I’ve been keeping something exciting under wraps, and it’s time to tell you about it!

My fifth cookbook goes on sale on April 15, 2025, and is available for preorder now.

The title says it all for this one.

A Grain, a Green, a Bean: One Simple Formula, Countless Meatless Meals.

It’s a collection of more than eighty recipes, each devoted to the iconic trio of plant-based ingredients: grains, greens, and beans. As was the case in Power Plates, each of the recipes is a complete, satisfying meal.

For me, this book has been a joyful return to my vegan roots.

There’s a type of plant-based restaurant that’s increasingly hard to find these days. For me, the archetype would be Angelica Kitchen, described by one food writer as a relic of the East Village’s hippie movement.

Angelica closed its doors in 2017, and I wrote about it in a Weekend Reading post. It’s shuttering happened to coincide with a painful, unanticipated breakup.

As I processed my own grief and shock, I also processed the loss of a certain kind of warm, wholesome eatery.

These spots were often inspired by macrobiotic cookery. Inevitably, they smelled like simmering kombu and nutty brown rice. The food was hearty, wholesome, and soul-satisfying.

I wouldn’t take friends who had never been to a vegan restaurant to a place like Angelica, lest ingredients like tempeh or burdock root be too far afield.

But for a whole generation of vegans and vegetarians, these spots felt like home.

I thought about Angelica a lot as I was writing A Grain, a Green, a Bean. I thought about Real Food Daily and Candle Cafe and Souen, too.

I remembered how these restaurants used to, and in some cases still do, have a section on the menu called “basics.”

That section would mainly comprise grains, greens, and beans. With the choice to add a good sauce, of course.

The idea of going back to basics is what has animated this particular recipe collection. The book extends well beyond grain bowls; there are pastas and sheet pan meals and casseroles and entire section of sandwiches and toast, entitled “beans and greens on bread.”

But simplicity is the book’s guiding theme. I didn’t include fun and fancy vegan meats or cheeses or newfangled products in the recipes, much as I love those innovations. I tried to focus on accessible, unfussy preparation methods.

And the book’s central formula is, I hope, a simple one. Not sure what to make for dinner? Pick a grain, a green, and a bean—whichever ones you have at home—and call it a meal.

Here’s a visual sneak peek. All images were created by the super talented Ashley McLaughlin, whom I’ve now been lucky enough to work with on three consecutive cookbooks.

As you can see, I take a pretty liberal approach to how I categorize the cookbook’s greens, beans, and grains.

“Beans” are really the whole family of pulses, so they include lentils and split peas in addition to chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, and white beans.

They also include soybeans and all the things that soybeans can become: tofu, tempeh, TVP, and soy curls.

“Grains” include cooked whole grains, like farro, barley, or millet, but also all of the wonderful things that grains and grain flours are made into: pasta, flatbread, English muffins, and ciabatta rolls.

And the “greens” aren’t only leafy greens. I momentarily thought about that—about making all of the book’s greens of the dark and leafy variety—but in the end I decided against it.

In my every day cooking, the green thing on my dinner plate might be a dark, leafy green. But it might also be broccoli, green beans, zucchini, salad greens, or even a heap of herbs.

In that spirit—the spirit of real life—the green component in A Grain, a Green, a Bean is any green vegetable or herb.

I don’t usually write cookbooks in close succession; there were nearly five years between Power Plates and The Vegan Week. But for some reason, it felt right to get to work on this one just after The Vegan Week had been published.

It could be because I spend most of my week trying to offer my clients an approach to menu planning that’s intuitive and straightforward. Shaping plenty of dinners and lunches around grains, greens, and beans is as good a strategy as any.

Maybe it’s because I myself have an increasing need for meals that are relatively simple to prepare, economical, and uncomplicated to plan.

And perhaps it’s because I’ve been trying to come home to myself in the past two years, embracing my identity and the life that I’ve created.

Veganism is part of that life. The recipes in A Grain, a Green, A Bean have taken me on a journey back to the kind of cooking that made me fall in love with being vegan in the first place. Whether you’re vegan or not, I hope they’ll get you excited about the simple, nutrient-dense plant foods that have sustained people for centuries.

I’ve always found it hard to make asks of this community, but I can’t tell you how important preorders are to the success of cookbooks. They directly impact an author’s capacity to keep writing.

So, if you feel inspired by this premise, it would mean so much to me if you’d consider preordering A Grain, a Green, a Bean.

I’m including preorder links for some major retailers below. The title will also be hitting library shelves and local, independent bookstores in April.

• Amazon
• Amazon.ca
• Barnes & Noble
• Books A Million
• Bookshop.org
• Powell’s
• Target
• Walmart

I’ll be back to the usual weekend reading format next Sunday. For today, I just want to sign off by thanking you.

Last weekend, I wrote about being inspired to serve. Books are one of the ways in which I feel that I can be of service, communicating something that I believe in. And it’s readers like you who allow me to keep doing that.

xo