Me and David at the table just before dinner. David cooked such an excellent feast that I'm still thinking about it. Yet the recipes he used are designed for easy home cooking by anyone who want to eat healthy with a minimum of time in the kitchen.
David Gabbe Makes the Veg World More Delicious
Do you ever look around your kitchen and feel uninspired? You want a simple, tasty meal but can’t quite get it together to cook something.
David Gabbe, a Portland-based vegan cookbook author, cooking instructor, and speaker, can help you out. I was fortunate, on a recent trip to Oregon, to savor an excellent dinner at David’s house with him and his wife, daughter, and son-in-law.
My spirited, friendly hosts offered such a variety of enticing food that it was hard to know what to eat first. I ended up with a plate crammed with a whole grain medley, tofu cubes, Mexican-themed casserole, corn bread, baked yams, and kale salad. Home made chocolate truffles rounded out dessert. I was so stuffed that one truffle was all I could manage, but my hosts downed a few more. In fact, I was informed, they eat home made chocolate truffles every day. Can I move in?
David is the only vegan I’ve met who did not have an identified reason to go animal-free. He and his wife just woke up one morning and decided to do it. Their two young children adopted the family food values. David reached out to educate the community. He immersed
David makes cooking manageable and fun for busy people who want healthy recipe ideas
himself in both the art of plant-based cooking and the science of nutrition so he could share his pleasure in vegan choices.
Now, twenty-two years into his career as a vegan author and educator, David teaches over 100 cooking classes a year in Oregon and Washington. His classes range from the general (David’s Vegan Kitchen, Grab-and_Go, Soups and Salads) to focus on specific foods and holidays (Adventures with Tofu, Gluten-Free Baking, Cheeses and Milks Vegan-Style, Thanksgiving, and many more).
Most people who take David’s classes are not vegan. They are just wanting to learn some healthier recipes and pick up some new ideas to incorporate beans, whole grains, and vegetables into their meals. Students describe David and his classes appreciatively as entertaining, delicious, fabulous, awesome, healthy, funny, and inventive.
If you are not lucky enough to live where you can take one of David’s classes, you can still have fun with his cookbooks. David’s Vegan Home Cooking, with over 250 whole foods, plant-based recipes, is his latest. The earlier books are From David’s Pure Vegetarian Kitchen, The Going Vegetarian Cookbook, and Why Do Vegetarians Eat Like That?
David’s Vegan Home Cooking wonderfully incorporates a cooking style that David describes as “quick and easy to prepare, that use a minimum of ingredients and instructions, and that use familiar ingredients that are used again and again in many other dishes.” He calls his food “A celebration of life with every bite.”
You should have an easy time finding intriguing recipes in David’s Vegan Home Cooking. If you are new to whole foods, plant-based cooking, David starts with basic information on kitchen tools, cooking techniques, and preparation of whole grains and beans.
Recipes are grouped by kind of food and how it is cooked rather than by meal. Chapters include Grains, Cereals, and Noodles; Dips, Sauces, and Condiment, From the Oven, Wraps, Patties, and Sandwiches, From the Skillet, Sweets, and more.
David has learned much from working with his students, answering their questions, and hearing their concerns. He has learned to satisfy them with simple, tasty, familiar foods. Because he is meeting students at their starting point, some of his recipes contain added oil and salt. In many recipes, you can simply leave these out if you prefer.
David's recipes incorporate appealing whole foods
I decided to give David’s Tempeh Meatloaf a try. I’d never figured out a way to cook tempeh before that I truly liked, and also was attracted to the bar-b-que sauce, which I love but rarely cook with. The loaf was tasty, satisfying, and easy to cook. It stretched as part of several meals on its own, as a sandwich filling, and cut up into salads. What to make next…it will be fun to sample these ideas made for everyday cooks who love to eat but don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen. David shows that whole foods, plant-based recipes can be varied, intriguing, yet quick and simple all at the same time.
David has shared some of his new recipes here.
If you liked this post, you may want to read Twelve Ways to Make Cooking Fun and Easy. The two posts, taken together, are a good place to get information for easy, everyday meals with healing recipes, like those shown in the film Forks over Knives.
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on whole foods, plant-based diets. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods. This easy-to-follow eating plan is built on a whole foods, plant-based diet that can prevent, and even reverse, most chronic disease. Janice is still smiling thinking about her dinner with David Gabbe and his family.
Tags: chocolate, cookbook, cooking, cooking classes Portland, David Gabbe, Forks Over Knives, getting healthy, Janice Stanger, Plant-based nutrition, Portland, tofu, vegetables, whole foods, whole foods plant-based diet
