Vegetarian Step-by-step - Book Review

I've mentioned before that I'm trying to find crafts that I can involve my son in at the tender age of 2.5yrs. We have recently started growing our own veg, and planting seeds but on a drizzly day we do love to cook (and eat) so when Parragon Books offered to send me Vegetarian Step-by-Step recipe book to review I replied "yes, please".

In fact when I saw the book I said "yes, yes, yes, finally!"

This was no ordinary recipe book

It's the best child cook along recipe book I've ever seen (and no Parragon haven't asked me to say this!) and its actually not a children's recipe book.

So what's so special?

The layout of Vegetarian Step-by-step is heavily pictorial. Whilst the steps are written out like a normal recipe book there is a photo of each stage as well. This was pure genius for cooking with little ones as you can discuss the pictures together and follow them.

The recipes aren't particularly simple, but the pictures meant that me and my 2.5yr old helper made the asparagus and egg pastries with no trauma, and he was confident to get involved as we could just look at the picture together to complete the next step

• There was no need for me to practically memorise the recipe before we started so I knew exactly what was coming next - because I could quickly look at the pictures
• There was no concern as to whether we were doing the stage correctly - because we could look at the recipe in pictures
• There was no reading the same instructions 3 times because you've lost your place in the recipe - because we knew which picture we are working on

Checking against the picture we've got all the ingredients ready

Pricking the pastry

Snapping the asparagus - tough work

Ready for the oven

I was left thinking

why aren't all recipe books like this?

The food was really tasty too, all enjoyed the delicious homemade lunch

The target market for Vegetarian Step-by-step is most definitely adults, but if your child loves to cook with you this is a great option. A quick amazon search tells me there are more in the series including Tapas, Cocktails and Beginners might have put one of these on my list for Santa

I was sent Vegetarian Step-by-step by Parragon to review, no money exchanged hands. All the words in this post are my own