You are what you eat. So I guess I'm a garden.

Now that I'm gearing up to start running again I have decided to revamp my diet. While training for my first marathon I kicked my vegetarian diet out the window. I know that there are plenty of plant-based protein recipes that I could have made and used during training but for some reason my body wanted meat. Yeah kinda weird. I tried going completely vegan for a short period of time but I wasn't very confident in my cooking skills and the food didn't come out so great.

This time I going completely vegan and really giving it my all. There are some books that I want to share with you that I'm either about to use or have used for a vegan diet. The books that I've already explored I can tell you the recipes that I like and start exploring some new recipes that I haven't tried. The new book that I recently got will be a new experience and one that we can check out and review together as I try to find things that are easy and tasty to make.

Mmmm, mmmm. Betty Crocker goes vegan. This is a new book that I picked up from my local library. When I went to the library I didn't know what I was looking for and decided to just peruse the cookbook section to see if something jumped out at me. Well this book practically leapt off  the shelf and into my arms. I know that I live in a warm climate but I still eat like I did when I was a kid in Pennsylvania. I LOVE comfort foods. Soups, casseroles, stews, breads. If it can be served in a bowl with some type of carb as a side then I am one happy lady. Two recipes that I'm dying to try are the vegan meat lover's pizza casserole and the vegan bacon cheeseburger potato pie. I know, sounds like a whole lot of craziness right? That's exactly why I want to try it! My mouth couldn't stop watering when I read the ingredients.


Most of the vegan cookbooks that I have looked at or bought are good but don't have a lot of recipes that I'm really excited about cooking. My go to cookbook for a number of years has been

There are still about two or three tried and true recipes that I cook on a regular basis that my whole family loves in here. Two of our favorites are the chickpea cutlets and the spinach linguine with basil-cilantro pesto and artichokes. In fact I've made the basil-cilantro pesto sooooo much that I don't even need the book anymore. I even use the pesto sauce on pizzas rather than red sauce and my family prefers that hands down to any other pizza sauce. I've only tried a couple of other recipes in this book and while I know they are easy and everything that I've made from here turned out great thus far, I'm a little intimidated by this book. Don't ask me why I can't put my finger on it but something stops me every time I go to pick up this book. But this time I'm rolling up my sleeves and really giving more of the recipes a try.

Now if you want to take your vegan eating to a whole other level you can try this book,

I picked up this book after my wife and I went to a cooking class at our local Whole Foods. The teacher was talking about this book and a couple of people in the class had already bought it and swore by it. These recipes use no type of oil or salt and are much more wholesome than any other vegan recipes I've made. The man who wrote this book is the son of the doctor in the documentary, Forks over Knives. If you haven't seen the movie I recommend watching it, very informative and insightful about eating a plant-based diet and the benefits on your body. With that said these recipes take some time to make and since there's no salt and no oil the foods has a more bland flavor. But there's no doubt that it's healthy for you.

Are you making any changes in your diet? What changes are you making? Let's go on this healthy journey together.