Vegetarian Comfort Foods: The Happy Healthy Gut Guide to Delicious Plant-Based Cooking

by Jennifer Browne

The Happy Healthy Gut Guide to Delicious Plant-Based CookingMore than seventy-five recipes to nourish your body and soulFood is the mind and body’s single-most important form of nourishment. Our bodies’ capacity for growth and repair directly correlates to the fuel we put into it, and food is that fuel. By eating mindfully, we can not only steer the course of our health to reach its peak, but enjoy the ride along the way.After a decade-long struggle with IBS, Jennifer Brown discovered that the path to health is no further than the walk to the refrigerator. Vegetarian Comfort Foods couples the healing power of whole, plant-based, mindfully-chosen food with creative recipes to please our palates and diminish our ailments. Starting with the necessary kitchen tools, pantry prerequisites, and cleansing instructions, the foundation is set for more than seventy-five recipes, such SmoothieBanana Walnut PancakesRoasted Squash with Apple and EggplantWarm Steamed Green SaladTangy Lentil SaladThai Red CurrySweet & Sour Tofu Stir-FryPink Salt BrowniesChocolate Chia PuddingAnd many more!Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Good Books and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of cookbooks, including books on juicing, grilling, baking, frying, home brewing and winemaking, slow cookers, and cast iron cooking. We’ve been successful with books on gluten-free cooking, vegetarian and vegan cooking, paleo, raw foods, and more. Our list includes French cooking, Swedish cooking, Austrian and German cooking, Cajun cooking, as well as books on jerky, canning and preserving, peanut butter, meatballs, oil and vinegar, bone broth, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 4, 2015

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

I so rarely DNF books that this is super weird for me to give a book one star. But folks...

...if your cookbook has the phrase "comfort food" in the title, it should not have entire chapters on

1) full day detox cleanses (the torturous kind where you can only have two juices, some water, and one smoothie at the end of the day so you can give your body some shred of real food to shit out the next morning. *shudder*)
2) juicing
3) smoothies.

THIS IS THE HELL THAT IS IN THIS COOKBOOK. Really. I could not make this up. I don't have an issue with smoothies and juice recipes (detoxes are a complete joke), but:

They shouldn't be in a comfort food book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This should be common sense!!! I eat comfort food when I feel like trash and want to drown my emotions in the warm hug of yummy, not-healthy food!! Juicing and smoothies and detox days are not comforting!! They are horrible ways to make sure your day is ruined with not-eating-real-meals-and-suffering-through-your-desire-to-eat-solid-food!!!

Anyways. I couldn't trust an author who puts this nonsense in a self-proclaimed "comfort food" book. I stopped after subjecting myself to reading the first three chapters. I feel like the author really wanted to get her main health eating focus in a cookbook and this subject (veggie comfort foodz) was the only way she'd get her gross detox obsession published. (maybe this is because literally nobody on the planet wants another garbage detox book? Or another typical juicing book that tries to act like it is in any way nutritionally superior to smoothies? Idk. Whichever the case, if you're looking for decent veggie comfort food recipes, do not look here. Run in the opposite direction of here. Go buy a Tofurky pizza hot pocket. They are vegan and a warm hug for your tender feelings.)

[Mariah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Today marks the day that I completed every single recipe in this book. When I first received this recipe book, as a gift in 2018, I knew very little about cooking. To me, cooking was boiling a pot of boxed pasta and adding store bought pasta sauce. Now I’ve vastly increased my cooking knowledge, but not from this book alone. I believe that this book is an amazing intro to cooking for those who have tiptoed around the oven or for a teenager who just wants to learn.

Out of the 92 recipes, I found 20 recipes that I labelled “Would Not Make Again” and 41 labelled “Delicious.” The other recipes sat somewhere in the middle. My favourite recipe from each section would be as follows: “Juice” chapter = “Anti-Inflammatory Juice” (p.42), “Smoothies” chapter = “Tropicana Smoothie” (p.52), “Sauces & Dressings” chapter = “Spicy Miso Sesame Dressing” (p.63), “Wake & Break” = “Blonde Museli” (p.73), “Nibbles” chapter = “Nori Roll” (p.105), “Sides” chapter = “Mazin’ Mashed Potatoes” (p.111), “Rawsome Salads” chapter = “Sesame Citrus Salad” (p.127), “Main Eats” chapter = “Marie’s Thai Curry” (p.145), and “Sweet Tooth” chapter = “Chunky Monkey Cookies” (p.175).

I must agree with the other reviewers in that the title “Comfort Foods” really does not describe this cookbook. All the chapters are very health oriented, which is great, but they aren’t the cozy warming foods I would associate with comfort. I would give it 3.5 stars because I enjoyed many of the recipes, but it would not be the best cookbook for those who are experienced at cooking. Also, I really felt the chapter “Sauces & Dressings” was unnecessary.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Felt sparse on recipes -15 were smoothies and juices, and 9 more were dressings and sauces. That's almost a third of the recipes in the book. Other recipes were so short they barely feel like recipes: for wild carrots, simmer carrots with greens on then add chopped dill, the end.

Liked the intro section a good bit and was disappointed the recipes didn't live up to it. I wouldn't call most of these foods comfort food, except some of the deserts. Calls for uncommon ingredients like quinoa flour and brown rice syrup. Long section on juice detoxing feels out of place in a book called comfort food.

[Sarah Amundsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok, but I really didn’t get the comfort food vibe

A little too much talking on and on about the vegetarian/vegan choice. Recipes looked pretty good but fairly complicated. They also really didn’t remind me of comfort food... at all. And since that was what I picked it up for, it was a let down. Maybe our idea of comfort food is just different??? Either way, I skimmed over most of it and didn’t find much that was really useful or I was interested in.

[Emma Que · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really what I mean when I think of comfort food, mostly smoothie and juice recipes. Lots of them tho!