I’m just going to start this post by saying: I’m a big fan of Dreena Burton. For starters, I’ve been buying her books and making her recipes for years. And, I had the opportunity to meet her, and to sit with her on both the parenting panel and the privacy panel, at VVCII. And also nowadays, I help to moderate her Plant-Powered Families Facebook group, which you should totally join! So yes, I adore Dreena, and that means that this will be a 100% biased review. Ha!

Luckily my bias is irrelevant, because this is a fantastic book! Truly, this is by far my favorite of Dreena’s books, with a wide array of amazing recipes, plus a great section of tips and troubleshooting for parents who are raising vegan kiddos. It’s a valuable book, and one that I think all vegan families should own.

Waits and I have been baking out of this book (<-- that's a Periscope video of "baker Waits Rebhal", by the way) for the past few weeks. We've made most of the muffin recipes, but hadn't ventured into savory territory . . . until this past Saturday. So, since it's been so very long since we've done one, I thought it would be fun to do a full WIAW along with this review.

So here's our Saturday: all of our our eats for this rambunctious vegan 5 1/4 year old, and his busy vegan mama.

This is basically what my mornings look like . . .

On this particular Saturday morning, I sat down with Waits first thing, to thumb through Plant-Powered Families and pick out a recipe to make for dinner.

Oat milk all the way.

Waits had “butter bread” for breakfast, which is whole-grain bread with Earth Balance and raspberry jam. It’s a favorite these days.

I drank a mug of Earl Grey that’s roughly the size of my head.

And we broke out an old set of Star Wars Monopoly I’d picked up at the second hand kid’s store a few months ago. Waits is juuuust now old enough and patient enough to venture into board game land, and I am SO EXCITED about it. Because I love board games. Love them.

My breakfast: avocado toast with heirloom tomato and red onion, plus sea salt and lemon pepper. On my favorite gluten-free oat bread, which we buy in bulk in LA and keep stockpiled in our freezer. Huzzah!

After breakfast we got dressed, and I loaded Waits up in the little red wagon. It was Farmer’s Market day, and I was excited to get out into the fresh air and surround myself with beautiful veggies, vibrant flowers, happy people, street performers, and the generally delightful vibe of the Saturday Farmer’s Market.

Pictured above, you can see Waits eating a fig that we Urban Foraged in an alley behind our house.

Always gotta stop for an ounce of green goodness from my wheatgrass lady!

With a shot of fresh pressed orange juice for the kiddo.

From the market we walked up to Still, to visit Jeremy and to drop off fresh flowers for the shop.

Then it was home for lunch. We just discovered that Bill Nye the Science Guy is on Netflix streaming, so Waits watched that (it was the episode on Magnetism, I think – so cool!) while I put together our lunches. For him:

A platter of (starting in upper left) seaweed strips, wild rice with a homemade sauce (it was something I had improvised a few days earlier, similar to this but with raw carrots instead of squash), magic beans, and raw Farmer’s market veggies. With coconut water for sippin’.

And for me:

A big salad with green leaf lettuce, tomato, shredded carrots, avocado, chickpeas, green onions, and fenugreek sprouts, served with one of my all-time favorite dressings, the Green Goddess Dressing from the Choosing Raw cookbook (recipe here).

This salad was sort of amazing.

After lunch we had some quiet time, and actually, Waits even conked out for a rare afternoon nap. I got to sit down and put my feet up and watch an episode of one of my shows (current obsession: Friday Night Lights) and boy howdy, was that a lovely and unexpected little interlude.

Once the kiddo woke up, we set out to run some errands.

Oat milk for my sleepy-faced guy.

And a tall, iced green tea for me. (also, Waits took this picture! Not bad right?)

On Saturdays I like to try and hit estate sales, since I run the vintage program at Still. I’ve become quite adept at sleuthing out old, rare bar/cocktail/glassware-related treasures, and I’m actually really good at it! Who knew? But it’s so fun, and as an avid lover of all things vintage, it’s a pretty cool way for me to be able to help Jeremy build his business.

Anyway, we didn’t find anything special for the store on this day, but we did find some awesome stuff for us! A certain board game I’ve been searching for, an amazing vintage 1000-piece puzzle of the USA, and a cool little science kit (not pictured because he was playing with it in the back).

And as we were leaving the last sale, I realized that we were in the same neighborhood as my favorite local tea and spice shop.

My mother used to take me to this shop when I was Waits’s age – it’s where she would buy her bulk tea and coffee. And she would always let me get a few of the bulk candies, as a special treat.

I have such vivid memories of that. So long ago.

Bulk Earl Grey and Pu-Erh for me, and for the kid . . . Swedish Fish are vegan!

By then it was time to get back home so I could get to making dinner. We had decided on 2 recipes from Plant-Powered Families: the Sneaky Chickpea Burgers and the Home Fries.

Burger-making.

Home fries, featuring Farmer’s Market butter potatoes, and fresh rosemary straight from our garden.

Oh man, these were both SO GOOD.

Waits can be pretty picky with his burgers, but he gobbled this recipe right up. Jeremy and I both loved them too, and the patties were great on a salad for lunch the next day. These burgers will definitely go into the rotation . . . well, at least after I’ve made and tried the other burgers from the book!



All in all, a pretty perfect summer day, I’d say.

♥ ♥ ♥

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