Super Natural Simple: Whole-Food, Vegetarian Recipes for Real Life [A Cookbook]Paperback (2024)

Super Natural Simple: Whole-Food, Vegetarian Recipes for Real Life [A Cookbook]Paperback (1)

Availability:

in stock, ready to be shipped

Save 11%

  • Description
  • Product Details
  • About the Author
  • Read an Excerpt

Description

Notes From Your Bookseller

It has been years since Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day, a book that was vegetable-forward, plant-based, and all the other adjectives to describe what's popular today, hit the shelves. But back then it was not in vogue. Fast forward to Super Natural Simple, which takes her passion for vegetarian cooking with an eye towards simplicity, and you have the perfect everyday cookbook for today's health-conscious eater. Swanson remains a key voice in vegetarian cuisine.

120 whole-food, vegetarian recipes for quick weeknight meals full of flavor, spice, color, and nutrition from the New York Times bestselling author of Super Natural Cooking

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE KITCHN • “There are many reasons to love Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Simple. It’s great food with the best ingredients presented with a modern twist.”—Steve Sando, founder of Rancho Gordo

When life gets busy, it often seems easier to order in or grab something on the go than to cook at home. But this is precisely when wholesome, nutrient-packed meals are needed the most. In Super Natural Simple, beloved blogger and New York Times bestselling author Heidi Swanson offers 120 smartly streamlined recipes—with minimal ingredients, timesaving tips, and creative flavor combinations—to make healthy home cooking completely doable.

If you want approachable ways to work more vegetables onto your plate, these whole-food, vegetarian recipes, along with Heidi’s power pantry of go-to dressings, drizzles, pastes, and butters, will help you create high-impact meals with total ease. Whether you’re in the mood for a make-ahead morning, weeknight noodles, a one-bowl bake, or the best salads, dishes like French Onion Breakfast Strata, Blistered Cherry Tomato Soba, Spicy Chickpeas with Kale and Coconut, and Big Raspberry-Rye Cookies are quick to prepare and beautiful on the table.

Featuring gorgeous photographs that give you a peek into Heidi’s sunny Southern California lifestyle, Super Natural Simple makes eating (and living!) well second nature.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781984856883

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed

Publication Date: 03-23-2021

Pages: 288

Product Dimensions: 9.90(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Heidi Swanson is the New York Times bestselling author of Super Natural Cooking, Super Natural Every Day, and Near & Far, as well as a photographer, website publisher, and shop curator. She is a two-time James Beard Award winner and was named one of the 100 greatest home cooks of all time by Epicurious. She has been featured in Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Vegetarian Times, Cherry Bombe, British Journal of Photography, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and on Food52. She lives in Los Angeles.

Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

The cookbooks I love always have a strong sense of place, so if you’ll indulge me a bit, I’ll paint a picture of where this one originates. I’m writing from a small, sunny kitchen in a century-old Spanish bungalow. A bird’s-eye view places me a block from an expansive stretch of beach running a few miles in length—from a neat-as-a-pin marina to a craggy jetty at the end of a long, dancer’s leg of a peninsula. You can’t go much farther south and still be in Los Angeles County. It’s California, at volume ten.

At this moment, a glance through our south-facing windows reveals electric-red pomegranate flower blossoms and fiery banks of bougainvillea. From what I can tell, the plants here are happy, and I’m trying to get passion fruit, Arabian jasmine, kishu mandarins, makrut lime, and tiny rosella seedlings to take hold in a postage stamp–size space. There are herbs like tulsi and African basil, marjoram, yerba buena, and tangerine sage sprinkled about, and I water them with an old-fashioned metal watering can because I have yet to figure out the drip line.

I throw most of our meals together with ingredients I keep on hand. My goal is always to fix vibrant, nutrient-packed meals made primarily from whole, natural foods and I try to set up my kitchen to encourage and support that. When I open my pantry door, I see brown jasmine rice, dried mushrooms, chickpea pastas, tri-colored quinoa, fire-roasted tomatoes, and a rainbow of beans and lentils. Beyond that, seasonal vegetables set the tone for most meals, and I keep as many within eyesight as possible. This way, I’m more likely to integrate them into whatever I’m cooking.

California has enviable year-round farmers’ markets, and Los Angeles has a great climate for maintaining a garden. For both, I’m exceptionally thankful. Intense, fresh, and bright flavors are what I crave and what inspire everything I cook. But if I’m being honest, my days are fuller than ever, and this detail, this busyness, is what defines my everyday cooking style as much as anything else. The more hectic my life becomes, the simpler my cooking has to be.

Simple is more of a feeling than anything else, and it’s something I increasingly chase. A recipe that roasts for thirty minutes but only takes ten to get in the oven? Simple. Leveraging freezer items? Simple. A cake that comes together in one bowl? Yes, please. Generally speaking, balancing the idea of simple cooking while keeping things interesting is my sweet spot. I try to maintain efficiency in the kitchen without sacrificing flavor. When I’m cooking now, I’m most excited by recipes that are both succinct and special.

What you’ll find here is a collection of whole-food, vegetarian recipes, all of which have been pared down for quick weeknight cooking via short ingredients lists, make-ahead techniques, and smart methods to create high-impact meals full of flavor, color, and nutrition. These are laid-back, crowd-pleasing power recipes rooted in plants, spices, color, nutrients, and flavor—the kinds of dishes that are manageable on a weeknight.

STAY CONNECTED TO WHAT YOU EAT

In 2007, I wrote Super Natural Cooking. It was a cookbook celebrating the power of natural foods at a time when cooking with whole grains and focusing on nutrient-dense plant-based ingredients wasn’t as popular. Super Natural Cooking and its 2011 follow-up, Super Natural Every Day, highlighted a style of cooking and sourcing of ingredients that felt right to me. It made sense to eat real food and cook using mindfully grown, thoughtfully sourced ingredients. The case for vegetarianism (and veganism) was similar then to what it is now: better for the planet, better for the animals, better for our health and well-being.

In the years since, I’ve watched the coming and going of so many diet, eating, and cooking trends: Whole30, Atkins, low-carb, Paleo, Keto, turmeric-everything, warm lemon juice every morning, cupboards dedicated to smoothie powders, extensive supplement and vitamin programs, and on and on. It’s an intense and often overwhelming ecosystem, created by networked information culture, food politics, and diet wars colliding with people who are genuinely hoping to find their way to balance and good health. Unfortunately, many people end up ping-ponging from one trend and headline to the next.

When you cut through all of the claims and look at communities with the strongest longevity pockets, communities with elderly populations that experience a good quality of life well into their eighties and nineties, you find common threads. These folks tend to eat a 90 to 100 percent plant-based diet. And they build meals around greens, whole grains, beans, nuts, and tubers. So, while a lot of the information out there can be fun, inspiring, compelling, and, in many cases, helpful, finding your way to nutrient-rich, whole-food, plant-based meals is probably where you want to settle.

The trick, of course, is to identify and consistently integrate this type of cooking (and eating) into your life. My hope is that Super Natural Simple can step in here. If you are looking for approachable ways to work more vegetables and whole foods onto your plate, this book is for you. If you’re looking for ways to phase out processed ingredients, restaurant meals, and take-out in place of super natural, weeknight-friendly meals, this book will help.

Natural foods and whole ingredients are wonderful, powerful, and often very beautiful. The magic (and benefits!) of integrating them into the rhythm of your life is real. Staying connected to what you eat is one of the most impactful ways to support your health and well-being. And modern life makes it so easy to disconnect with its bounty of prepared foods, restaurants, and delis.

The point of this book is to make you want to walk into your kitchen and cook healthful, wholesome meals. Even within the demands of modern life, regularly cooking for yourself can be transformational, and these recipes are definitely doable. Cooking and eating with others is one of the daily rituals that ties us together as human beings. If cooking hasn’t previously been your thing, it’s okay! It can be an adventure of sorts and an exciting world of deliciousness to explore. Experiment with new recipes a couple of times a week and, before you know it, you will have built a repertoire of go-to dishes you’re excited about.

Show More

Super Natural Simple: Whole-Food, Vegetarian Recipes for Real Life [A Cookbook]Paperback (2024)

FAQs

What was the first vegetarian cookbook? ›

Vegetable Cookery: With an Introduction, Recommending Abstinence from Animal Food and Intoxicating Liquors is the first vegetarian cookbook, authored anonymously by Martha Brotherton (1783–1861) of Salford.

How do I make a mini cookbook? ›

How to make a recipe book with your family.
  1. Brainstorm family recipes. Think of some of your favorite recipes that you loved growing up. ...
  2. Collect the recipes from relatives. ...
  3. Curate the collection and write them up. ...
  4. Design or find a consistent format. ...
  5. Cook (and take pictures).

Are the oldest people vegetarian? ›

The vast majority of centenarians are omnitarian (eating plant and animal products). While it's probable that diet allows more people to live to be over 100 than normally would (and the ideal diet is low in meat, free from processed foods, and highly varied — but not vegan), it's NOT the primary factor in longevity.

Who was the vegetarian who became a butcher? ›

Jered Standing, 40, who owns Standing's Butchery in Los Angeles, never stopped longing for meat during the five years he was a vegetarian. He eschewed meat after working as a conventional butcher in a supermarket right out of college. “I was really turned off by what I saw,” he said.

How many recipes should be in a cookbook? ›

The standard expectation is that a cookbook should have between 70 and 100 recipes, but larger compendiums have at least 200. Think carefully about how many you want to include.

How to create a cookbook for free? ›

On myfoodbook, you can create your own free online cookbooks. You can save any recipe on myfoodbook in your cookbooks, and you can also upload your own. Customise your ebooks with your own covers, dedication and recipes today - all for free.

How much does it cost to write a cookbook? ›

In general, it can cost between $1,000 to $20,000 to self-publish a book. This price varies depending on the additional editing, book cover design, and formatting services you choose. However, because cookbooks usually incorporate visuals throughout the book, the total cost is generally higher.

Who was the first famous vegetarian? ›

The Greek philosopher and religious teacher Pythagoras (570 BCE – 495 BCE) is said to have advocated vegetarianism, but it is more likely that he only prohibited his followers from consuming certain kinds of meat. Later Pythagoreans did practice various forms of vegetarianism.

Who was the first recorded vegetarian? ›

Major religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism have recommended a vegetarian way of life since their conception. The recorded history of vegetarian nutrition started in the sixth century bc by followers of the Orphic mysteries. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras is considered the father of ethical vegetarianism.

What is the oldest cookbook in history? ›

The Truncated History of Cookbooks and Class

The first recorded cookbook is said to be four clay tablets from 1700 BC in Ancient Mesopotamia, but by the 1300s, cookbooks were a norm for kings and nobles.

What is the first cookbook in history? ›

The first recorded cookbook that is still in print today is Of Culinary Matters (originally, De Re Coquinaria), written by Apicius, in fourth century AD Rome.

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: The Hon. Margery Christiansen

Last Updated:

Views: 5510

Rating: 5 / 5 (70 voted)

Reviews: 85% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: The Hon. Margery Christiansen

Birthday: 2000-07-07

Address: 5050 Breitenberg Knoll, New Robert, MI 45409

Phone: +2556892639372

Job: Investor Mining Engineer

Hobby: Sketching, Cosplaying, Glassblowing, Genealogy, Crocheting, Archery, Skateboarding

Introduction: My name is The Hon. Margery Christiansen, I am a bright, adorable, precious, inexpensive, gorgeous, comfortable, happy person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.