three great meals from the Thug Kitchen cookbook

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ckAs I wrote last week, I borrowed Thug Kitchen from the library based solely on this instagram post. I made three meals directly from it and used it as inspiration for many more. The recipes are varied and for once not reliant on eggplant and mushrooms, something I find unique and welcome for a vegetable-focused cookbook. The instructions are straight forward, though geared toward those not comfortable in the kitchen and not really used to cooking whole (real) food meals. The instructions will help teach you how to get an honest feel for cooking. For example when they say use your hands to mix up something, there’s a reason. I’m at the point in my cooking experience I rolled my eyes at much of those notes and did it my way, but that is experience and because I finally acquired a spring-loaded cookie scoop that is much faster and better than rolling with my hands. There are more recipes I plan to make and I do highly recommend this book.

I made:

wedding soup with lentil bean balls


This was the first recipe I made from the book. It’s a bit more time consuming than the others, but not fussy. It’s a very hands-on dish (and the one that had me pulling out the cookie scoop). I made it for Shabbat dinner and it was very good. The flavours do meld together “wedding”. As my scoop is small next time I’ll probably halve the lentil balls as we had way more than we wanted for the soup and I snacked on them … they’re a great snack, but there were definitely more than we could use.

vegetable pad thai
I’m sorry there aren’t any images of this simple and very tasty meal. I haven’t looked how it was different from how I normally make pad thai, but it was quick to put together. I topped it with some chunky peanut butter.

pumpkin chili


A nice easy chili and more important, different from the chili’s I’ve been making in the slow cooker. It was good and I made it less spicy by just halving spices clear across the board. With canned pumpkin puree and beans it comes together very quickly.

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ckThug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck
Published 2014 by Rodale Books