Book Review: Power Plates by Gena Hamshaw

Gena Hamshaw, of Food52 fame, has put out another book, Power Plates: 100 Nutritionally Balanced, One-Dish Vegan Meals.  

She starts the book by talking about ingredients, followed by how to batch cook beans and grains.  There's even a bit on macronutrients if you follow that kind of thing.  The book ends with meal planning ideas.  The pages are a good weight, and there are gorgeous pictures of every recipe.  There is a lot of roast this, puree that.  Nothing complicated.  The book is divided into six sections, Breakfast, Salads, Soups, Bowls, Skillets and Stovetop and Bakes.  She gives the same advice I give everyone, try a recipe as it was originally intended, onwards from there, make it your own by modifying ingredients to suit your taste.

There's a misconception that vegan food is not only expensive but time-consuming to make.  This book helps to disprove that idea.  All the recipes are easy to make and uses ingredients that I have in my pantry.  Albeit, not everyone has bulgur wheat or miso, but I didn't see anything I couldn't find at a local market or on Amazon.  I do like that none (well, none that I saw) of these recipes relied on faux meats or commercially-made vegan products.  It's all veggies, fruits, beans, and grains.

IS IT VEGAN-FRIENDLY?  Duh.  It's a vegan cookbook.  "100 Nutritionally balanced, one-dish vegan meals."  Yes, of course, it's vegan-friendly.

WOULD I BUY IT?  Yes, I'm made many recipes from Gena Hamshaw's Food52 Vegan: 60 Vegetable-Driven Recipes for Any Kitchen.  Just about everything in that book was really good, so my guess is that everything in here is equally amazing.  I would definitely buy Power Plates: 100 Nutritionally Balanced, One-Dish Vegan Meals for anyone trying to switch over to a plant-based lifestyle but is lost on what to make.

I received a free copy of this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.  There was no obligation to give a positive review, and if you read my blog, you know I'm a tell-it-like-it-is kind of girl.  I mean what I say and say what I mean, that holds true for my review.