YumUniverse Pantry to Plate

July 10, 2017
The second cookbook by Crosby, author of the book and blog YumUniverse, suggests ways to make healthy, plant-based cooking easier. The dairy-, meat- and gluten-free recipes she created for the book are meant to be flexible: home cooks with reasonably stocked pantries should be able to cook from the book without a trip to the grocery store (although they may have to make a trip to a specialty store for some ingredients, such as sucanat and psyllium husk). Crosby provides a helpful guide to newbie cooks on how to combine flavors, so they don’t have to feel bound by recipes. Each chapter opens with a template readers can use as a guide to create their own no-fail recipes. Crosby’s range of nutritious snacks and dishes is appealing, including banana chocolate chip breakfast cookies, gluten-free caraway swirl crackers, acorn squash fries, and warm Tuscan kale and artichoke dip. Crosby hasn’t forgotten the comfort foods of her childhood, either, and offers healthy versions, including sriracha mac made with squash-and-cashew puree, loaded nachos with a veggie nacho sauce, and strawberry-oat hand pies. Thanks to her simple, flavor-forward take on nutritious eating, Crosby’s book will appeal to both longtime vegans and vegetarians and those just diving into their first glass of almond milk.

April 15, 2017

Crosby, the plant-based diet advocate behind YumUniverse.com, wants her readers to be able to choose between a structured cooking style and a more flexible, real-time approach. To that end, she organizes this cookbook around 30 everyday food categories such as pancakes and waffles, soups, epic salads, and veggie burgers. Each pairs a master recipe template with several exemplars; for instance, you can use the vegan, egg-free "scramble" template to invent a nutritious breakfast from the vegetables and spices you have on hand, or you can prepare one of three complete recipes. Like Woman's Day magazine's Recipe Remix and Mark Bittman's Kitchen Matrix, this title can help cooks to feel more comfortable modifying and improvising variations from recipes. Expect a few hard-to-finds from the whole foods pantry, including coconut aminos and ground psyllium husk. VERDICT A fun, customizable collection of contemporary vegan and gluten-free foods.

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