A Week of Meals from Love Real Food (Cookbook Review)

Welcome welcome to Fooduzzi’s “A Week of Meals from” series! This is the second post in the series (check out the first one here!), and I’m v excited you’re here!

This little series is one of my favorite things, even though I’ve only done it twice.

And that’s because it came out of a need. A need to dust off the bajillion cookbooks I currently have strewn about my room. A need to get out of our dinner rut. A need to actually cook the recipes I find in cookbooks.

In this “A Week of Meals from” series, I find a cookbook, I cook a few different recipes from it throughout the week, and then I review it here! On Fooduzzi!

Today’s review: Love Real Food from the vegetarian queen herself, Kathryne Taylor from the wonderful blog, Cookie + Kate.

Kathryne’s blog focuses on celebrating whole foods. In fact! This is on her About page:

This blog is all about celebrating good food—real, sustainable food that delights the senses and nourishes the body.

And while she’s not one to shy away from an indulgence, I love that her focus is on food that tastes good and makes us feel good. And that’s exactly what she does in her 2017 debut cookbook, Love Real Food.

Here are the deets:

Title: Love Real Food: More Than 100 Feel-Good Vegetarian Favorites to Delight the Senses and Nourish the Body
Author: Kathryne Taylor (from Cookie + Kate)
Diet: Vegetarian
Number of Recipes: 100+
Sections/Chapters: Good Morning, Salads, Soups, Happy Hour, Let’s Feast, Sweet Treats, Extras
Recipes You’ll Wanna Make ASAP:
· Creamy Cashew Chai Lattes – pg. 28
· Thai-Style Mango Slaw – pg. 55
· Butternut Squash Chipotle Chili – pg. 83
· Avocado, Spinach, and Artichoke Dip with Toasted Pita Wedges – pg. 124
· Hibiscus Pink Lemonade – pg. 138
· German Chocolate Cake – pg. 212
Fooduzzi Rating: 4/5
Purchase: on Amazon →

So before this lil experiment, I actually had a few of the recipes from this book. And that’s because a lot of my friends are in love with it! The Greek nachos, the enchiladas, the hibiscus pink lemonade (which I remember being amazing)…maybe a few other odds and ends.

But I never ended up cooking from the book for Mark and me. Never. But that all changed a few weeks ago when I made a week of meals from Love Real Food.

Here’s what we made!

(ps. all of these photos were taken with my phone right before eating – we’re going for an “in the wild” review situation here)

Butternut Squash Chipotle Chili – pg. 83

Man oh man did I love this chili!

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen my Stories when I made this little number. It’s filling, full of veggies, and really customizable.

For example, I was a little short on the butternut squash, so I just added in some cubed sweet potato. I didn’t have a red onion, so I used a sweet one. I didn’t have a bay leaf, so I left it out.

One of the surprising ingredients in this chili is cinnamon, which really warms up the entire dish and gives it an addictive and distinctive taste.

Huge huge win, especially with extra tortilla chips on top for dipping.

Fresh Sesame Soba Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce – pg. 98

So. One thing about Mark is that he cannot stand the smell and taste of sesame oil. He hates the stuff. And in this recipe, the buckwheat noodles and veggies are tossed in it.

So I left it out, like a good girlfriend, but it made the entire thing lack flavor. Obviously.

Next time I’d add some more flavor to the noodles and possible add some crushed peanuts inside of the rolls for some crunch.

I just really love making spring rolls at home because they’re simple and just like…really fun. And so different!

Avocado, Spinach, and Artichoke Dip with Toasted Pita Wedges – pg. 124

OKAY. We need to talk about this dip.

It. Was. So. Good.

Looking at the ingredient list, I was like, “K. This will be fine.” Oh no. Kathryne, you know your dips, girl.

It’s just garlicky enough, just tangy enough, perfectly creamy, and way too addictive. I served mine with tortilla chips because we already had them thanks to the aforementioned chili, and it was the best.

Honestly, even better the next day.

One tiny note though: you can’t make this thinking it’s spinach artichoke dip. Because it’s not. It’s more like a guacamole with spinach and artichokes in it, and honestly I have no idea why that hasn’t been a thing before because it is GOOD.

Chickpea Tikka Masala with Green Rice – pg. 157

I’m so excited that I got to make this recipe because I love Indian food, but I have like…zero experience making it. This recipe was so simple, and the end result was pretty tasty!

I ended up skipping the cardamom because DUDE. It was so expensive at my grocery store for some reason. But even without it, the tikka masala was nicely spiced and flavorful.

It probably wasn’t my favorite recipe of the bunch, but Mark and I agreed that if we make it again, we need lots of pita to sop up the yummy sauce. Rookie mistake on my part.

Coconut Fried Rice with Edamame – pg. 182

This recipe really intrigued me. Coconut in fried rice?! Who wouldda thunk?!

It’s a super simple recipe, and great if you have some leftover rice laying around because it should be cold when you cook it (Kathryne says it’s less clumpy than freshly cooked rice).

If we’d make this again, I’d probably add some ginger and a bit more sauce, but it was a nice base upon which we could add #allthethings. And I’m not super sure about the coconut. It was different, but I personally didn’t love it in the fried rice.

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So some main takeaways from Love Real Food:

• It’s a beautiful book. The layout is just really appealing and easy to navigate.
• The pictures are beautiful, and Kathryne gets big bonus points for including pics of her dog, Cookie.
• Girl LOVES her fresh cilantro, and I do too. If you’re cilantro-adverse, mayyyybe steer clear of the recipes I made here because, with the exception of the dip, they all call for it.
• Each recipe is marked with dietary notes and adaptations. So if a recipe isn’t naturally vegan, chances are she’ll have a note at the bottom of the recipe on how you can make it vegan. I’m just so impressed by that because it means she tested the heck out of these recipes.

Kathryne is such an incredibly talented blogger/author/person, and I’m really glad I finally dove into this cookbook that I’ve had since it came out in 2017. Oy.

You’ll find lots of classic vegetarian recipes in this cookbook. So if you’re looking for ways to incorporate fresh recipes, whole foods, and real foods into your diet, as well as having a resource upon which you can adjust and tweak to your tastebuds, I say Love Real Food is a great place to start.

You can’t really argue with a perfect 5/5 rating on Amazon, now can ya?

So I’m curious: Have you cooked from Love Real Food? What’s your favorite recipe?!

Some links used in this post are affiliate links, which means if you order a product through the link, Fooduzzi makes some money (at no cost to you). All money is put directly back into making delicious plant-based yum here on the blog!