Book Review - reFresh

♥ I love Fresh ♥

It's been one of my favourite places to eat for quite awhile. One day I was at Fresh and I impulsively bought the refresh cookbook along with my lunch and I'm so happy I did!!

Refresh contains over 100 vegetarian/vegan recipes from the restaurant. I love that I can make things (that I love to eat there) for myself at home! Fresh is great about providing ingredient lists to their customers, but seeing the exact recipe is quite insightful. On their website they have a list of foods that are gluten free and wheat free and there are many opportunities for easy substitutions within the book.

The first thing I made from this cookbook were the banana muffins (prior to my food sensitivity tests) There were really easy and quite tasty! (Joey is actually still eating them because I froze a whole bunch of them) I included some organic blueberries for a little bit of extra fruit which worked out nicely and used the batter to make 36 muffins instead of 24. I love that there is no added sugar in these muffins as their derive their sweetness from the bananas and the dates.

I made the Marrakesh Curried Stew for dinner one night and it was good, but I found that I liked it even more the next day! I added some extra raisins on top and had a wonderfully spicy and hearty stew. The recipe makes quite a large batch so I was able to freeze some for lunches and Joey said that it was still great when reheated.

My favourite recipe that I've made so far has been the marinated tofu cubes, which I've used on the Quick Protein Salad. You'll be seeing more pictures of this again this weekend in my recap as I made them earlier this week. They are AMAZING. The simple combination of (wheat free) tamari, apple cider vinegar, and some sunflower oil over the tofu is delightful. I've been quickly frying them in a little bit of sunflower oil so that they are crispy on the outside. The salad is a yummy combination of these tofu cubes with greens, cucumber, onion, sprouts, chickpeas, sunflower seeds and currants. I made the sunflower seed dressing from the book to go with this salad and I was honestly in heaven. It is my favourite salad right now.

The cookbook features some beautiful pictures and I've found the recipes very easy to follow. I haven't even cracked open the juicing and smoothie section, but once I'm armed with a better blender (ahem, Vita-Mix) I will be delving into that section. As with many cookbooks, my only issue with this book is a lack of nutritional information, but since the recipes are rather simple it is easy to put them through the recipe builder.

Rut Tal and Jennifer Houston also have another cookbook called Fresh at Home. Just like the restaurant, I'm in love with this cookbook and look forward to exploring and creating even more of the recipes.