La Dolce Vegan!: Vegan Livin' Made Easy
by Sarah Kramer
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Book Reviews of La Dolce Vegan!: Vegan Livin' Made Easy
Book Review: A Mixed Bag
Summary: 4 Stars
Many of the recipes in this book are phenomenal. I would particularly recommend "On Golden Pond Mushroom Soup," which instantly became my husband's (and my)absolute favorite soup, though he is not even a vegetarian. I often get asked for the recipe by other non-vegetarians when I make something from this book.
Some of the recipes are less inspiring. The stir-fry and pasta dishes I have tried so far have been somewhat bland. Still, it is the first book I open when I am looking for something new to make for dinner.
Though this is irrelevant to the quality of the recipes, I find the pictures of Ms. Kramer plastered all over the book to be rather off-putting. Although I have no problem with the fact that the majority of the recipes comes from outside contributors, Ms. Kramer's diminished creative role in preparing the text only serves to give the continual self-reference the unfortunate appearance of an ego run wild.
Nonetheless, I am grateful to her for putting this book together. I would just like to see a little less of her face in the next one.
Book Review: Skip this book.
Summary: 2 Stars
As an enthusiastic fan of How it all Vegan and Garden of Vegan, I'm sorry to say I was very disappointed with this book. La Dolce Vegan is overloaded with stirfrys and other simple recipes you could pretty much figure out for yourself. There are also a lot redundant recipes for the same dish, and just silly fluff like chocolate-covered pretzels that nobody needs a cookbook to make. There may some gems in this book, but they get lost in a sea of what seems to be filler.
Also, I would have to agree that it is pretty obnoxious that there are more pictures of Sarah Kramer being cute and quirky than there are pictures of the actual food, especially since many of the recipes are credited to other people.
I was once told that a cookbook is a good purchase if you find just a handful of recipes that you enjoy enough to start making regularly, but I didn't find any such recipes with this book. I didn't even pick up any useful cooking tips. Pick up the first two books from this author if you like, but skip this one.
Book Review: Easy, Tasty & Healthy
Summary: 5 Stars
I buy a cookbook for it's recipes. So far, everything I've tried has been tasty and very easy to make. I really appreciate a cookbook that contains natural, whole foods cooking that is quick to make and tastes great. The flax bread recipe alone is worth the cost of the book to me.
As other reviewers mentioned:
There are typos. And at least one error in the index, the Tu-No recipe is nowhere to be found. So I wrote the page number in the index myself. And yes, some of the photos can get irritating with the repetition of Sarah's "Betty Boop" pursed lips. Pursed lips aside, I wish Sarah would write a fashion book, I love her style! And yes, a portion of the recipes aren't Sarah's, but are from folks who contributed them. SO WHAT?! I don't understand why other reviewers complained about that. I care about good food, not who wrote the recipe.
This is a fun book with healthy, TASTY eating. I'll be buying her other books.
Book Review: My good 'ol standby cookbook, when I'm in a hurry
Summary: 3 Stars
This is it! The good 'ol standby when you know time is of the essence and you have to have dinner fast. I would compare this to the "Betty Crocker" in the typical diet world. You know you can turn to it and find a recipe and have dinner on the table in no time. There is a great mix of recipes, but I have to admit I really love her dessert recipes the best. I have taken some cookies to friends and they have commented on how good they were and even asked for the recipe. I explained that they are from a Vegan cookbook, but they didn't care. Unfortunately there are no pictures in this book (if that is something that you must have) but it hasn't stopped me and she hasn't written all of these recipes. Many are credited to other people and not everything is original -- you can find similar things on the internet. All in all a decent book to turn to when you are in a hurry and have some general ingredients on hand.Book Review: Welcome to Veganism!
Summary: 4 Stars
This was the first book I bought when I stepped into Veganland along with two other cheaper more compact books. While it took about an hour to decide on the other two books, this one jumped out at me from the get-go and introduced me to a new world where becoming vegan wasn't all hard work and having to justify my beliefs and choices.
This book, to me, is showing that it can be fun to be vegan. The recipes were more varied than I ever realised when I was a lactovegetarian and as soon as I got home from the bookstore I sifted through the pages with post-its in hand dazzled by all the recipes I wanted to try.
So far I have tried a few of the veggie recipes and a muffin recipe and all were top-notch. I can only recommend this book as a new vegan but I highly recommend it for others like me - a new lone vegan in a see of omnivores!