annieb123
Written on Dec 17, 2019
Vegan Yack Attack's Plant-Based Meal Prep is a tutorial and recipe guide for meal-prep based on a vegan diet. Due out 7th Jan 2020 from Quarto on their Fair Winds Press imprint, it's 176 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.
There have been a lot of times when I've come home from work and literally had no plan for dinner and a not-inspiring collection of ingredients and no idea what to cook for my family (we usually wind up with takeout food in those cases). I've been familiar for ages with the concept of once-a-month-cooking and meal planning and prep, but it always seemed to take a lot more organizational skills than I honestly have. I'm sort of an extreme case of course, but I wanted to read this book and see if I could get some tips I could use to be more food prep organized.
This book is certainly organized. The first ~7% of the page content covers the introduction, definitions and concepts involved in meal prep, along with lists of very basic kitchen utensils and storage items. There are also lists of staples with quantities to have on hand for maximum efficiency.
My main interest personally in food prep is to take care of my 5 day work-week lunchtimes. I work in a hospital lab and it's just so convenient to eat at the cafeteria which is generally full of high fat, calorie dense, carbohydrate laden food with almost zero plant based options. This book contains 6 sample lunchtime meal prep menus for one which are -perfect- for my lunch-box problem.
The recipes are well illustrated and appealing. This is a huge bonus for me. Ingredient measurements are supplied in American and standard (metric) measurements. The nutritional information: fat, carbs, protein content are listed for the recipes as well as serving sizes. Extra tips or recipe alternatives are listed in sidebars with the recipes. The recipes themselves are fairly straightforward and are made with easily sourced ingredients. Many are very simple, none of them are overly complex.
This is a beautifully presented very well organized book. I would definitely recommend it to any of my friends who are looking to make their food prep even more efficient and vegan friendly. Once a week cooking can be made family friendly, and the authors have included mix-and-match recipes so that these meals can be incorporated into a family style meal environment. These would also work very well for singles or for one person (or whole family) following a plant based diet.
Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.