Customer Reviews

PETA's Vegan College Cookbook: 275 Easy, Cheap, and Delicious Recipes to Keep You Vegan at School

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

If so then this is for you. I looked over this in the bookstore and the things that stood out to me were several pages on how to make a peanut butter and banana sandwich, how to make a vegan grilled cheese, and how to make "poor folks" cinnamon rolls (answer: white bread with margarine sugar and cinnamon). No thanks. other things in the cookbook may be more complicated (and...tastier?) but as a college student with no kitchen and only a blender to my name, I can be more creative and healthy than this on my own. also, faux meats and cheese are *expensive* for a college budget. (And get quickly lost in the dorm fridge)... better to spend on nutritional yeast which will perk up popcorn, pasta, and soups. Then again for a first-time vegan this is possibly adequate and I could be a food snob. In short, vegan food snobs, this is not the book for you. :)

This book may be worth checking out from the library or borrowing from a friend, but don't waste your money. Far too many of the recipes are anything but, e.g. microwave a Boca burger and put it on bread with condiments, put jelly and vegan cream cheese on a bagel and smoosh it together, etc. etc. Any college student is smart enough to figure most of these recipes out on his/her own without shelling out the cash. The authors claim all the ingredients are cheap but often rely on fake meats/cheeses/etc which simply aren't in a college student's everyday budget. In addition, almost all of the little blurbs before each recipe rely on very tired stereotypes about college life that try so hard to be funny and unique but fall flat and get old quick. E.g. in the breakfast section, nearly all of the recipe blurbs assume you're hungover, and in others many assume that you want to avoid studying at all costs, etc. There are a rare few recipes worth noting, but I would recommend the Student's Go Vegan Cookbook or even [...] before this.

This is another PETA hit. Well worth owning. I am lonnng past college age, but got this for some quick ideas for weekends or nights there wasn't much time to cook. It is great for this.

It does use a lot of faux meats and cheeses as you might expect. There are recipes without these though.

The recipes I've tried so far were hits - not just with myself but the family and I'm going to try to upload a photo of the peanut butter cup pie from p.87. OH MAN. You can sell this stuff by the slice an make a fortune. It's UBER GOOD!!!

If you are in college and vegan or if you just want some really, really quick and easy TASTY meals - this is the book to get. Honestly, I wish I could afford to by several hundred to hand out on our local college campus. Great food - fast and all you need is a microwave and a blender. There is no reason you can't be vegan! :)

I picked this up and spent 10 minutes going through it at Barnes & Noble to see if there were any quality, quick, cheap meal suggestions since I'm a severely overbooked grad student. Not only did I not find any recipe warranting a buy, I didn't even find a recipe worth memorizing (and that's bad since most of the recipes have 2-4 ingredients).

Since they generally require meat/dairy substitutes (which aren't cheap) I can't understand why they were so bold as to put "Cheap" in the title. Further, often the book call for pre-prepared ingredients (which also aren't cheap).

The recipes are simple to the point where I was surprised that there wasn't a recipe detailing how to pour soy milk into a glass and then drink it. Adding sloppy joe sauce to fake burger meat actually qualified as a recipe--so did pasta with marinara. (See other reviews for Boca, PB&J, and grilled cheese examples). It sort of reminds me of an elementary school assignment where I had to write directions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a person who knew absolutely nothing about knives, bread, jar opening, etc.

I'm relatively certain that the writer's put more time into creating the "trendy" recipe titles than the actual recipes themselves.

As for delicious? Well, microwaved Chic n' Strips just doesn't quite make the cut as far as I'm concerned.

Overall, I was extremely disappointed. There were two other college-oriented books alone on the shelf at the store, both of which yielded quick, healthy, and original recipes after quick scans.

If you need someone to tell you take bread and add peanut butter or fake meat/vegan cheese on it...well, then maybe this is for you. The "hot meals" are microwaved and consist mainly of prepackaged, processed foods. That stuff is expensive and already comes with instructions. If you are looking for a cheap and easy way to cook, maybe try a Sarah Kramer or Jo Stepaniak book. If you want this book, then buy lots of prepared foods, place in microwave, and heat for 2 minutes.

My girlfriend and I found this gem while browsing through vegetarian cookbooks at a local bookstore. PETA may have the ability to encourage young people to explore vegetarianism and think more critically of the meat industry, but this book serves as a testament to the ignorance of some of the folks associated with PETA.

Are the recipes simple? Sure. In fact, they're so simple I don't know why anyone would have to write a book about them. They might as well have a "recipe" for water in this book.

WATER
What you need: a cup, water.
Pour the water in the cup and voila!

Of course, even water has more nutritional value than the recipes compiled in this piece of garbage. Almost every recipe requires some kind of vegan meat, cheese, milk or egg substitute. I don't think I've ever seen a decent cookbook call for the use of a microwave either (weird). Not to mention, this thing is full of misinformation regarding the nutritional value of non-vegan foods.

If you're into buying expensive, heavily processed food products with the vegan label, tossing them in the microwave and calling it "healthy" then by all means, buy this book and enjoy. However, if you're a health conscious person who would like to take a stab at a vegetarian or cruelty-free diet, look elsewhere.

Don't take my word for it though. Do your own research and draw your own conclusions.

DISCLAIMER: it's really, really hard to write this review without gratuitous PeTA bashing; I don't like their extremism and I think most of their advice to vegetarians is in bad faith. But I'll try. Dammit, I'll try.

When I reviewed Double Take a while back, I generally gave it a pass for its reliance on premades. I can't do the same for this book. DoubleTake was targeted at more mature cooks who need to entertain or feed a family, and although it worked overall it didn't quite pull it off; with the PeTA book, the audience is completely different, largely geared towards a younger audience who may still be learning to cook; new cooks should be learning the basics and knowing how to cook healthy, not going the Sandra Lee route, especially since veg premades tend not to be much better for you than their mainstream counterparts. I honestly don't think they picked someone who actually is a serious cook to write this; the recipes are uniformly uninteresting and simplistic as well as hopelessly prefab, including things like "vegan biscuit dough", which I'm not sure I've ever seen. Honestly, it's wall-to-wall junkfood, and someone who wants to eat a *healthy* vegan diet is not going to find what they need to know in here.

College cooking is always tricky -- unless a student has his/her own apartment, kitchens are makeshift and usually limited to a microwave-refrigerator and whatever you can hide from the RA (a hotpot or an electric frypan), and some of these recipes require a rather more complete kitchen. I don't think this book is really suitable for that audience to begin with; for better choices, try Cook Food for vegan, and perhaps Bittman or the Carle sisters for general vegetarian. I don't need to tell you what I think of PeTA to tell you that this book would be barking up the wrong tree no matter who wrote it.

I do not recommend that you buy this book, unless you really are in college and are useless at cooking. The recipes are so basic, and the ingredients used are mostly pre-packaged items. All in all, very disappointing for me.

If the idea of veganism ever crossed your mind, you should definitely pick up this book. This book is great for college kids because the recipes are dorm friendly, but it is also great for anybody who wants to try a healthier alternative to eating animals.

Basically, this book will make your life easier, and you will want to shout from rooftops how much you love veganism.

I am a lazy cook, which is why I bought a copy of this book. I love the simplicity, but the two meals I made were delicious, too!

What a great idea for a cookbook, I'm getting another copy for my stepdaughter who is vegetarian and in her 2nd year of university.