Cook This: 3 nourishing recipes from Eat to Love, including zucchini Parmesan egg muffins

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Our cookbook of the week is Eat to Love by nutritional chef Mikaela Reuben.

Jump to the recipes: zucchini Parmesan egg muffins, edamame cilantro hummus and citrus olive oil cake.

Nutritional chef Mikaela Reuben has cooked for some of the world’s biggest celebrities, including Ryan Reynolds, Brie Larson and Woody Harrelson. For more than 15 years, she’s toured with rock bands, joined movie stars on location and worked with high-performance athletes. Writing her cookbook debut, Eat to Love (Appetite by Random House, 2025), Reuben realized that as skilled as she is at nourishing others, it hasn’t always been easy to do the same for herself.

As she worked on Eat to Love, the title took on different layers of meaning. It started with how food represented love in her family. Reuben’s paternal grandparents were concentration camp survivors and passed down the idea that eating together, sharing food and recipes was love.

“In the world where only the grandchildren had the grandmother’s recipes, where generations were preserved in mouthfuls, where the culture moved from person to person, that, to me, was such a beautiful story to see and to learn,” says Reuben.

“In the process of creating the book and in my time as a private chef, I had to really focus on what self-love and self-nourishment looked like for me, and feeding myself was one of those things.”

Reuben, who grew up in Victoria and divides her time between Vancouver and New York, is certified as a holistic nutritionist, sports nutritionist and raw food chef. In Eat to Love, she features more than 115 plant-forward recipes. Travelling the world with her clients, she’s accustomed to cooking on the fly and adapting to the situation — an approach that extends to the book.

“Being able to work with what you have became a metaphor for my life and a metaphor for how we made the book. Really, truly, make the recipes work for you,” says Reuben. Realizing that some cooks prefer clear direction, “I tried to make precise guides for those who need that guidance. Then, go rogue.”

Reuben weaves her nutritional knowledge throughout the book, explaining the building blocks for healthy eating and categorizing each recipe by health benefit. Though she cooks with animal products, plants are at the heart of the book.

“I cook plant-forward because of fibre and because of nutrients. You can come to me and say, ‘I’m vegan, I’m keto, I want all the meat in the world, I want low-carb, I want whatever.’ I will still cook plant-forward food for any client that I have. All that changes is whether I choose starchy or non-starchy vegetables, or how I do the mixing, or what their goals are.”

Reuben says that much of her confidence has come from someone showing her how to do something, from kicking a soccer ball to making crêpes, and then building on it.

Growing up in Victoria, Reuben was a dancer, runner, soccer and field hockey player — but she credits playing rugby for her resilience. “Rugby was the one, and it was the one that taught me about believing I could.” At 16 and 17, her team played women’s clubs in England, Scotland and Wales, which was intimidating.

“We did it. We all survived. As a woman, learning to move (my) body like that and being fearless at some points gave me so much. So, I think I owe a lot of my boundary-pushing nature to rugby,” says Reuben, laughing.

Shooting the book was an adventure that unfolded as Reuben travelled to five of her favourite spots in coastal British Columbia with friends over the summer of 2019: the Gulf Islands Galiano, Salt Spring and Hornby, Squamish and Jordan River.

Reuben’s friend, photographer Robyn Penn, shot Eat to Love, which was a full-circle moment. They grew up together, and Penn was the reason Reuben met her late mentor, “Wayno” (Wayne Forman), a nutritional chef and caterer to the stars, on a trip to Maui.

“What we were looking for was so different from what I think a normal cookbook would be,” Reuben says of the shoot. “We went in, and we hit the market off the ferry. ‘What’s fresh? What’s beautiful?'”

Many of the recipes in Eat to Love arose from that spontaneity. “The hard part” — the development and testing — came after.

The recipes range from tonics, plant milks and smoothies to staples (including protein add-ons: tofu, tempeh, fish, poultry and beans), sauces and spreads, and reflect how Reuben likes to compose meals — layering components and mixing and matching multiple dishes.

“It’s not just a cookbook,” says Reuben. “(My recipes) are made to be adaptable and to build, not just with flavour, but with nutrition. And so, it’s really important to me that people understand that it’s a hybrid book. If it’s just one thing that helps them, I hope it brings them joy.”

ZUCCHINI PARMESAN EGG MUFFINS

Makes: 12 muffins or 24 mini muffins (6 servings)

6 cups grated unpeeled zucchini
1 tbsp sea salt
3 cups finely grated Parmesan cheese (see note)
1 cup almond meal
1/4 cup chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp onion powder
5 eggs, beaten

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 375F (190C). Line a 12-cup muffin tin or 24-cup mini muffin tin with muffin cup liners or parchment paper, or use a silicon muffin tray.

Step 2

Place the grated zucchini and salt in a colander and massage the salt into the zucchini for 15 seconds. Let sit for 20 minutes, then gather the zucchini in a dish towel or a fine-mesh sieve and squeeze until dry.

Step 3

In a large bowl, combine the zucchini, Parmesan, almond meal, thyme, green onions, pepper and onion powder, mixing thoroughly. Add the eggs and stir well to combine.

Step 4

Add about 1/3 cup of the mixture to each muffin cup if making standard muffins, or 2 tablespoons if making mini muffins.

Step 5

Bake regular muffins for 30 minutes or mini muffins for 20 minutes, until golden brown on top. Serve warm.

Step 6

Store leftover muffins in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat in the oven before serving.

Variation: You can replace the Parmesan with either pecorino or Manchego if you would rather use a sheep cheese, for either health or flavour.

Serving note: Serve these with kale Caesar salad, cauliflower leek soup or arugula and roasted squash salad (the recipes are in the book).

EDAMAME CILANTRO HUMMUS

Makes: about 1 1/2 cups (4 servings)

2 cups frozen shelled edamame
1/2 cup packed fresh cilantro leaves
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more to garnish
3 tbsp tahini
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste
3 tbsp water
1 1/2 tbsp gluten-free tamari
2 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp ground cumin, plus more to taste
1/2 tsp sea salt, plus more to taste

Step 1

Bring a small pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add the edamame and boil for 3 to 4 minutes, until tender. Drain and let cool. If desired, set aside some edamame for garnish.

Step 2

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor or high-powered blender. Pulse in the food processor or blend on medium-high, stopping to scrape down the sides as needed, until very thick and smooth. Adjust the seasoning with lemon juice, cumin and salt. Garnish with the reserved edamame and olive oil, if desired.

Step 3

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.

Serving note: Use this as a bowl builder. Start with a layer of hummus, then top with Green salad or roasted veggies. You can also spread it over seed bread and top with olive oil, flaky salt and fresh herbs, or serve it as part of a crudité platter. My favourite way to use it is in collard roll-ups. Spread a blanched collard leaf with 4 to 5 tablespoons of hummus, top with some quick pickled onions or caramelized onions, ribbons of carrot and English cucumber, arugula or sunflower sprouts, and chopped fresh cilantro or green onions; season with salt, pepper and hot sauce, and wrap up like a burrito!

CITRUS OLIVE OIL CAKE

Makes: 9 servings

1 1/2 cups almond meal
1/2 tsp grain-free baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp orange zest
2 tbsp fresh orange juice
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 325F (165C). Line the bottom of a 9-inch (23-cm) square cake pan with parchment paper and lightly oil the sides.

Step 2

In a large bowl, combine the almond meal, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Step 3

In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients until smooth. Add to the dry ingredients and stir until you have a smooth batter.

Step 4

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Step 5

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden and it springs back lightly when touched. Remove and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Step 6

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.

Variation: You can also use a round cake pan, as pictured. For a sparkly garnish, sprinkle 1 tbsp coconut sugar over the top before baking.

Serving note: This is wonderful topped with fresh fruit, blueberry compote or coconut cream!

Recipes and images excerpted from Eat to Love by Mikaela Reuben. Copyright ©2025 Mikaela Reuben. Photographs by Robyn Penn. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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