensible and balanced. Macrobiotics taught me how to eat, and how to cook. Most important, macrobiotics taught me the connection between diet and health. (For more on macrobiotics, turn to page 202.) Later, when I moved to California, my newfound proximity to local organic farmers and outdoor markets was another great inspiration.

Over the years, Ive explored the many permutations of a plant-based diet. I spent years as a strict vegan and a macrobiotic, and I experimented with raw foods, food combining, wheat- and gluten-free eating, and other dietary regimes. Today, I know what makes me feel besta mostly vegan diet.

ITS A GOOD TIME TO BE VEGAN OR VEGETARIAN. In the 1970s natural foods was a fringe movement, but today it is mainstream. Being vegan is actually cool. When I began changing my diet, many vegetarian products and ingredients were only available at a few independent natural foods stores. Today, vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic, and whole foods ingredients and products are available at conventional mainstream supermarkets across America.

The natural foods movement rose in response to an epidemic of degenerative diseases: Twentieth-century America saw an explosion of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, certain cancers, and more. Most of these diseases can be directly attributed to radical changes in our food supply, changes brought about by the industrial revolution. In response, authors and researchers began to identify and document the connection between industrialized food and the degenerative diseases suddenly plaguing America and began to tear down the myth that meat is a necessary part of a nutritious diet.

In 1971, Frances Moore Lapp published Diet for a Small Planet, a radical book for its time, telling people how they could thrive without meat. Lapps book laid the foundation for a vegetarian movement to flourish among the Baby Boom generation. In 1987, John Robbins published