Please Don’t Feed the Bears: A Vegan Cookbook

May 15, 2008 | By Doug In Vegetarian Ideas |

Please Don’t Feed the Bears: A Vegan Cookbook
List Price: ?4.43
Amazon Price: ?4.43
Used Price: ?1.92
Customer Review: Super duper. Love it.
I own loads of vegan cookbooks and this is one of my favourites. This isn’t a healthfood type book, its full of vegan comfort foods and ways to make faux versions of things from scratch. The aesthetic is a messy zine style and its full of bits and pieces of drawings and random writings. Its not for the minimalist. The tone is friendly and fun. Highly recommended, there’re recipes for lots of things I’ve never seen in other books, eg. kofta balls (like delicious falafel but with shredded cabbage and cauliflower as well as gram flour). If you’re into heat you’ll enjoy the chilified hot-sauced focus, but you can always leave some of that out or cut back if you’re not so into that. Drawbacks - only things to say are its very American, so some ingredients will be hard to find in UK..but use your imagination! Also there’s no index, but that means you get to trawl through the book all the more. There’s also a boozer feel to the whole thing (hangover cures etc), so if you’re straight-edge or teetotal this might irritate you. In conclusion, buy it! It very very good.
Customer Review: AWESOME
Hands down, one of the best cookbooks ever. Excellent food, excellent suggestions for musical accompaniments.

Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style
List Price: ?16.99
Amazon Price: ?11.04
Used Price: ?8.95
Customer Review: simple, easy and delicious
If you’re bored of mashed potato or boiled carrots, this book will provide you with plenty of ideas on how to prepare vegetables in a new, original way. I have tried many lovely dishes from this book; my favourites are the carrots boiled in cream and basil (absolutely delicious), the layered potato and tomato pie, celery risotto, chard and mushroom fettucine (I’ve never liked chard very much and I loved this dish!), the orange and fennel salad, lentil soup with butternut squash and fennel, the pear, parmesan and celery salad, and many more. All ingredients are easy to find in your local shop and rely on good quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar to bring out the tatste of the vegetables rather than soaking them in tons of mayonnaise or salad dressing. I give this book 4 stars rather than 5 because there have been 2 or 3 recipes that were complete failures - such as the marinated raw courgettes, but perhaps Italian sun-drenched courgettes straight from the market taste better than ours? However, despite the occasional recipes which I found less successful, the majority have been absolute winners and I’d recommend the book to anyone who loves their vegetables.
Customer Review: A true taste of Italy
I have about 3000 cookbooks and this is in my top 10. I’m not a vegetarian but reading this, I wonder why I ever eat anything other than vegetables? Viana’s recipes were a revelation in their simplicity and vibrant flavours. The raw pasta sauces transformed my summer eating; Spaghetti alla Trapanese, where pasta with a fiery chilli tomato sauce is punctuated by shots of hot, crisp little squares of roast potato is just genius. And for the lover of Italy and how one eats there, this book is sheer poetry…’this satisfying salad is like a tableau of Italian country life. One can imagine the ingredients casually arranged on a rough-hewn kitchen table waiting to be gathered into a salad: freshly cooked garbanzo and borlotti beans in earthenware dishes: tender green beans, luscious tomatoes and a small bouquet of parsley and basil all just picked from the garden; and potatoes from the cellar, still caked with fresh soil. Outside, the sky blazes a brilliant blue and the fields are alive with vines and orchards.’ I just love that: forget it, Easyjet, I’m there already!