Vegetable Kingdom facts for kids
Vegetable Kingdom: The Abundant World of Vegan Recipes, often called Vegetable Kingdom, is a cookbook from 2020 written by Bryant Terry. It got great reviews and even won an NAACP Image Award, which is a special prize for achievements by people of color. The recipes in the book are all about the amazing flavors and cooking styles from the African diaspora, which means people of African descent living around the world. A cool thing about this book is that each recipe comes with a suggested song to listen to while you cook or eat!
Cooking with a Soundtrack
Bryant Terry believes that food and music go together perfectly. For every recipe in Vegetable Kingdom, he suggests a song, calling it the recipe's "soundtrack." Imagine making stuffed peppers while listening to Cab Calloway’s "Jumpin Jive"! Or maybe you'd enjoy "Flat of the Blade" by Massive Attack while cooking dirty cauliflower. There's even a song by Solange called “Stay Flo” paired with mashed kabocha squash. Bryant grew up in a family that loved music, and he sees his song pairings as "cooking as collage," like putting different pieces together to make something new and wonderful.
Where Do the Recipes Come From?
Bryant Terry's way of cooking is inspired by hip-hop music producers. Just like a hip-hop producer takes different sounds and mixes them to create a new song, Bryant takes different flavors and ideas to create his recipes. He mixes and remixes ingredients from various cultures. All the recipes in the book are vegan, meaning they don't use any animal products like meat, dairy, or eggs. They are also full of the rich and diverse flavors from the African diaspora, bringing a taste of history and culture to your plate.
When Was the Book Released?
Vegetable Kingdom was first released on February 11, 2020. It came out as a hardcover book and an ebook, published by Penguin.
