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Vive le Vegan! Simple, Delectable Recipes For the Everyday Vegan Family
Foreword
by Erik Marcus
I’m pretty sure that Edvard Munch’s classic painting "The Scream" was inspired by a lifelong meat eater contemplating a switch to a vegan diet. Even today, as the natural food industry rides a twenty year boom with no end in sight, there’s a widespread misconception that veganism requires following a rigorously disciplined and thoroughly uninteresting diet. The most common question I’m asked when somebody learns I’m a vegan is, "Well, what do you eat?"
With the publication of Vive le Vegan!, I can now answer this question without saying a word – I can just hand over this book. Here we have page after page of delicious, easy-to-prepare recipes that even committed meat-eaters will find intriguing. After getting this cookbook, I immediately lent it to a couple non-vegetarian friends. The next day, I heard nothing but raves about how delicious their food turned out.
As a vegan cookbook, Vive le Vegan! hits the spot. None of its recipes require you to spend all day in the kitchen, nor are these recipes slapped-together affairs that anyone could have improvised. I’ll be turning to this book again and again when I have guests for dinner. There are also dozens of simpler recipes included here that I can make for myself in under an hour. My favorite so far is the Cannellini Bean Yam Hummus featured on page 60; I love how this hummus tastes on bread pulled right from my bread machine.
I especially admire how Vive le Vegan! uses healthy, whole foods ingredients to maximum effect. Eating delicious vegan food shouldn’t have to mean basing your diet on sweets, fried foods, and refined flours. This book captures the amazing flavors available in fresh produce, and drives home the point that health-conscious vegans don’t need to miss out when it comes to gourmet enjoyments.
I think you’ll be continually impressed by the quality of the recipes in this book, but there’s an entirely other level of significance to Vive le Vegan! I’ve spent many years of my life looking closely at the business of animal agriculture. In my books, I’ve shown that this is an industry that depends on cruel practices in order to enhance its bottom line. While various animal welfare reforms are achievable and should certainly be sought, the easiest and most reliable way to eat a diet that is free of animal cruelty is to avoid the products of farmed animals altogether.
Many people assume that concerns over cruelty can be addressed by becoming a lacto-ovovegetarian, and buying free-range eggs and organic milk. Unfortunately, welfare standards for these foods are utterly lacking. And, just as troubling, these foods depend on slaughter every bit as much as their factory farmed counterparts. There is simply no such thing as animal agriculture without suffering and killing – the economics just don’t allow it.
Books like this play a decisive role in helping society shift toward cruelty-free eating. In our fast-food culture, people urgently need to be taught the basics of healthy and humane food preparation. This book provides an ideal entry-point into the world of vegan cooking. In these pages, Dreena proves that it doesn’t take huge amounts of culinary training to learn how to prepare delicious vegan meals. Vive le Vegan! gives you everything you need to get going, all in one fun and inviting book.
While becoming vegan is easy, it does take a little work at the beginning. It’s important to spend some time reading about nutrition so you don’t inadvertently adapt a diet that is deficient in nutrients. But the real key is to spend a bit of time every day trying new foods, and to keep at it until you’ve assembled a wealth of dining options that you enjoy. I remember my first few weeks as a vegan, and how exciting it was when I sat down at the table to sample a delicious new recipe. As I chewed I would think, "Veganism isn’t difficult at all. It’s fun!"
This book offers you that same wonderful, life-affirming experience – an experience that happens whenever great food and compassionate values intersect. Healthy, delicious, and humanely produced food is the foundation of a meaningful life. Vive les animaux!
Erik Marcus is the author of Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money and the publisher of Vegan.com
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