Vegan Done Real:
52 Favorite Vegan Recipes
from Ten Whole-Food Food Bloggers

A collection of favorite vegan recipes, all made without processed food. Fresh, whole and delicious, that's Vegan Done Real.

Vegan Visitors: Please know, Kitchen Parade is not a veg(etari)an website but includes many veg(etari)an recipes as part of a healthy omnivore / flexitarian diet. You might appreciate my food blog about vegetables, A Veggie Venture but please know, it is vegetables, NOT vegetarian, even though heavily vegetarian and mostly vegan, see (Note to Vegetarians).

Regular Readers: No worries, Kitchen Parade is not turning vegan, nor even advocating a vegan diet. What I do want to stand up for is fresh, seasonal healthy food -- real food, not processed food -- whatever our diet choices.

Vegan Done Real, a collection of favorite vegan recipes from whole-food bloggers.

"Oprah Winfrey, who has been on more diets than the rest of us combined, challenged her staff to 'go vegan' for a week. Intriguing, except her idea of surviving without meat and dairy -- no explanation why we should go from too much to none -- is to fill your shopping cart with fake versions of both, like meatless chicken breasts and dairyless cheese. But the goal is not universal veganism, which is pie-in-the-sky; it's health and sustainability. And we get there by preparing real food, vegan or not. (Remember: Coke, Tostitos and Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs -- yum! -- are all vegan.) The answer is not fake animal products, whose advocates argue that they're transitional to a kinder-to-animal diet. Indeed, that's good, but a real food diet is better."

Excerpt from
Is 'Eat Real Food'Unthinkable?
by Mark Bittman in the New York Times,
who famously lost weight with a
'vegan until dinner' diet,
in response to the
The One-Week Challenge
which aired on February 1, 2011.


Why Vegan Done Real?

By accident, I watched Oprah on February 1, a snow day here in St. Louis, and was horrified to watch one processed food product after another parade across the screen. What? Not a vegetable in sight!

A month later and still unable to forget the opportunity that Oprah threw away, I had to act. So I asked some of my food-blogging friends for help and we put together this collection of our 52 favorite vegan recipes -- a year's worth of recipes for Meatless Monday.

Only two of the bloggers are veg(etari)an, the rest are 'omnivores', that means our diets include both meat and meatless meals. What unites these bloggers is that our vegetarian and vegan recipes are based on whole food, real food, not processed food. We cook fresh, whole and delicious vegan meals with plant-based ingredients, vegetables and grains and beans, all easy to find in grocery stores.

That's Vegan Done Real.


Andrea Meyers


Bistro Katie


Cookin' Canuck


FamilyStyle Food


FatFree Vegan Kitchen


In My Own Sweet Thyme


Kalyn's Kitchen


Kitchen Parade


The Perfect Pantry


Wicked Good Dinner


Many Thanks!

Many thanks to my fellow bloggers for sharing their favorite vegan recipes!

Other food bloggers, do you believe in Vegan Done Real too? Please feel free to send me a message via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. Include links to your favorite five vegan recipes, no processed foods, please. Vegan bloggers, please send recipes that include the most accessible ingredients.






© Copyright 2011 Kitchen Parade



Alanna Kellogg
Alanna Kellogg

A Veggie Venture is home of "veggie evangelist" Alanna Kellogg and the famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables.

Comments

  1. Oprah, I hope you're reading this! What a wonderful collection of vegan recipes, the kind we'd all be happy to cook any day of the year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love this idea of eating more healthful vegan choices, something I've been trying to do myself for the past few years after reading The China Study (really a fascinating book for anyone trying to eat more plants and less meat!) And I agree with Lydia, I hope Oprah is paying attention to how it should be done.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, please. Hold the fake burgers and eat real food--plenty of good vegan choices out there made with beautiful, delicious ingredients. Great post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rhonda3/03/2011

    Oops! The 'Wicked Good Granola' by Wicked Good Dinner contains egg whites. Too bad -- I'd love to see a veganized version.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous3/03/2011

    Thanks for this great collection! You are definitely preaching to the choir over here. I have never understood the fake meat concept. Tofu is yummy and I don't want it to look or taste like shrimp/hot dogs/etc. I want it to look and taste like tofu!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous3/03/2011

    Chickpea Cakes with Cashew Curry Cream
    While it looks yummy, the recipe calls for 4 eggs. Too bad :-(

    ReplyDelete
  7. Rhonda & Anonymous ~ Thanks for pointing out the eggs in those two recipes, so sorry, I didn't check them myself when linking. I've asked the bloggers for an ingredient substitute or a substitute recipe.

    But let me ask, maybe you can help since I don't have experience with this, when a recipe does call for eggs, is there a reliable whole-food substitute?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous3/03/2011

    @ Alanna: chia, flax, pumpkin or fruit purees, tofu, mashed beans, etc. can all be used to replace eggs in a variety of recipes. It really depends on the recipe but yes, you can easily replace eggs with whole food substitutes. Once you get up to like 4 eggs it gets a bit rougher. Recipes that call for only one egg can sometimes even get away with just adding more liquid, if the egg was a binder only.

    The Ener-G powdered egg replacer is just starches and some gums, too. Not whole foods but not evil or chemically badness, IMO. Way better than eggs at any rate.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks, Anonymous, that helps much. I also got this from Susan Voisin from FatFree Vegan:

    "Ener-G is basically a combination of potato starch, tapioca starch, and leavening, so I would say that it's a somewhat processed food, but natural. Another good substitute for an egg is 1/4 cup of silken tofu, pureed. There are lots of sites with lists of vegan substitutes, such as this one from my site, that provide more ideas."

    ReplyDelete
  10. What a wonderful collection of recipes, Alanna. These recipes inspire me to continue cooking with real ingredients, for health and flavor.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks for putting this together Alanna, it's a great list. Those polenta cakes are calling to me.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous3/03/2011

    Nice list and great idea, but the inclusion of honey means they're not all vegan :(

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Anonymous ~ Thanks for pointing that out. Would you feel comfortable substituting agave for honey? I have great luck with agave.

    ReplyDelete
  14. FYI - Chickpea Cakes recipe is updated with a vegan alternative to eggs; instead use 3/4 cup pureed silken tofu. Thanks, and apologies for the oversight!

    ~Karen {FamilyStyle Food}

    ReplyDelete
  15. Thank you so much - great recipes. I am not able to access the Bistro Katie recipes, or go to it online.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So sorry for slow reply, just found 100s of comments that somehow didn’t reach me. :-( Anway so sorry again, it looks as if Bistro Katie is no longer blogging and her site has been closed down.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking a moment to write! I read each and every comment, for each and every recipe. If you have a specific question, it's nearly always answered quick-quick. But I also love hearing your reactions, your curiosity, even your concerns! When you've made a recipe, I especially love to know how it turned out, what variations you made, what you'll do differently the next time. ~ Alanna