Green book review - Vegan Secret Supper: Bold & Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen by Merida Anderson

A vegan dining club? Yes, it does really exists and it is run by chef Merida Anderson in Vancouver  Montreal and New York, where she proves that sophisticated dinner parties can be fun, tasty and vegan too! Don't believe it? Have a look at her book "Vegan Secret Supper", which is the green book we review this week!

Vegan Secret Supper: Bold & Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen by Merida Anderson (publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press)

What this book is about?
The art of the convivial, joyful meal shared with friends and family has evolved in recent years. The growing popularity of dinner clubs and themed potlucks attest to our desire for get-togethers at home that are out of the ordinary; also, temporary pop-ups and secret supper locales (where the address is often kept under wraps) are redefining the notion of the traditional restaurant meal. But where do vegans fit into all this fun for foodies?

Vegan Secret Supper is a collection of imaginative, delectable, animal-free recipes by chef Mérida Anderson of VSS (Vegan Secret Supper), a dining club that she has run in Vancouver, Montreal, and New York. At VSS, Mérida creates amazing vegan dishes that prove that sophisticated, spectacular dinner parties do not require the use of animal products. With her focus on menu-planning and simple, seasonal ingredients, she offers readers all the tools they need to create healthy, sumptuous meals, whether it's a dish for a potluck, a romantic dinner for two, or a celebration for twenty.

Full-color throughout, the book's recipes include split pea bisque with minted cream; smoked cauliflower on red quinoa tabouli; walnut and roasted yam croquettes with spicy balsamic beet reduction; and chocolate blackberry cashew cheesecake. As well, Mérida offers fantastic tips and insight on how to create your own vegan secret supper club at home. 

About the author: 

Mérida Anderson is a self-taught chef who became vegan at the age of sixteen. She is also a photographer, visual artist, clothing designer, and musician.

Our review:

I take vegan books with a bit of hesitation. They are either really good or really awful. This book, Vegan Secret Supper, I am very pleased to say is one of the really fantastic ones. It is sophisticated and refined. It has plates and recipes for any taste and every taste. It takes into account nutrition as well as the vegan ideology and thankfully is not just tofu and soy.

I really liked that it gives full meals, not just pieces and parts that you then have to put together on your own. Then the author goes on to give helpful plating instructions. This book offers all courses of a meal from the starter to the dessert and everything in between. The handmade ice cream recipes with instructions of ‘how-to’ without using an ice cream maker, not only work, but work well to produce a wonderful variety of ice creams. I was very pleased with the outcome.

I am happily making my way recipe by recipe and page by page through this book. The author has a way of instruction that is easy to understand and then implement. I will add that if you are looking for a quick meal, this book may not be for you. Although most can be made up rather quickly, it does take a bit more time and planning than pre-processed food.

I highly, and definitely recommend this book. Even the carnivores in my house have found enjoyment from the dishes within.

You can purchase the book on Amazon.com.

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris
Plant a tree for every book you read!

Recommended book on Kickstarter - Passion for Place: Community Reflections on the Carmel River Watershed

Kickstarter is a great place to fund interesting new products and projects, including books. Great books. So we decided we want to help spread the word on book projects we like on Kickstarter and every weekend we'll share one with you.

The first one is Passion for Place: Community Reflections on the Carmel River Watershed, a book and CD project for and by the community and serves as a prototype for people in other communities.

This project is about creativity and the possibility of cultural change, understanding what ecological integrity means, and knowing that we are a part of that integrity.

The current status of the project is as followed:

Goal: $4,000

Pledged so far: $2,920 (28 backers)

Still missing: $1,080

Days left: 28 days (until Feb 25)

Here's a description of the project:
Wherever we live, sharing stories of our connection to rivers and land connect us to each other and remind us of what is important in our lives. We are reminded of the beauty, wonder, and spirit of the natural world. Creativity, in its greatest depths of the human psyche and genetic coding, emerges from the wildness of the natural world. When we allow wildness, our own spirit, to flourish within, we can also respect and allow nature’s spirit, the wild outside, to exist.

The stories, poems, and essays in the book are organized from the headwaters and source of the Carmel River, through the valley, and out to the lagoon and ocean. In addition, a CD of natural sounds combined with excerpts from interviews of eight community members will complete the anthology, taking the reader on a virtual experience of the Carmel River Watershed.

The Foreword is written by Freeman House, author of Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species. Internationally recognized authors Terry Tempest Williams and Peter Forbes have granted use of quotes for the book. Dr. Barbara Mossberg has written the Introduction that will appear on the cover front flap.

Copies of Passion for Place will be given to local libraries, schools and public officials as well as to the writers and interviewees. I will do talks about the watershed and my paintings, read stories on my own and with other contributors to the book, have live music with readings, hold readings along the trails and river among other avenues of sharing.

Given Carmel Valley is a destination location, known around the country and world, this book will be a useful, informative, beautiful resource and anthology for people to get to know the community and land from various perspectives.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

neigh*borrow around the world (in 80 days)

Our friends and partners at neigh*borrow have a great new project - "Black and White and READ around the World".

The ideas is really great -"Around the world in 80 days" is on a Journey around the world, that started in New York City. The goal of the project is to send the book on a journey around the world using the technology and communities behind neigh*borrow and stickybits!

According to neigh*borrow, this promotion aims to do more than illustrate the fantastic technologies and communities behind stickybits, neigh*borrow, and the other organizations helping to make this possible.

Read Around The World...

• Will reinforce how the web and our online worlds can influence and enrich our offline connections and experiences.
• Will show how something can be hyperlocal and genuinely global all at the same time.
• Will help bring global awareness to important issues like re-using, recycling and literacy.

Check out the rules and how it works on their blog, check out the history and the current location of the book at stickybits and join the fun if you want to be part of this great project and help get the book around the world.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

A new book in Swedish about social entrepreneurship is going green with Eco-Libris!

We're happy to announce on a new collaboration with the Swedish publisher, Bookhouse Publishing, to plant trees for their new book with the great title “Making money and saving the world” (or in Swedish - "Tjäna pengar och rädda världen") by Erika Augustinsson and Maja Brisvall.

The new book deals with social entrepreneurship and presents examples, mainly Swedish, but also from other countries (Grameen Bank for example), and discusses the future of this form of business and it’s role in today’s economy.

It joins two other wonderful books we worked with Bookhouse Publishing on to plant trees for the printed copies - the Swedish edition of "'Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism'" by Prof. Muhammad Yunus and the Swedish edition of "Getting to Scale" by Jill Bamburg.

More than 1,000 trees will be planted with Eco-Libris in Malawi, Africa by our planting partner, RIPPLE Africa, on behalf of BookHouse Publishing to balance out this edition. Inside the book you can find Eco-Libris' logo ('one tree planted for this book') with details on our vision and operations.

The book is in Swedish, so if you're speaking (and reading) the language you can check Bookhouse publishing's website for further details at www.bookhouse.se/main/index.asp. The rest of us will wait impatiently to the English translation :)

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

Monday's green books series: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Organic Living

Today on our Monday's green books series we have another book from the Complete Idiot's Guide.

No, you don't have to be an idiot to enjoy this book - all you need is to want to learn more and to do it right, at least when it comes to organic living. What does organic living mean? the book we review today has the answers.

Our book for today is:

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Organic Living

Authors: Eliza Sarasohn and Sonia Weiss

Eliza Sarasohn is an editorial director for CE Media, oversees four eco-style city publications and websites. She is also the editor-in-chief of the online health and wellness network Lime.com. Thomas's work has appeared in Experience Life, Women's Adventure, LA Eating, Utne Reader, and other publications.

Sonia Weiss has written or co-authored 12 books in The Complete Idiot's Guide series. She is a long-time organic gardener and uses natural and organic ingredients to make many of her skin-care products.

Publisher: Alpha

Published on: February 2009

What it is about:
Wholesome tips for a healthier you. Everyone knows that we should be doing more to be good to our body— but moving toward an organic lifestyle can be overwhelming. This guide provides step-by-step information on everything from food to cleaning products to how to detoxify our bodies. It includes choosing quality natural products, exploring holistic alternatives to conventional medicine, and determining what to eat—and what not to eat.

Why you should get it:
1. It is a very useful resource even if you're already familiar with organic living and organic products. The book tries both to make some order in all the information available on this topic and to provide the reader a comprehensive review of the topic - from the history of organic movement (did you know the industrial revolution also changed the face of agriculture forever with the invention of motorized machinery and chemical fertilizers?) to organic furniture.

2. I found there great tips for greening up your life, from yummy food recipes that gives you creative ideas of how to use organic products to recipes for chemi-free lotions, shampoos and even minty toothpaste and deodorant!

3. The book helps you to better understand related definitions, many of them are quite complexed (I had no idea what solubilizers are until I found in the glossary these are substances used to dissolve other substanes in). Not only that there's a good glossary at the end of the book, but you can also find definitions throughout the book in a separate small window - very convenient and very helpful.

4. This book walks the talk and is printed on recycled paper! Way to go!


WANT TO WIN A COPY OF THIS BOOK?

All you have to do is to join our Earth Day celebration on our Facebook group. We're celebrating there Earth Day with tree planting, giveaway of green books and an effort to increase our group to 1000 members! Every day, until the end of the month, we will have a giveaway of a book of authors and publishers we work with, including a copy of 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Organic Living '!

So if you're already a member, bring along more Facebook friends to the group. If you're not a member, join in and bring other friends with you.

If you're looking for other interesting green-themed books, you are invited to check out our green books page on our website's green resources section.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

What is the most watched book trailer on 2008?

According to GalleyCat (on mediabistro.com), the most successful book trailer of the year (viewed over 30 million times on YouTube) is this amazing video (the original video was taken off YouTube so here's the closest one we found to the original):



GalleyCat reports that this is an homemade video about a nonfiction book called "A Lion Called Christian" by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall. What's even more interesting about this story is that this is an out-of print book and was according to the report the sixth most wanted out-of-print book of 2008.

So what this story is all about? here's a description of the book from its website:

The true story of a lion cub taken from his zoo-caged parents and sold in a London department store, and bought by two of the most understanding men a lion could hope to meet. Named "Christian", this remarkably gentle and intelligent lion became a British celebrity and professional model. As he reached maturity, his owners decided to give him something he was never destined for: freedom to live as a wild lion in Africa. A chance meeting with "Born Free" stars Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna led to an appeal to George Adamson to take Christian and teach him how to be a wild lion.

And it looks like the interest generated by this book trailer actually helped to get this book back to the print! I read on the book's website that the book will be reprinted in an expanded (224 pages) version in March, 2009! You can already pre-order it on Amazon.com.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

And the winner is:

Thank you to all of our readers who took part in our giveaway of the review copy of "Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet". There were a lot of excellent suggestions for an eighth wonder and I really enjoyed the discussion.

And the winner is the reader Jennifer (JenO) that offered cloth as the eighth wonder, representing the use of reusable items instead of disposable alternatives - "There is so much waste in so many ways! I think cloth can make a big difference, if ppl would just use it! Cloth diapers, cloth napkins, cloth towels instead of paper towels, we even use the cloth wipes I made for the baby for tissues around the house." And if I may add, if this cloth is made of hemp or organic cotton that would be even greener.

Congrats to Jennifer and thank you again to all of the participants!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!

Susan's Blog: Support Your Local Indie

Eco-Libris is proud to work with independent bookstores. We see them as we see them as a viable part of local economies, supporting both community life and regional sustainability.

Another supporter of independent bookstores is the author Susan Kelly ('The Lesser Evil', 'The Great Good') , who recently wrote a great piece in her blog about a bookstore called 'Page After Page'. I enjoyed reading it and thought you will enjoy it as well. We have the pleasure to republish it again (thank you, Susan!):

Support Your Local Indie (Susan Kelly, 6/2/08)

I recently had the privilege of being the guest of honor at a book signing. There was a very small turnout, in a small store in a small town. Needless to say, I sold a small amount of books. Certainly not enough to pay for my gas there and back.

BUT I met a wonderful bookseller who will now hand sell my books. Murrie is keeping them right on the front counter. He wants to try another signing on a Saturday when he has lots of foot traffic. He's ordering copies of my second book. And his store, PAGE AFTER PAGE, is a comfortable, lovely place full of character and history.

With the small number of customers, Murrie and I had a chance to talk about the business. Not just the writing and selling of my book, but the fate of independent book shops like his. There are no B&N or Borders within an hour or so of him, but there is a college bookstore. And that store is thinking of leaving campus and moving in a block from him. They're going to form a partnership with B&N and build a three story combination coffee shop and bookstore. If the town council passes this, Murrie will go out of business as will the little cafes that share the main street with him. And why do we care?

Independent bookstores like Murrie's are the doorway to the public for authors like me. He's willing to deal with my small publisher. He's willing to do loads of advertising for a relatively unknown like me. He knows the names of his customers and what they like to read.

We all need to support guys like Murrie. He can't compete with the big guys. And those big guys aren't always so ready to support us. Stop into your local indie bookseller. Stop and see your hometown version of Murrie. Get to know him or her and they'll never forget you.

Murrie's website:
http://pageafterpagebookshop.com

Susan Kelly's website:
http://www.susankelleyauthor.com

How to live off-grid - Holiday green gift guide for book lovers: part 8

Today, stuffed with too much donuts and latkes (Hanukkah is here!), I'm happy to present you with part 8 of Eco-Libris blog's holiday green gift guide, the guide that will help you find the best green books to give as gifts this holiday season.

Today we have the pleasure to bring you a recommendation of Tracy Stokes of EcoStreet on a great new book that will take you off the grid.

Tracy is a green blogger (she co-founded EcoStreet) and an online activist who lives in suburban Surrey. She lives life to the full as a stay-at-home-mother, organic food gardener, vegetarian cook, permaculture and green living enthusiast. If you should chance to meet Tracy, you'd be amazed at how fast she can turn a conversation round to recycling.

Tracy Stoke's recommendation for this holiday's gift is:

How to Live Off-grid: Journeys Outside the System

Author: Nick Rosen

Publisher: Doubleday

Published in: 2007

What it is about: In "How to live off-grid", Nick Rosen goes into every detail of off-grid living. He provides not only the inspiration to get off the beaten track and find your own space, but also countless resources to help you do just what he suggests.

To gather the information to write this book, Nick took to the road with his wife and baby daughter in a converted care bus fuelled by vegetable oil and sun. They toured the UK meeting with off-gridders of all sorts. Yurt-dwellers, communards, utopians and rural squatters were all on Nick's path, all living happy and comfortable lives completely off-grid. Their stories are fascinating, inspiring and sometimes quite far-out. But they all have some lessons to pass on to those of us who until now have only dream about being self-sufficient.

Why it's a great gift: It's a great bit of escapism from the excesses of the holidays.

Thank you Tracy for a great recommendation! If you want to learn more on life off-grid, check out this site - http://www.off-grid.net/. You can also find there some extracts from this book.

If you choose to give your friends or family this book as a gift on the holidays, you are more than welcome to balance it out with Eco-Libris, add its sticker to the book and make it the perfect green gift for the holidays.

And just a reminder, here are the other recommendations we had so far on our guide:
Part 1 - The Man who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
Part 2 - Home Work : Handbuilt Shelter by Lloyd Kahn
Part 3 - The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
Part 4 - The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Part 5 - Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
Part 6 - The Armchair Environmentalist by Karen Christensen

Part 7 - Worldchanging - A user's guide for the 21st century by Alex Steffen (Editor), Al Gore (Foreword), Bruce Sterling (Introduction)

The whole guide can be found here - http://www.ecolibris.net/holiday_guide.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

Now you can find on our website two special offers for the holidays - holiday greeting cards and holiday certificate gifts.

The Climb to the Top

There's something thrilling about climbing trees. As a kid I couldn't get enough of swinging from the middle branches of a mulberry trees that was growing in the yard. Actually it was growing right over the asphalt communal parking lot, which proved to be an important and dangerous distinction once the mulberry decided to retaliate and slip away from underneath my feet just as I was lowering myself down from a rather tall branch. I'll save you the long story but the end of it was that the house committee decided to cut most of the branches to save other kids from similar fate, but really it was because the bats, who really liked the ripe fruit, were wreaking havoc at night all over everyone's windshields... Poor mulberry. These days, many years later, I can still see rebellious shoots growing here and there from a rather dead looking stump, every time I visit my parents' place. And that's as exciting as it gets.

Robert Macfarlane of The Guardian has much more to offer when it comes to tree climbing. In this beautifully written review piece, he lists several classics written about tree climbing and then goes on to describe a few recent additions to tree climbing literature genre. Yes, he claims it exists, with Italo Calvino as its main trunk. He also tells about his own adventures and distinctions exploring various trees from the special perspective of someone who climbs them regularly. Recommended!

So next time I'm out about exploring the woods I think I'm going to find an easy spot and let the inner boy reawaken... or is it the inner monkey? I can never tell them apart anyway :-)

Eylon @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!