Wholesome and Seasonal Vegan Recipe Books
Learning to cook your own food is empowering, as you no longer have to rely on expensive plastic-wrapped ready-meals and takeaways. Master your favourite cuisines at home. Then every night is restaurant night!
The First Mess is a highly-reviewed cookbook packed with wholesome recipes to eat through the seasons. What makes this book different is that it uses real locally-sourced organic ingredients to create recipes, using seasonal finds from your weekly veg box.
Read up on food safety for people and pets. Bin allium scraps (onion, leeks, garlic, shallots, chives) and tomato/citrus/rhubarb scraps (acids may harm compost creatures).
Fully remove tinned lids (or pop ring-pulls back over holes) before recycling, to avoid wildlife getting trapped.
If growing food, read our posts on pet-friendly gardens and wildlife-friendly gardens. Avoid facing indoor plants to outdoor gardens, to help stop birds flying into windows.
What Foods to Eat (and when?)
- Spring – asparagus, spinach, peas, radishes, rocket, kale
- Summer – tomatoes, sweetcorn, strawberries, courgettes, peppers
- Autumn – carrots, apples, pumpkins, parsnips, squash
- Winter – collards, squash, kale
Arguably, the best recipe books are those that use local natural and seasonal produce. Not only better for the planet with less food miles and less packaging, but the ingredients are easy to find, and more affordable.
The author is a Canadian who grew up in a family that ran organic box schemes. She trained as a chef, and also writes and photographs well. So all combined, you end up with a smashing book.
Recipes include:
- Beet & Mushroom Bolognese
- Fluffy Whole Grain Pancakes
- Hot Pink Beet Smoothie
- Broccoli Caesar with Smoky Tempeh Bits
- Vegetable Bean Pot Pies with Potato Crust
- Weeknight Root Vegetable Dal
- Burrito-stuffed Sweet Potatoes
- Romanesco Salad with Meyer Lemon Dressing
- Chilli Tofu Lime Bowls
- Roasted Aubergine & Olive Bolognese
- Earl Grey & Vanilla Bean Tiramisu
Laura Wright has been cooking and testing plant-based seasonal recipes for years. Her cooking blog is one of the most popular in the world, packed with recipes that use real affordable ingredients, and turn out well each time. Many of her readers are not vegan, she prefers to simply focus on good food to inspire, rather than be a ‘celebrity chef’.
A Year of Seasonal Recipes from Cornwall
A Year in a Cottage Garden is a lovely book by a young vegan cookbook author who is fast turning into a next-generation version of Nigella Lawson. Discover 80 simple plant-based recipes, from the heart of Cornwall.
Take a seat at Maddie’s table, as she cooks delicious meals in her cosy cottage, and step inside her world as she tends to her vegetable patch, strolls along the stunning shore to take in the sea air, and hosts supper in her home or (when the weather allows) on the beach.
Recipes include:
- Homemade Crumpets
- Warm Butter Bean, New Potato & Tomato Salad
- Black Bean Burgers with Summer Hot Sauce
- Roasted Butternut Squash & Sausage Gnocchi
- Mushroom and Lentil Pie
- Roasted Parsnip, Rosemary & White Bean Soup
- Tear and Share ‘cheesy’ Bread
- Pear Upside Down Cake
- Homemade Apple Crumble
- Lemon and Elderflower Cake
Madeleine Olivia is a full-time content creator, who writes lovely vegan cookbooks. She lives with husband in a beautiful renovated cottage in Cornwall. Find more recipes (and home makeover tips) at her lovely website!
The Seasonal Vegan (a simple tasty affordable cookbook)
The Seasonal Vegan is a book of simple affordable recipes that make use of local seasonal produce. Each recipe is geared to seasonal crops, with year-round menus. Illustrated with beautiful colour images, these recipes let you enjoy wholesome affordable meals.
Each of the 70 recipes in this book (by a Welsh-speaking veggie cook and writer) focuses on fresh local product). The 70 recipes include:
- Pancakes with Blueberry Compote
- Potato Salad with Watercress Pesto
- Summer Berry & Coconut Milk Ice Lollies
Grow, Store and Cook Vegan Food
If you like growing and eating your own food, read The Vegan Cook & Gardener. This book is co-written by a father and daughter (he’s a gardener, she’s a chef).
This is affordable feel-good food, if you don’t want anything too fancy. Find recipes for soups, mains and cakes (carrot or strawberry chocolate).
At once scholarly and entertaining, the book is gloriously illustrated, and the recipes are easy-peasy to follow. Joanna Lumley
Piers Warren and Ella Bee Glendining are experienced vegan cooks. He is a conservationist, permaculture expert and wildlife filmmaker who wrote How to Store Your Garden Produce.
Ella Bee is a passionate advocate for animal welfare, who recently received huge accolades for directing the film Is There Anybody Out There?‘, where she tries to find others with the same rare disability as her.
Dreena’s Kind Kitchen (100 wholefood plant-based recipes)
Dreena’s Kind Kitchen is a nice book by one of our favourite cookbook authors, who always uses fresh wholefood ingredients and uses a little oil and maple syrup (she’s Canadian!) with recipes that will appeal to most tastebuds. This book offers 100 easy-to-make and delicious recipes.
This is a book you will use, whether you want a quick weeknight supper or a dish for a special occasion. From breakfasts to small bites to dinner and dessert, enjoy recipes for:
- Light Fluffy Breakfast Pancakes
- Lemon Poppyseed Muffins
- Potato Cauliflower Scramble
- Seasoned Potato Squashers
- A-Game Chilli
- White Bean Corn Chowder
- Beyond Beet Burgers
- Fiesta Taco Filling
- Smoky Caesar Salad
- Lentil Sweet Potato Meatloaf
- Holiday Dinner Torte
There’s also a troubleshooting section to boost your kitchen skills, with tips on techniques, time-saving skills and suggestions for re-purposing leftovers into delicious new dishes.
Dreena Burton is a self-taught cook and one of North America’s most popular vegan cookbook authors, whose recipes are also recommended by health professionals, due to always using real wholefoods over fake anything.
A mother of three children (who she and her husband have raised vegan), she is author of several best-selling recipe books.
Michael Pollan’s 64 Food Rules (empower yourself!)
Food Rules is a great little book (it costs a fiver) that is ideal to take with you to the grocery store, or just read and enjoy, to learn what to eat. In a nutshell, Michael has condensed all the wisdom of good nutrition, into a book of rules that you can use, to empower your eating and health.
Whatever your diet, this book has your back. If you follow these rules, combined with some exercise (and an optional sustainable vegan supplement to cover any bases), you should enjoy pretty good health.
Good nutrition is not just about avoiding sweets at the checkout. Michael gives you the knowledge you need that you likely already knew – supermarkets don’t really care about your health, they care about profit. He gives a few indicators that you can try looking for yourself:
When we watch TV, our brains go into ‘alpha mode’ (a bit like meditation). Surveys have asked people in supermarkets why they have certain brands in their trolleys, and many have no idea! They have been under hypnosis the night before!
Think about which foods the big supermarkets advertised last time you saw an ad. Were they advertising special offers on organic broccoli? Not likely.
Bit supermarkets have no clocks or supermarkets, so you lose track of time. They are also designed to make you stressed, so you buy more to eat more. Think of Co-op supermarkets, that blast loud music (which could cause pain for older customers with hearing loss). Same reason why McDonald’s is bright red and yellow.
And here’s the biggie. If a big supermarket cared about your health, it would have aisles and aisles of fresh produce, chilled cabinets of healthy fridge goods, and a few processed items. But every one follows the same design:
A couple of aisles of fruits and veggies (mostly not organic). Then perhaps a ‘free-from aisle’ and a small fridge and some part-baked bread in what the Real Bread Campaign calls ‘tanning salons for bread!’
The rest is all processed food and alcohol. Aisles and aisles of beer, wine and cider – then more aisles of processed foods – plastic-wrapped breads and rolls, processed cereals, canned foods and aisles of sweets, chocolate and non-food items.
And as Michael so correctly points out; the special offers are always on the high-profit processed foods at eye-level (Frosties in your face with offers, lowly porridge oats with no offers on the bottom shelf).
And daily staples (like bread and milk) are never near the door. They are always at the far end of the supermarket, to ensure that you pass lots of other foods you don’t want or need, before you get to the checkout. Take a look next time – he’s right.
A Few of Michael’s 64 Food Rules
Most people can’t afford to shop in swanky farm shops, and many people have no access to good indie health shops (most sell supplements over food these days). So in most cases, you’ll be shopping in the big supermarkets. If so, you can still eat healthy, just follow Michael’s rules!
This en-masse would have a knock-on effect. Could you imagine if we all did this? Supermarkets would have to change their ways, and offer customers what they want: good, natural and healthy foods, and more plant-based options than now.
- Avoid food products that contain high fructose corn syrup.
- Don’t eat breakfast cereals, that change the colour of the milk!
- If it comes from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t!
- Don’t get your fuel, from the same place that your car does.
- Avoid food products claiming to be ‘low-fat’ or ‘non-fat’.
- Pay more, eat less.
- Serve a proper portion (and don’t go back for seconds).
- Don’t eat foods with ingredients your grandmother wouldn’t know.
