Oop! I have been vegan for many years, and I assumed that's what I was getting myself into with a "plant based" cookbook.

Just a heads up it's actually more of a vegetarian cookbook. Not for me thanks.

Some of the recipes in this cookbook are wonderful, and a great way to incorporate a healthier focus on food into life in university, which can certainly be a challenge to manage! Most of the food in here is reasonably cost-effective as well, which is another really vital element in writing a cookbook for students, who are frequently struggling financially. Time is another really vital aspect of student life to think about, and a lot of these are well worth the effort put in, taking about as long to make as it takes to order takeaway. The categories were all very strong and made a lot of sense too, and so there's a lot of vegetarian delights to be found within these pages.

However, I did have some issues with the book as a whole. The title itself suggests a plant-based approach, but realistically, a lot of this cookbook is simply vegetarian. A plant-based diet usually eliminates all animal products, aside from honey. This cookbook includes too many recipes that are heavily grounded in eggs, milk, cream, and cheese to be known as purely plant-based, so a change of title may need to be considered to be fully accurate. Another issue is how much this book hammers home the unhealthiness of dining hall options- if there's one way to get young adults living alone doing something, it's usually to tell them how unhealthy it is. Some of that could have been taken out and replaced with, say, tips about finding plant-based foods at speciality supermarkets, or bargain vegetable shopping.

nice looking book... but defiantly not plant based. Its more of a vegetarian book with vegan options. Lots of cheese recipes and they have oil in them.

low stars only due to saying its plant based but not really.

Some of the recipes looked interesting, but they were either too complicated or didn't seem like something we would enjoy.

Covert art: 4.5/5 - the large avocado makes me happy
Audience: Young Adult / Adult
Theme: Cookbook, vegetarian & vegan.
Overall: 3.5

While I’m not still in college, I am a lazy vegetarian who enjoys college-esque junk foods like Mac n cheese & veggie chiken nuggies - so i thought this book would be good for me.

It starts off discussing a little-bit of nutrition & tips for going plant-based. It’s focused more on incorporating plants rather than removing animal products & that choice is left up to you. As it is geared towards a college student there are some suggestions for kitchen equipment and grocery shopping choices if said student will be cooking in the dorms.

Some of my favorite recipes included the mini quiche, tofu breakfast burrito (looks so good!), jalapeño poppers, Greek salad pita pockets, spicy sweet potato soup (there’s a whole bunch of soups that I want to try, there was a lot of great recipes in this section), chickpea tacos, garden quesadilla, seitan buffalo wings (I’ll be trying this one out this weekend) & a variety of smoothies, deserts & staples (such as dressings etc.).

This book had a good mix of classic staple foods that every one should know how to make (kale chips!) & creative choices (parsnip chips!) Some of the recipes required more effort/time than I would’ve been willing to do during my college days but I’ve always been lazy when it comes to cooking. I wouldn’t call most of the recipes fast & easy cooking, but they all looked delicious and were healthy choices.

Recipe sections included breakfast, snacks, soups, salads, sandwiches, mains, desserts, smoothies &
staples.

The book closes with useful cooking tools (i.e.) conversions which is VERY helpful to have.

Overall, I enjoyed the recipes and will be trying a bunch of them out soon!

* I received a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review *

The Plant-Based College Cookbook is filled with delicious looking vegetarian and vegan recipes. I really enjoyed leafing through this, finding recipes for things like vegan pancakes, raspberry breakfast bars and sun dried tomato risotto with spinach and pine nuts.

Apart from breakfast, lunch, main dishes and snacks, the book also contains tons and tons of recipes for wraps, salads, sandwiches and soups.

The only downside is that there are only a handfull of pictures, but the enormous amount of recipes does make up for that.

I can’t wait to try a lot of these out!

Please be aware before reading this book that it is NOT a plant-based cookbook.

Plant-based diet = a diet with NO animal products (as opposed to a vegan lifestyle, which means consuming no animal products in your diet and lifestyle, like leather and cosmetics etc.)

This book features eggs, honey, and dairy cheese often. At first, I thought it just hadn't specified vegan, but no; it features omelettes, scrambled eggs and the like.

The recipes themselves are well written and detailed. Not super simple, but some really interesting recipes. This would be a great book for a vegetarian, but it's not plant-based as it claims to be.