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Reviews with images
Healthy, delicious, and beautiful!
This is a neat produce-filled vegetarian book. The idea is that the authors make all really good food choices during the week, and then relax their rules on the weekends. I’m a foodie. I didn’t pay attention to the weekday/weekend distinction when flagging recipes to try, and notice now that all but one that I flagged were in the weekday section. Nice. There’s no sacrifice on flavor in their healthy recipes. They’re strong flavorists. The aesthetics are great, too. The dishes are filled with color. The recipes are all at the easy end of the spectrum. We really enjoyed the book.Pictured below:1) Zoodle and Noodles Teriyaki Stir Fry – p 91. Nice strong garlicky, gingery flavor. Delicious. This was our favorite.2) Snow Pea and Pineapple Stir-Fry with Cauliflower Rice – p 121. Lovely sweet, tropical flavor.3) Spicy Pumpkin Chili – p 103. Really satisfying and we loved the smoky, spicy flavor.4) Creamy Mashed Cauliflower – p 131, My Favorite Brussels Sprouts – p 132, Garlic-Miso Asparagus – p 133, and Garlicky Sweet Potato Bites – p 134. They put the four of these together in the book, so I decided to do the same and make a big vegetable feast. The sweet potato almond flour bites are sweet and delicate. The miso, soy, sesame dressing on the asparagus was fantastic. And the cauliflower has a full head of roasted garlic mashed in there. Great dinner.5) Barbecue Sweet Potato Burgers – p 79. Yummy, garlicky, smoky, and sweet. Loved them.6) Steel Cut Oats with Sweet Potato and Pumpkin Seeds – p 26. This was really good, but definitely tasted nutritious.7) Twelve ideas for Infused Water – p 183. We love infused water. I was psyched to see a few ideas that I hadn’t seen before and they were keepers!8) Easy Cheesy Popcorn – p 163. Vegans have to stop putting the word Cheesy in a recipe title when they're talking about nutritional yeast. I flipped through the book, flagging recipes to try. Cheesy popcorn with nutritional yeast. That's not happening. I made several dishes on my list and they were outstanding. Then, like Charlie Brown and the football, I thought to myself, well, maybe they've got it worked out. Nope, I popped a handful in my mouth and realized I'd landed smack on my back without even pretending to make contact with that football. Nothing but a mouthful of cheese lies. It had a happy ending. I had organic cheddar powder in the pantry. That tasted just like cheesecorn. It was the weekend anyway, so it was totally within their rules.9) Vanilla Bean and Banana Affogato – p 156. This was a really refreshing pick me up.Some others I have flagged to try: Miso Granola – p 25 * Whole Wheat Pizza Crust and Topping Ideas – p 94 * Tempeh Taco Salad with Salsa and Spicy Mayo – p 104 * Stuffed Peppers with Quinoa and Black Beans – p 112 * Cheesy White Wine Risotto – p 139 * Za’atar Nuts – p 160*I received a review copy to explore and share my thoughts.
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2018
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2018
Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2017
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2019
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2018
The premise for this book is striking up a balance of healthy eating. The authors suggest a few simple rules to stick to on weekdays: eat a variety of foods, skip the refined sugar, avoid white flour and white rice, and abstain from dairy and alcohol. For the weekend you can throw out the rules and indulge in your favorite treats - which they give you plenty of recipes for.
Each section of the book begins with a note from the nutritionists. I thought this was a nice touch - 'healthy veggie life' is on the front cover - albeit the information was very basic. This didn't really seem to mesh well with the rest of the book though. Not because the recipes were unhealthy (at least in the weekday section), because the nutritionists kept going back to the importance of sourcing ingredients locally and eating a variety of colors. We really weren't given recipes that fit with those ideas.
This book is definitely not focused on local food (unless your idea of local ingredients include whatever is inside of the nearest box store), and it doesn't have to be. But it's odd that you would spend time praising the benefits of local eating, and then have seven of your first ten recipes include banana. The authors are located in Missouri and Tennessee, bananas grow a thousand miles away. Other decidedly non local ingredients they call for include: goji berries (almost all for sale in the US come from China), tofu, textured vegetable protein, refrigerated biscuits, tropical fruits, dates, and an abundance of cashews.
The nutritionists advocated for eating the rainbow. Most of the recipes in the book are tan and green. Given the front cover, and the rest of the A Beautiful Mess empire of colorfulness this really surprised me. Recipes like Lots of Broccoli Pasta Salad, Stuffed Peppers with Quinoa and Black Beans, Stacked Apple and Kale Salad (how are you supposed to cut this to eat?), Tempeh Taco Salad, Steel Cut Oats and Sunflower Seed Risotto, Brown Rice and Roasted Banana Porridge, Breakfast Stuffing, Stir Fried Cabbage with Wild Rice (only brown rice is seen in the photo), all had the same color palette. Again, there's nothing really wrong with that but it didn't fit with the book cover, or the nutritionist advice, and it was surprising from a duo known for their colorful artistic skills.
There are some good thoughts in here and the recipes are simple enough to be approachable for an inexperienced cook. It just seems like it would have been better to have gone in a different direction, maybe focusing more on the health aspect and dropping the recipe for the deep fried tube of refrigerator biscuits coated in sugar. Nutrition facts could have been given for the recipes or at least tips to up the protein or add more veggies, etc.
I have always enjoyed their quirky and colorful food aesthetic on their blog. But I don't feel like that's what this book offers.
And it was printed in China, why?
Basic recipes for beginner cooks. Falls short of the colorful aesthetic A Beautiful Mess is known for.
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2018
This book was not what I had hoped for. Looking at the cover I expected colorful and fun recipes. The first picture inside is of the sisters together in a greenhouse next to a row of cucumber plants so I thought perhaps the book would be more vegetable heavy and locally grown oriented than the avocado-blueberry-pomegranate toast on the cover lead me to suspect. The recipes fell short to me on both fronts.Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2018
The premise for this book is striking up a balance of healthy eating. The authors suggest a few simple rules to stick to on weekdays: eat a variety of foods, skip the refined sugar, avoid white flour and white rice, and abstain from dairy and alcohol. For the weekend you can throw out the rules and indulge in your favorite treats - which they give you plenty of recipes for.
Each section of the book begins with a note from the nutritionists. I thought this was a nice touch - 'healthy veggie life' is on the front cover - albeit the information was very basic. This didn't really seem to mesh well with the rest of the book though. Not because the recipes were unhealthy (at least in the weekday section), because the nutritionists kept going back to the importance of sourcing ingredients locally and eating a variety of colors. We really weren't given recipes that fit with those ideas.
This book is definitely not focused on local food (unless your idea of local ingredients include whatever is inside of the nearest box store), and it doesn't have to be. But it's odd that you would spend time praising the benefits of local eating, and then have seven of your first ten recipes include banana. The authors are located in Missouri and Tennessee, bananas grow a thousand miles away. Other decidedly non local ingredients they call for include: goji berries (almost all for sale in the US come from China), tofu, textured vegetable protein, refrigerated biscuits, tropical fruits, dates, and an abundance of cashews.
The nutritionists advocated for eating the rainbow. Most of the recipes in the book are tan and green. Given the front cover, and the rest of the A Beautiful Mess empire of colorfulness this really surprised me. Recipes like Lots of Broccoli Pasta Salad, Stuffed Peppers with Quinoa and Black Beans, Stacked Apple and Kale Salad (how are you supposed to cut this to eat?), Tempeh Taco Salad, Steel Cut Oats and Sunflower Seed Risotto, Brown Rice and Roasted Banana Porridge, Breakfast Stuffing, Stir Fried Cabbage with Wild Rice (only brown rice is seen in the photo), all had the same color palette. Again, there's nothing really wrong with that but it didn't fit with the book cover, or the nutritionist advice, and it was surprising from a duo known for their colorful artistic skills.
There are some good thoughts in here and the recipes are simple enough to be approachable for an inexperienced cook. It just seems like it would have been better to have gone in a different direction, maybe focusing more on the health aspect and dropping the recipe for the deep fried tube of refrigerator biscuits coated in sugar. Nutrition facts could have been given for the recipes or at least tips to up the protein or add more veggies, etc.
I have always enjoyed their quirky and colorful food aesthetic on their blog. But I don't feel like that's what this book offers.
And it was printed in China, why?
Images in this review
Top reviews from other countries
A. Bridget
Nothing to get excited about.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2022
A. Bridget
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2022
Images in this review
