Member Reviews
"Unicorn Food" is a bright-colored wonderland.... a creative book full of delectable plant-based drinks and food. It's obvious the author Kat Odell is passionate about creating recipes she loves and wants to share with others to make them happy and healthy. I enjoyed using this book and I'll recommend it to my vegan Facebook group as well as my non-vegan friends!
This is a gorgeous recipe book which also helps you learn about healthy foods that can help you make unicorn food. Everything included in all the recipes are natural and healthy. It allows those with specific dietary needs to participate in the current beautiful coloured food trend. It also gives you the information on natural and healthy foods you can use to colour you own recipes and food stuffs. This is perfect for those who love unicorns but not the sickly sweet and sugar intensive recipe books that have been part of this market recently.
I was expecting more everyday foods. The recipes themselves look amazing and the pictures are super. Only downside is sometimes the writing and background colours clash and make it unreadable.
Very creative! I especially enjoyed the grain bowls and wraps recipes and I can't wait to try them out! Thank you for the opportunity!
Awesome recepies, very helpful and inventive. I made two breakfasts already and I'm liking everythign - I'll update with pictures later. Recommend!
So fun! Thank you! I was dying to see what was in this book as a lover of all thing unicorn 🦄
Such fun creative ideas!
I found this cookbook to be beautiful and fun but somewhat lacking in recipes. Don't get me wrong -there are recipes but it's very heavy on drinks and snacks. If that's what you are interested in, go for this book and you absolutely will not be disappointed. . This book has me looking at my food differently now. I know the more colorful the better, but I had no idea what amazingly colorful foods were out there! Another big plus is the beginning pantry section. The author does a great job of going through the basic items that are included in the recipes and should be included in your pantry.
There are lots of books about "Unicorn food" hitting the market lately. This book stands apart from the crowd by being focused on healthier options, rather than simply making the food colorful with interesting shapes. For those who appreciate a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, this is the unicorn food book for you. For parents who want their children to eat healthier, this would be a great book to try out and it would serve as a distraction from the healthy foods with color and fun for those picky kids!
The recipes are legit and I will be trying more of them in my vegan kitchen!
I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
From the Publisher: It’s among the hottest trends in the food world today—magically colorful dishes and drinks that are as bewitchingly beautiful as they are incredibly tasty and nutritious. Now, Kat Odell—a food journalist, author (the just-published Day Drinking), and entrepreneur who started selling her popular unicorn nut milks in 2015—celebrates the unicorn food movement with a rainbow of 75 recipes.
The recipes are vegan. The ingredients are all-natural and super-nutritious, from fresh fruits and vegetables to superfoods like flax, coconut oil, spirulina, chia, and bee pollen. And the offerings are exactly the kinds of hyper-colorful, super-fun dishes that healthy-forward eaters love, including gently flavored nut milks, grain bowls loaded with vegetables, probiotic breakfast custards, toasts with slathers and spreads. This is health food as never seen before, filled with joy, and words can’t do the colors, the (all-natural) sprinkles, the whimsical decorative touches justice—the deep glowing yellow of a Frozen Turmeric Lassi, the greens of Soba Noodles with Arugula and Arugula Pesto, the intense oranges and purples of Sweet and Sour Radish Tacos, the tie-dye rainbow effect of Veggie Summer Sunset Rolls with Pineapple Kimchi, and the pastels of Chamomile Milk Tea Pudding with Fennel and Pistachios and Strawberry Pink Peppercorn Ice Cream Sticks.
Filled with dazzling full-color photographs, published in a package as special as the dishes themselves, Unicorn Food is a cookbook of real beauty, in the look, in the recipes, in the spirit of the food itself.
Joy and ever-freaking rapture! My trapper keeper carrying, hair band loving, Lisa Frank buying, side ponytail wearing inner child of the 80's, just did a squee and a backflip.
Drink and eat the Rainbow man. Preferably wearing glitter.
I seriously loved this cookbook for the simple fact that I can pretend that I am a hoity-toity chef making things with the words fennel, kimchi, and infusion at the same time as playing with my colorful food like I would play with playdough. I am absolutely and unequivocally sold on the concept. Plus, it is just a really lovely book to look through.
As far as the writing is concerned, she did a great job. It feels slightly whimsy and straightforward at the same time. I have a real issue with cookbooks that take themselves way too seriously. She doesn't. Lastly, the book inspired me to try some of these concoctions for both the chance of prancing around my house as a unicorn. (see photo below) But, also my health. I would recommend this to anyone, serious chef or novice. It is just a whole lot of fun.
I follow @unicornfoods on Instagram not because my diet is plant-based, GF, or even particularly healthy, but because this colorful food is gorgeous, creative, and looks delicious. That said, I'd love to see way more pictures in this cookbook! Maybe it feels redundant with the photos already on social media. With niche & often expensive ingredients, I don't see this as a practical cookbook, but rather a combination art/cookbook. Though the design is bright and colorful, I think the appeal of this book is the exotic (unicorn!) food.
Fun idea. Great photography (intsgrammable for sure!). In practice, the food coloring is a little jarring and the recipes themselves were nothing special
This is the better unicorn food book. This is about eating like a unicorn might instead of just using a lot of bright food dye. The recipes are “almost vegan”, colorful, and healthy. The author goes into detail in the beginning about some of the “weird” ingredients that may not be in a fast food lovers normal diet like Chia seeds, and almond milk. This is very well done, and some of the recipes, while not in my normal diet seem weird, they also seem really tasty.
UNICORN FOOD isn't just about changing the coloring of food using all natural ingredients, as many of the cookbooks with similar titles seem to be about lately. This book is a cookbook on multiple levels, and provides recipes for those just generally trying to get healthy. The author is careful not to use terms like "superfood" because they are so overused now, and I really appreciated that. As one recently placed on an anti-inflammatory diet, this book is going to be super helpful in finding creative ways to make required foods more tasty and inviting.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this cookbook given the name, but I actually am very impressed. Unicorn Food doesn't just focus on making normal food in bright colors, but actually gives a range of plant-based recipes that are creative, healthy, and visually appealing! I went through and highlighted the recipes that I wanted to try, and I'm pretty sure I highlighted 75% of the book.
Something that I really appreciated about this book is that although there were a lot of ingredients that I wasn't super familiar with and have never used before (bee pollen, psyllium husks, spirulina, etc), the author included in-depth explanations of what they are, why they're good for you, and how to use them. She also mentioned what they are substitutes for, making it really easy for you to substitute easier to find (but less healthy) ingredients if you're not into tracking down a specific type of mushroom. I think that this guidance made these new ingredients and techniques seem a lot less intimidating and more doable.
I feel like the "unicorn" aspect was not really a overwhelming or gimmicky part of the book, but rather a nod to the fact that this is a whimsical and creative celebration of food. The recipes include a lot of flavors that I know and like, but used in new combinations and novel ways. It also helps that I really like a lot of the things that the author likes to put in her food (ginger, tumeric, chia seeds, among others).
The only thing that I found a little strange was the organization of the book into drinks, brunch food, snacks and sweets, and dips. I thought these categories were a little strange, and "brunch food" in particular kind of seemed like a catch-all category for anything that was close to being a meal. It's a minor complain though, and on the whole I'm still quite excited to try some things from this book!
I received a digital copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This was a unique and very cool cookbook! There are lots of really creative ideas and ingredients that I might not have even considered before.
I'm definitely trying out some of the drinks first. I really think the cardamom-rose milk could be my new thing. Lots of nifty breakfast bowls to try too.
There are lots of great and colourful photos to help the novice (or novice to some of the ingredients) chef along too. All round great and unique book!
This book reads like a quick browse on my Instagram and Pinterest food trending list, and that is perfectly fine by me. Combining whimsical bright colors and plant themed health food for a unique collection of recipes that definitely all look tasty! One of the frustrating thing of the current trend of vibrantly colorful foods (looking at you rainbow cake) is it uses a ton of artificial food coloring, which I happen to be rather allergic to, so seeing a book that has all the color with none of the artificial stuff was refreshing. Since this book was devoted to healthy food, there were no recipes for plant based rainbow junk food, but that is probably for the best!!
My only complaint is that there are not enough pictures, this book is all about food and color, so I was hoping for a ton of photos of the food. Other than that I really enjoyed this book, especially chapter five which was devoted to condiments!
This was such a fun book! I truly enjoyed flipping through the pages and learning more about how all these Instagram food bloggers make their food posts so beautiful and colorful. This book contains a lot of great, healthy ideas for making your food stand out, and i can definitely say I'll be trying a few of these recipes for an upcoming party. I'm sure my guests will be blown away by the stunning colors.
4.5 magically beautiful stars to Unicorn Food! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️.5 🦄 🌈
So unicorn food is a thing?! Yes, yes it is! And my inner 80s child is thrilled to say so! So what is it? It’s food that’s beyond colorful, and as nutritious and delicious as it is visually-appealing. All of the recipes in the book Unicorn Food happen to be plant-based.
The appearance of the cookbook is stunning. It looks as if Lisa Frank has designed every page. There’s an Art Deco, bright, sometimes neon, color scheme to it. The only reason I took away half of a star is because I wished for more over-the-top, vibrant recipe photos. The ones included are absolutely enchanting.
What have I made so far and what appeals to me recipe-wise? I’ve made the Drunken Chickpea Spaghetti. If you follow my reviews, you know how I feel about chickpeas. 😉 They seem to make an appearance in every review, and I eat them almost every day! This pasta dish had a lovely red wine sauce, and we adored it! Also, the Black Honey Tahini is out-of-this-world delicious. I already am a fan of tahini, but I’d never made my own. Totally worth it and easy to do in my Vitamix. Coming soon, I’ll be making the Crispy Coconut Lime Lentils (lentils are only second to chickpeas in my world, and crispy ones?!), Oil and Vinegar Broccoli, Spiralized Zucchini with Basil, Mint, and Toasted Walnuts (any excuse to use my spiralizer!), Chamomile Milk Tea Pudding with Pistachios, and last, I simply must make the Lisa Frank Mountain Cake with brilliantly colored layers! I wish I could attach a pic of this from the book!
Overall, this is a fun, inspiring, creative cookbook with uncomplicated recipes, and an added perk is the stunning presentation of the food!
Thanks to Kat Odell, Workman Publishing, and Netgalley, for the copy to review.