Bianca and Sascha, bloggers and foodie couple, believe that any reason to adopt a vegan lifestyle is a great reason, and your decision to stop eating animal products will be one of the best of your life. Have your cake and veganize it too!
Vegans still love breakfast sandwiches. And popcorn chicken. And mac and cheese. And all the other comforting, delicious foods we grew up with. Don’t worry, having these cravings is completely normal and part of every vegan’s life. Cravings Made Vegan offers plant-based resources and guides for every meat eater, cheese lover, and milk drinker followed by a unique collection of fifty detailed recipes to create surprisingly delicious alternatives for all those non-vegan dishes you still hold dear.
Recipes include melted cheese sandwiches, hearty sausages, baked almond feta, and a steaming hot chocolate fudge pudding that will make you forget about your pre-vegan life. Bianca and Sascha offer easy vegan swapping alternatives for all your favorite meat and dairy products and answers to every vegan’s most-asked how to make food taste and look like it has eggs in it, how to make tofu not boring, and how to satisfy that bacon craving.
It seemed that a lot of their "fake meat" options were made from vital wheat gluten, so, I went through and tallied. 56% of the recipes that include fake meat call for vital wheat gluten. The rest do not. That's still a lot but not as bad as it seemed at first glance.
The recipe layout is interesting, for example: Seitan Steak has instructions for the whole plate which includes roasted potatoes, herb butter, and seitan steak. Usually cookbooks will say "serve with roasted potatoes (found on page 6)." With this cookbook, you need to pay attention to every picture or read through each recipe in order to see all of the recipe offerings. (Though, they do deviate from this with a few recipes that picture fries, rice, or salad. Maybe because they feature those within other recipes?) If you look for "roasted potatoes" in the index, you won't find them. If you look for "potatoes" you then will see "Seitan Steak, 77-79" which might make you think that the steak has potatoes in it rather than being a separate recipe for roasted potatoes.
Also, their Margherita Pizza with Cashew Mozzarella is the most unappealing pizza I have ever seen. It's so stereo-typically vegan.
There are a couple of recipes I look forward to trying. I'll update when I do.
I’ve been vegan for 20+ years, it is so much easier today to find vegan products. I am always looking for new recipes to try, especially ones that use normal ingredients that don’t need to be found in a specialty store. I like to read cookbooks cover to cover before trying any of the recipes and this book did not disappoint. I look forward to trying many of the recipes. Some of them I will most likely combine with my own methods just because after 20 years of cooking vegan food for a family of 5, I know a thing or two.