Vegetables: A Love Story: 92 Heartwarming Recipes from the Kitchen of Sweetsugarbean

Among the Globe and Mail's Top 100 Books of 2021

In this follow-up cookbook to her Taste Canada Gold Winner All the Sweet Things, Renée Kohlman turns her attention to vegetables and gives us 92 heartwarming recipes and stories from the kitchen of Sweetsugarbean.

On Renée Kohlman's very first date with her partner Dixon, he presented her with a bundle of asparagus. She knew immediately it was love and that her next cookbook would be all about vegetables.

In 23 chapters organized by vegetable, from that auspicious Asparagus to the reliable Zucchini, Vegetables: A Love Story includes 92 delicious and easy-to-follow vegetable-forward (but not exclusively vegetarian) recipes. Soups, salads, sides, tarts, casseroles, pastas, snacks, and more are accompanied by vivid photography that celebrates both raw ingredients and finished dishes.

The book is prefaced with a recommended ingredient list for pantry, fridge, and freezer; the author's favourite kitchen tools; tips for successful cooking and vegetable storage. It also includes seven essays that tell the story of Ren and Dix's relationship and the significance of vegetables to the life they've built together, all delivered with the signature blend of humour and heart that readers of Renée's blog and newspaper columns have come to love. With a little cajoling she was even able to get Dixon to contribute some of his own insights to the pages. In Renée's own words, "it's a love story about food and a food story about love."

Renée Kohlman is the author of the Taste Canada award-winning cookbook All the Sweet Things (Touchwood Editions, 2017). She's a professional cook and baker, freelance food writer, and columnist for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. She also writes a popular food blog, Sweetsugarbean. In the summer you'll find her in the garden admiring her sweet peas and coaxing her cats down from trees; in the winter she's curled up with a book and a mug of hot chocolate. Renée lives in Saskatoon.