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

Here is a nice, beautifully-produced trade paperback cookbook featuring a large array of vegan recipes. Lately, many vegan cookbooks have hit the market and the recipes offered in them are not that different. In Real Food for Everyone, Ann Gentry’s collection is drawn from international cuisine, but you will find many of the old standards, too (granola, french toast, niçoise salad). The recipes are not hard to follow, and range from very easy to complex. Ingredients would not be hard to find if you have a very well-stocked health food store available for such items as Hunza mulberries, goji berries, umeboshi, and of course, the usual vegan butter and cheeses. For some seemingly simple recipes, like breakfast power smoothie, you need to think ahead and soak almond and flaxseeds overnight—not for weekday breakfasts. The photo illustrations are professional, but we see way too many of the smiling author and her children. The instructional thumbnail series of photos are great, and so are the numerous sidebars (immersion blenders, silicon spatulas, non-dairy cheeses). It’s nice to see the list of recipes preceding each chapter. It’s too bad the recipe layout is not always convenient when flipping the pages. The index is excellent, even including the sidebars.