Customer Reviews

The Natural Lunchbox: Vegetarian Meals for School, Work, and Home

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4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"The Natural Lunchbox" is a somewhat deceptive title for this book. The recipes are very "natural"; no eggs, no dairy, no refined sugar, lots of soy and sea vegetables. However, most of them would not go in a "lunchbox" especially well. The book contains the standard mix of recipes, including birthday party and brunch sections.

In any case, the recipes look pretty tasty. Each recipe comes with a nutrional analysis and the book is full of nutrional facts and food quotes. Brown has some very creative ideas for getting kids to eat healthy foods, including lunches.

The recipes are uninspired (do you really need a recipe for adding things to canned baked beans?), only vaguely lunch-y (and what do I do with 9 servings of lasagna for "lunch"?), and too large when lunch-oriented (I don't need 4 sandwiches, I need 1 or 2). Ingredients can be remarkably vague ("marinated seitan"--marinated in what? will any marinated seitan do or should I be looking for something a bit more specific?).

It looks rather like someone had a passable vegetarian cookbook and decided to try to make it fit into a lunchbox. Sadly, it's not a great vegetarian cookbook to begin with and the lunch theme falls apart very quickly.

Neat little cook book. So many wonderful fresh, and easy to prepare lunch ideas. Small portions for just yourself or two. The author really covers a large variety of various types of dish, patties, sauces, etc. If your looking for quick and easy this is a good place to begin.