PPK Cook Book Challenge - Week 7 - 500 Vegan Recipes

This week's book was 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman. I am sad to say I was so busy this week, I did not give these two fab authors their due. I did manage to make 3 different recipes and I'm looking forward to trying many more. I spend many months drooling over testers' pictures and testing while this book was in the works. So I know it is going to provide me with much awesomeness.

My first selection was the Blueberry Orange Muffins. I chose this for two reasons. The first is that our orange tree is full of sweet, juicy, beautiful oranges right now. The second reason is that 3 of my girlfriends from work were coming by at 4am to make 120 breakfast burritos and they needed some awesome vegan fuel for our marathon. I didn't get a picture of the muffins, because, well, I don't find muffins particularly photogenic. The muffins were nice and light and not too sweet. There was just a hint of orange. I used frozen blueberries instead of fresh. I think they would be even better with a touch of orange zest to up the orange profile just a tad.

Next I made something that would be easy for work lunches. I love any excuse to use barley, so with those two criteria in mind, I made the Jalapeno-Lime Barley Salad. According to the book, this as the first vegan dish Joni's mom whipped up for her. It is a simple and light dish. This would be a great potluck dish for a summer outing. For my tastes it was a little on the bland side. I will probably up the jalapeno and lime next time.

Tonight I got home and realized I had only done two recipes for the week. I decided to be naughty and make dessert. I decided to make the simply lovely Coconut-Vanilla Pudding. This recipe has only a few ingredients and comes together in no time. It does require some chilling time, but active time is probably less than 10 minutes. I decided to fancy it up a bit with caramelized plantains with oranges and cinnamon. I thought the plantains would be a nice compliment to the hint of coconut. It was creamy and quite lovely. I did use vanilla hemp milk for my non-dairy milk.

Looking through the book, the recipes are well written and well organized. I love books that have a LOT of recipes. It is like when we used to get the JC Penney catalog around Christmas time. Always something to find in the pages to get you excited!!!