by Sarah Matheny

Harlequin, $21.95, 256 pages

This book is a family photo album (mainly of the author’s girls) with many, many personal stories – some two pages long – preceding each recipe. I counted a total of 53 family photos; endearing to parents and grandparents perhaps, but of little interest to anyone else. You may read the stories once, (which take up almost one third of the book), but disregard them ever after. The recipes are standard, mainly vegan, some vegetarian, using entirely organic ingredients. The pantry list introducing the book is also standard vegan. If you already own a vegan cookbook, you are not likely to benefit from this volume on your shelf. In spite of this criticism, the recipes are well written and easy to follow, even for novice cooks.

Besides the family photos, there are also many professional photo illustrations of the final products. The photos range in size from small to full-page. Each recipe comes with a sidebar called “Pea Points” which gives the cook helpful suggestions with full nutritional information listed below each sidebar. Contents pages list every recipe in each chapter – which is a useful list to look through when trying to choose a recipe. The book is soft-cover with glossy, spill-resistant pages. The index is excellent and well cross-referenced.


Reviewed by George Erdosh,