VeganMoFo Day 10
Vegan Family Favourites by Erin Pavlina
I’m a huge fan of vegfamily.com. It was started by Erin Pavlina in 1999 and she has done an amazing job in gathering so much helpful advice, information and recipes for vegan families in one spot. Vegfamily.com has since moved to a new owner but it is still a fantastic resource with a newsletter, forums and many, many wonderful articles.
Through vegfamily.com, I read about Erin’s books Raising Vegan Children in a non-Vegan World and Vegan Family Favourites both of which I bought while pregnant and nesting!
Vegan Family Favourites is the cookbook which gave us our much-loved and oft-eaten bean burgers, we usually make them with black beans and lashings of curry powder but they can have any flavour really! There are also some yummy smoothies, cornbread, a great veg with couscous and much more.
The book is aimed at families with children, so many of the recipes come across as a bit simple and in fact some of them aren’t really recipes at all, more like assembly instructions (like vegan mac & cheese). But this works fine in this book, especially for folk like my good self who are frequently found muddled in the kitchen trying to invent a quick but decent meal while their toddler plays underfoot or wants to help cook!
There is also a slight over-reliance on pre-prepared ingredients such as jarred salsa, but, again, I can see the appeal of this when you’re making a family meal in a hurry.
Unfortunately, my pet peeve with many vegan cookbooks is the old “egg replacer to equal 1 egg” ingredient and it’s used quite prolifically here. It frustrates me because until you’ve made something you never really know what the egg property you are replacing is, was it there for texture, colour, lightness, taste? I really feel that cookbook writers need to specify what they found worked, even if it ends up looking like “egg replacer to equal 1 egg, I found ground flaxseed worked best“.
There is a handy cross-reference section at the back with the recipes listed under headings such as “Fast preparation, few ingredients, great for pot lucks” etc. along with some sample menus.
There are no photos in the book, however they are all available online here, along with some sample recipes to tempt you!
Egg-replacer peeve aside, I like this cookbook, I imagine we’ll get a lot of use out of it as Littlepixie grows!
What about you? Do you own “Vegan Family Favourites”? Any recommendations?
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both her books are on my wish-list, although raising vegan children seems to be out of print now which is sad. I have found the same with ‘family’ cookbooks, they do tend to be quite simple, and my kids don’t mind the more grown-up food as that’s what they’ve always had from me. But for nights when I don’t feel like cooking anything complicated or when I don’t want dinner to last an hour while I argue with a 5 year old about finishing his dinner they come in very handy!
That’s a good suggestion about the egg replacer – I know exactly what you mean by cook books not being more specific.
I don’t own this cook book, you’ve probably realised by my lack of interesting contributions to your great reviews that I only own 2 vegan cook books. But you are totally responsible for my wish list getting longer and longer.