A Beautiful Mess Weekday Weekend: How to live a healthy veggie life . . . and still eat treats (Vegetarian Cookbook, Ketogenic Cookbook, Healthy Living)

I got this for my girlfriend as a christmas gift as she kept talking about how much she loves the blog that the authors write, and we have already made several dishes from it. I'll admit I am not the most adventurous when it comes to food and I have pretty unhealthy eating habits, but some of the dishes in here are incredible for being health conscious. It's easy to navigate and follow, even for someone like me who is terrible at cooking. The risotto dish is amazing. Definitely pick this one up.

After looking through this cookbook I found one recipe that I just had to try. The peach pies looked delicious. They are made with puff pastry so half the work is already done if you buy the pastry. I had to adapt the recipe slightly since fresh peaches are not always available year round. I simply used Dole 100% Juice yellow cling diced peaches in 4-4oz cups. You have to strain the peaches and then mix in the cinnamon, brown sugar and one teaspoon of bourbon - I used brandy since that was what I had and use it for baking. The only issue I had was that the recipe calls for a different puff pastry than I can get. Instead I used Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry sheets and cut them into four squares each. So the recipe made eight peach pies. I also had to bake them for 25 minutes not 20. So easy to adapt if you are willing to change the recipe slightly.Other recipes which I'll have to try later include:Spicy Pumpkin ChiliCreamy Mashed CauliflowerBest Berry CobblerCurried Egg SandwichThere are some recipes for alcoholic drinks and I skipped those since alcohol is a toxin, makes you look older and generally causes disease. But apart from that the recipes look healthy. The trick is to eat healthy most of the time and treat yourself a few days a week. If you are having a party there is even a section on the ultimate cheese plate. Want healthy brownies? - this book has a recipe that includes zucchini.Some of the ingredients may have to be ordered like vanilla beans or a seasoning called za'atar which I've never tried but it sounds good. You will have to order things like black rice, nori sheets, fig jam and spelt flour (for waffles). Otherwise the ingredients look easy to find.So a cute cookbook filled with lots of unique and inspired recipes. Enjoy!~The Rebecca ReviewI received one free cookbook for review purposes.

This is a really pretty and inspiring cookbook. I am normally not into cookbooks like this but I wanted to incorporate more healthy, colorful food into my kids diet. I am also a fan of their blog and appreciate their healthy approach to life. I am not sure if the author is solely vegetarian, but I would love for future books to include some of the recipes with ideas on adding meat. I will update as I make some of the recipes.

This cookbook is really pretty. The recipes and ingredients are not simple or for the everyday person. I agree that it should be marketed as a vegetarian cookbook- I think saying healthy veggie life instead of saying vegetarian is deceiving. I’ve done Whole30 and I think the recipes in that book are more simple and user friendly and informative than these (and have the nutrition clearly labeled). Still a pretty book to have on the shelf, but not really practical or “how to live a healthy life” like the cover says. It seems like a normal vegetarian cookbook with pretty pictures, if that’s what you’re looking for. Still love the blog and the book is beautiful.

I was interested in trying new vegetarian recipes. I’ve been a vegetarian for years, but I get so bored with cheese, carb loaded recipes. These recipes are clean-eating, easy to make. There are a variety of foods too so everyone is happy. I like the weekday challenge with more relaxed weekend approach. It doesn’t feel like you’re sacrificing during the week though!

This book was not what I had hoped for. Looking at the cover I expected colorful and fun recipes. The first picture inside is of the sisters together in a greenhouse next to a row of cucumber plants so I thought perhaps the book would be more vegetable heavy and locally grown oriented than the avocado-blueberry-pomegranate toast on the cover lead me to suspect. The recipes fell short to me on both fronts.The premise for this book is striking up a balance of healthy eating. The authors suggest a few simple rules to stick to on weekdays: eat a variety of foods, skip the refined sugar, avoid white flour and white rice, and abstain from dairy and alcohol. For the weekend you can throw out the rules and indulge in your favorite treats - which they give you plenty of recipes for.Each section of the book begins with a note from the nutritionists. I thought this was a nice touch - 'healthy veggie life' is on the front cover - albeit the information was very basic. This didn't really seem to mesh well with the rest of the book though. Not because the recipes were unhealthy (at least in the weekday section), because the nutritionists kept going back to the importance of sourcing ingredients locally and eating a variety of colors. We really weren't given recipes that fit with those ideas.This book is definitely not focused on local food (unless your idea of local ingredients include whatever is inside of the nearest box store), and it doesn't have to be. But it's odd that you would spend time praising the benefits of local eating, and then have seven of your first ten recipes include banana. The authors are located in Missouri and Tennessee, bananas grow a thousand miles away. Other decidedly non local ingredients they call for include: goji berries (almost all for sale in the US come from China), tofu, textured vegetable protein, refrigerated biscuits, tropical fruits, dates, and an abundance of cashews.The nutritionists advocated for eating the rainbow. Most of the recipes in the book are tan and green. Given the front cover, and the rest of the A Beautiful Mess empire of colorfulness this really surprised me. Recipes like Lots of Broccoli Pasta Salad, Stuffed Peppers with Quinoa and Black Beans, Stacked Apple and Kale Salad (how are you supposed to cut this to eat?), Tempeh Taco Salad, Steel Cut Oats and Sunflower Seed Risotto, Brown Rice and Roasted Banana Porridge, Breakfast Stuffing, Stir Fried Cabbage with Wild Rice (only brown rice is seen in the photo), all had the same color palette. Again, there's nothing really wrong with that but it didn't fit with the book cover, or the nutritionist advice, and it was surprising from a duo known for their colorful artistic skills.There are some good thoughts in here and the recipes are simple enough to be approachable for an inexperienced cook. It just seems like it would have been better to have gone in a different direction, maybe focusing more on the health aspect and dropping the recipe for the deep fried tube of refrigerator biscuits coated in sugar. Nutrition facts could have been given for the recipes or at least tips to up the protein or add more veggies, etc.I have always enjoyed their quirky and colorful food aesthetic on their blog. But I don't feel like that's what this book offers.And it was printed in China, why?

I found the cookbook by "A Beautiful Mess" to be rather uninspiring to be honest, the recipes are a bit bland and unexciting in my opinion although i did enjoy some of the drinks recipes.The photography in the book is ok nothing to get excited about. Sadly not my favourite cookbook, one for the charity shop.

I enjoy the weekday vs weekend types of food!

I've been a daily reader of A Beautiful Mess blog for 5+ years. I was excited to see their newest book but to be honest I was disappointed with it. The photos are not great quality. A lot of the food they styled looks sloppy as well. The recipes themselves were okay, except for when a very rare ingredient is asked...I find that annoying because it takes a lot of preparation beforehand. What I mostly disliked was that it's written by the two sisters but each recipe is written in the first person, though it's never clarified who is speaking (Elsie or Emma). I know that sounds weird, but to me it was a detail that together with the subpar image quality made me wonder if they invested enough effort and attention to detail in this.

Okay