Who am I?
I’m Elena, I was born in 1984 and live in NRW/Germany, somewhere between Cologne and Düsseldorf. Here I live with my small family and our 2 cats.
My vegan “career”
I haven’t eaten meat/fish since I was 16 years old. At that time, the various emerging food scandals from mad cow disease (BSE) to foot-and-mouth disease to bird flu spoiled my previously carefree and above all unreflected enjoyment of meat. Spontaneously, the decision was made to become a vegetarian. Over the years and as I grew up, the unreflected attitude of my childhood and youth changed into the conviction that I wanted to cause as little suffering for animals as possible. This was also accompanied by the realization that this would only be possible as a vegan. I also took this step relatively spontaneously and have been eating a vegan diet since 2009.
What else do I do?
As a studied fashion designer, I like to deal with everything that is beautiful and get creative myself whenever possible. Cooking and baking, as well as my (still developing) attempts at food photography, are a way to combine the beautiful with the useful and necessary in everyday life. After all, we all have to eat.
Despite my creative urge, I find cookbooks enormously helpful and inspiring in the kitchen. Besides, they just look beautiful on the shelf.
Sport is also an area that plays a major role in my life, even if it has clearly taken a back seat in recent years. Running, cycling, yoga and hopefully acro yoga should eventually find their place in my life again.
And what is this all about?
Given the abundance of vegan cookbooks on the market, I thought a collection of relevant reviews (outside the spheres of the big, evil online retailer) would be a useful thing. So here, I try to review cookbooks as objectively as I can, so that you might have a little help for your next purchase decision.
Can you trust my judgment?
Because of my longtime abstinence from all animal products, I judge dishes that mimic meat or other animal “foods” more by “tastes good to me” or “doesn’t taste good to me” than by authenticity. I now simply lack the comparison, or I have never eaten certain things / dishes the non-vegan way. The in-house co-taster does not eat an exclusively vegan diet and sometimes has a valuable second opinion here. My general attitude towards the topic of “substitute products” is that I am very open-minded about all the vegan innovations on the food market. After all, I remember too well the days when tofu and plant milk were only available (and correspondingly expensive) at the health food store. At that time, one could only dream of vegan “cheese” and “sausage” in the discount store. Nevertheless, I prefer to cook myself and with fresh, and unprocessed ingredients whenever possible.
Are there also vegan foods that I don’t like?
In the broad field of plant-based and animal-free nutrition, I consider myself an omnivore, but of course everyone has their likes and dislikes. So recipes with celery, raisins, or dill will have a hard time to please my tastebuds, while everything with coconut, eggplant or cilantro knocks down open doors. You will hardly ever see fried food here as well, because my open kitchen without an extractor fan is unsuitable for it. Currently, alcohol is not on my menu either, but when certain phases of life are completed, I look forward to integrating it again as well. So much for my personal eating habits.
My rating system:
My 10-star rating system is based on 10 factors, each with 10 points. The average results in the star rating. Some factors are unaffected by my personal taste, such as value for money, where I award points depending on the price per recipe (whereby a distinction is made between hardcover and paperback). Or the question whether there are photos for every dish. But most criteria are inherently subjective, although I try to be objective when it comes to the taste of the tested dishes or the quality of the food styling. I rate the layout for clarity, but also for aesthetic reasons. I rate the recipes not only for their taste, but also for their originality and the very personal factor of the cooking incentive. Furthermore, I evaluate whether the cookbook does justice to its topic or its target group, depending on the orientation of the respective work. I also award points for additional information, which is often very useful. The bandwidth ranges from nutritional information to cooking time information, but also information such as “gluten-free”, “nut-free” etc. Of course, a book does not have to contain every additional piece of information in order to receive the full number of points, but a reasonable amount of information, historical background, ideas for modifications etc….
Any questions?
If you want to know more about me, write me at Elena(at)Vegan-Cookbooks.Reviews and feel free to follow @Vegan_Cookbooks.Reviews on Instagram.