Hackett - The Big Book of Vegan Recipes : More Than 500 Easy Vegan Recipes for Healthy and Flavorful Meals

Copyright 2014 by F+W Media, Inc.

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by

Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.

57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322 U.S.A.

www.adamsmedia.com

Contains material adapted and abridged from The EverythingVegan Cookbook by Jolinda Hackett with Lorena Novak Bull, copyright 2010 by F+W Media, Inc., ISBN 10: 1-4405-0216-1, ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-0216-3; and The EverythingVegan Slow Cooker Cookbook by Amy Snyder and Justin Snyder, copyright 2012 by F+W Media, Inc., ISBN 10: 1-4405-4407-7, ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4407-1.

ISBN 10: 1-4405-7248-8

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7248-7

eISBN 10: 1-4405-7249-6

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7249-4

Always follow safety and commonsense cooking protocol while using kitchen utensils, operating ovens and stoves, and handling uncooked food. If children are assisting in the preparation of any recipe, they should always be supervised by an adult.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their product are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and F+W Media was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters.

Cover image 123rf.com.

THE OLD ADAGE, Tell me what you eat and Ill tell you who you are, has never been more true. Whether you live in a small town or a big city, you have more choices as to what to eat than ever before in the history of humankind.

Even if you choose something simple such as cereal and milk for breakfast, youre still faced with an entire aisle of boxed cereals and nearly a dozen kinds of milk. Whole grain cereal? Soymilk, rice milk, hemp milk, or coconut milk? Plain, vanilla, or unsweetened? Low-fat or fat-free?

By picking up this book, youve already made one choice: to explore nourishing, animal-friendly, and environmentally sound plant-based meals. No matter whether youre a decades-long herbivore or this is your first exploration into vegan cooking, this book is for you. With more than five hundred recipes, you can try something new every single day for a year and still have ideas leftover.

Youll find plenty of vegan twists on comforting and familiar favorites, such as macaroni and cheese and chocolate chip cookies as well as dishes from around the world with exciting new flavors to keep your palate guessing and your meals fresh.

So if you are what you eat, what are you? Thoughtful? Mindless? Sugar-filled? Wholesome and healthy? Are you adventurous and fiery or simple and traditional?

I hope that after exploring a few of the recipes in this book, youll be filled with both radiant health and the satisfaction of a good meal. But more than that, I hope youre filled with the joy that accompanies exploring new things and the confidence of knowing that youre someone who makes healthy choices for yourself, your family, the animals, and the planet.

COOK SOME SESAME BOK CHOY and your friends will think youre a talented Chinese food chef. Perhaps even a connoisseur. But when you create a vegan meal, you are literally changing the world. Call it gastronomical activism at the tip of your fork. Just by eating vegan, you become an eco-activist and, within a week or two, a healthier person. Veganism is not just a diet, and not just the food on your plate: it is an active stance against environmental inefficiencies, a boycott against animal cruelty, and a method of preventative medicine. Yes, all that comes just from trading in milk and meat for mushrooms and marinara. One small bite for you is one giant leap toward a healthier planet and a healthier body.

If youre used to eating eggs for breakfast and steak for dinner, you may be wondering, whats left? Rest assured that with a little ingenuity, a plant-centered diet will bring more color, spice, and variety to your plate than ever before.

As a matter of habit, most people reach for the same few foods day after day, but all that stops now! A nearly infinite array of grains, herbs, fruits, vegetables, beans, and legumes from around the world is at your fingertips. There are dozens of varieties of beans alonenavy, cannellini, kidney beans, black beansand many other pulses, such as chickpeas and lentils, each with its own distinct flavors and textures. Theres no need to ever ask, What do vegans eat? Its simpler to question what vegans dont eat, as the list is much shorter!

Instead of packaged and processed foods, vegans eat mostly whole foods (fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, grains) and dairy- and egg-free versions of traditional favorites (cheeseless pizza, bean burritos minus the cheese) flavored with herbs and spices from around the world. Vegans today can savor hundreds of vegan substitute products, including nondairy cream cheese, beef jerky, and vegan white chocolate.

Whatever comfort food you crave has a vegan version. There are dozens of brands of the more common substitutes, such as soymilk and vegan meats and cheeses, each with their own texture and taste. Some will fool even the most ardent wrangler, and others, well, wont. Youll also find ways to duplicate many of your favorite comfort foods in this book, without eggs and dairy.

Ask one hundred vegans why they pass on animal foods and you may get one hundred different answers. Animal suffering, environmental waste, and personal health usually top the list. But global poverty, food safety and sanitation, or food allergies are valid reasons to reduce reliance on animal foods. People of Western faiths may cite the biblical order for stewardship over creation, while others commit to the Eastern spiritual principle of ahimsathat is, nonviolence and harmlessness. Call it the vegan Hippocratic oath.

So then, whats the harm with eating eggs and dairy?

Concerns over animal suffering understandably lead to a vegetarian diet, but the suffering and killing of animals in dairy and egg production inspires many well-intentioned vegetarians who learn of such practices to quickly go vegan.

Gone are the days of Old MacDonalds happily mooing dairy cows and clucking chickens. Todays cows are relentlessly milked by machines, not cheery, freckle-faced men in overalls. Females must be kept constantly pregnant in order to lactate, but the dairy industry has little use for their male offspring. Sent to slaughter at a few months old for veal, male calves are just leftovers, the collateral damage of dairy production. When her ability to produce milk naturally slows at five or six years of age (think of it as a sort of cow menopause), a dairy cows final destination is the slaughterhouse.