The Weekday Vegetarians

My NY Times bestselling book series! Your real-life plan to eat less meat.

I could not be more excited to introduce you to The Weekday Vegetarians cookbook series. This one you’re looking at here is the first volume. Can you believe how happy and gorgeous she is?

Before I started writing this series, it’s not an exaggeration to say that a piece of animal protein anchored our dinner plates at least five out of seven nights a week. Back then, when I was trying to decide what to make for dinner, I’d think to myself, We have chicken, lets make some breaded cutlets or We have ground turkey, let’s make turkey chili. Even though I had known for a while that reducing our meat intake was one of the most impactful ways we could personally combat climate change, I suddenly found the conversation was getting too loud to ignore anymore, especially at my own dinner table, with my own children. Plus, I was getting older! I wanted to eat better, I wanted to do better, I wanted to feel better — about my health and about my choices.

This book is about how I challenged my family to flip the formula. What if we limited our meat intake to the weekends? What if we became Weekday Vegetarians? Honestly, when I pitched the book, I wasn’t 100% sure I could do it. So so many of the iconic recipes at my table (not to mention in my books and on my blog) were meat-based. But I’m convinced that it was the forgiving formula — five nights on, two nights off — that helped my family stay committed. In fact, it was so successful that plant-based eating started creeping into weekend meals and restaurant orders, eventually, so much so that we could legit call it a Lifestyle. Do we have a long way to go? Of course we do. But it feels good to have taken one very large step in the right direction.

I’m not going to lie: The deliciousness of the dinners we discovered along the way helped a lot, too. There are of 100 of them in the book including an entire section devoted to what I call “Hooks,” i.e. that one moment on the plate that gets everyone at the table genuinely excited about dinner. Think: A honey-crusted cornbread to serve with a three-bean chili; or spicy peanut sauce to drizzle over steamed kale or crispy tofu; or pickled onions to put on top of literally anything, especially the veggie burger which I am obsessed with and eat once a week. You shall see!!

And do I even need to say it? The food is easy! Fast! Fresh! Healthy! All the musts a weeknight cook depends on not just to survive dinner, but to love it and look forward to it, too…

The Weekday Vegetarians is available from all your favorite retailers…

Penguin Random House | Amazon | Bookshop | Barnes & Noble |
Hudson Booksellers | Books A Million | Powell’s | Target | Walmart |

And then there is Volume 2: Here is a brief list of the kind of people who might enjoy Get Simple: Busy people. Smart people. Meat-loving people (for real). People who enjoy this newsletter! 🙏🏻🙏🏻 People who look at their bagged “spring mix” salads with bottled dressing every night and think There must be more to life vegetables than this? People who have received a text from their college grad saying HELP! How do I cook for myself? People who have uttered any of the following statements out loud or silently, existentially, as they slide yet another tray of chicken thighs into the oven:

I would love to cook more vegetarian meals, but I could never convince my meat-and-potatoes family to eat them.

I would love to cook more vegetarian meals, but I don’t want to eat pasta and cheese all the time.

I would love to cook more vegetarian meals, but I’m feeding ravenous children who need protein.

I would love to cook more vegetarian meals, but I don't know how to make plant-based food actually taste good.

And especially:

I would love to cook more vegetarian meals, but it’s so complicated.

Get Simple picks up where The Weekday Vegetarians left off. If the first book gave you a real-life plan for eating less meat (without giving it up completely), Get Simpletakes it a step further, addressing the most common obstacles that prevent dinner-makers from taking the plant-based leap. Get Simple is so packed with strategies to streamline vegetarian cooking, that for a while the working title was “Shortcut City.”

And of course, Get Simple is also packed with easy, beautiful recipes, all photographed by Christine Han. These technicolor tacos take under 25 minutes to get on the table…

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Order The Weekday Vegetarians: Get Simple

Penguin Random House | Amazon | Bookshop | Barnes & Noble |
Hudson Booksellers | Books A Million | Powell’s | Target | Walmart |

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…There are chapters devoted to dinner salads, one-pot meals, soup-and-salad nights, and hearty comfort-food dishes. There are tons of quick skillet recipes that have been very hard to keep from you all these months. There is an entire section called Store-Bought Saviors, devoted to the products I turn to again and again for help with the dinner effort. (That five-ingredient pizza up there? You’ll never not pick up Boursin at the supermarket again.) There are tacos and crepes (!) and dinner-worthy sandwiches, and pizzas because I know you have a crowd to please.

I think you’re going to love it. As always, thank you for your support from the bottom of my chick-pea-loving heart.

All photo credits: Christine Han.

Order Wherever Books Are Sold!

Penguin Random House | Amazon | Bookshop | Barnes & Noble |
Hudson Booksellers | Books A Million | Powell’s | Target | Walmart |