Vegetarian Books

I'm not one to write reviews. Usually I read other people's reviews and then decide whether to buy. Originally, I discovered this book at my local library and checked it out. Before it was due back, my husband and I made a couple of the recipes and really liked them. About six months later I was back in the cookbook section of the library and recognized this book from our previous encounter. I brought it home again. My husband made the Tofu-Mushroom Stroganoff and that was all it took! We bought this book and everything we have made is easy and delicious. I love to eat. Take it from a real foodie - this book is a great buy.

I was surprised to see that no one had written a review on this book. I have more than a dozen cookbooks devoted to soy products and this is one of the most impressive. The Author provides ample information about the benefits of soy, but in a very conversational manner. The directions are very simple and straightforward. Many cookbooks I've seen appear to be written by and for a culinary professional, but this one is aimed at home cooks with limited resources. There are some "exotic" ingredients, but most of them are common to your grocery store. Many recipes are low in fat. There are no pictures, but there are none needed. The recipes layouts are very easy to follow and the colors are pleasant to the eyes. Those who cannot see well may be deterred by the medium sized text. Most recipes are vegan. None contain any kind of meat, making this an excellent resourse for vegetarians. There are 170 recipes with many optional variations. Overall, I highly recommend this book. Some recipes are: fresh pea soup; creamy tomato soup; tempeh-fruit salad; Greek tofu salad;tofu curry; tofu-mushroom marsala; tempeh with black bean sauce;vegetable tartlets with herbed tomato sauce as well as lasagnes, puddings, pies, and several recipes calling for fresh, green soybeans (which grow easily at home if you're a gardener) Please look into this book.

This book has such a nice variety of soy and tofu recipes. I am so glad I purchased it. If you're looking for a good variety of recipes... this book is one of the best!

I love this cookbook! This book has so many creative and interesting recipes that I think one would never get bored with it. I especially like that the nutritional information is provided for each recipe. For those of you who aren't thrilled about soy, this book has a lot of good ways to help integrate it into your diet. Try it out - I am sure that you will like it!

I am really glad I got this book. It has everything I need to cook vegan food. Plus it has a lot of general information about nutritions and specific product. I would recommend this book for everybody.

I have found this book to be very useful, many of the recipes are easy to make and very VERY yummy!!! Highly recommended!!

This is a great cookbook, and you don't have to be vegan to appreciate it. Who wouldn't want to eat food this good? Everything I've made from the book so far has been terrific. What I especially like is that it does not call for any "imitation" foods. For example, the quesadillas don't use vegan cheeze, but rather a tasty bean dip to replace cheese, along with yummy sauteed vegetables. The blueberry bran muffins are fantastic and addictive. The section on vegetables includes simple but delicious preparations of veggies you know and love, but with a new twist. The roasted broccoli is so delicious you could eat a whole head a day. The brown rice-edamame-seaweed salad was so good, and looks so pretty. The author is a chef, after all, and she really knows how to make things taste good and look nice. I also really enjoyed just reading the text, as there is a lot of great cooking knowledge imparted here. I learned to cook short grain brown rice using the "excess water" technique, and turned out lovely, al dente brown rice in only 20 minutes. This is a keeper, for sure.

One of the first vegan cookbooks I purchased several years ago, and have turned to frequently over the years, is Very Vegetarian (currently available new and used from Amazon), also by Jannequin Bennett - executive chef of TJ's restaurant in Richmond Virginia's 5-star Jefferson Motel. It is an attractive, well-written collection of over 300 plant-based recipes that I have enjoyed perusing as well as using. For those new to vegan cooking, Ms. Bennett's book contains helpful supplemental material introducing what may be unfamiliar ingredients, the recipes are extraordinarily well-written, and 16 color-plates throughout the book help one picture just how enticingly vegan food can be presented. Most importantly, recipes I have tried have been delicious and well received by my family! Naturally, I was excited to see that Ms. Bennett had a "new" collection out this year. What a disappointment to discover that THE COMPLETE VEGAN KITCHEN IS A RETITLED, PAPERBACK EDITION OF HER PREVIOUS BOOK. If I didn't already own the hardback edition, this would have been an exciting new addition to my now extensive collection of vegan cookbooks. It has the same interesting foreword by Olympic Athlete of the Century, Carl Lewis, all the same wonderful recipes, and is illustrated with the same beautiful photos - just presented in a colorful paperpack cover this time around. If you don't already own Very Vegetarian, I highly recommend The Complete Vegan Kitchen.Very Vegetarian

I checked this book out of the library, and liked it so much that I went ahead and bought it. This is more than just a collection of recipes - it's a real "how-to" guide for neophyte and experienced vegetarian chefs alike.

I am a new vegetarian and I find the information in this book really useful. I refer to it over and over again-and the recipes are terrific. I will giving it as a gift to many of my friends.

I've been a vegetarian for 20 years and was given this book as a gift. I didn't think there would be much in it for me as I thought I knew it all. I was very wrong. Tips, techniques, recipes -- so much is packed into this book. It's my new kitchen Bible.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm interested in eating healthier and cutting back on meat. What I like about this book, so far, is that the recipes are easy and delicious. I'm not willing to eat bland food in the interest of health. I love good food and great taste. This book delivers on both flavor and technique. I've learned a lot about how to cook, what to look for and how to prepare great-tasting, healthy food.

Lynda takes her special catering talent and shares it with others in this cookbook! She has always prepared meals for ones in our neighborhood who need a "special pick me up". I just gave this as a gift to my Weight Watcher's friends and they LOVE IT!

There has never been a cookbook like the Daniel's Fast Cookbook! If you are a vegan, or just want to have a heart healthy diet, then this is the cookbook for you. I have personally sampled many of these recipes and they are quite delicious and easy to prepare. I highly recommend this cookbook for anyone wanting to explore a healthier lifestyle. Having high blood pressure and heart problems myself, my wife has struggled with having to make substitutions in traditional recipes. With the Daniel's Fast Cookbook, she can follow the recipes exactly and know that she is preparing "Heart Healthy" dishes. Thank you Lynda Anderson and Grace Bass.

Dr. David A. Butler

The Daniel's Fast Cookbook is an outstanding contribution to a healthy lifestyle. Whether a person wants to use the tasty recipes for religious purposes, a Vegan lifestyle, to control weight, or to insure protection from harmful ingredients in foods, this book will fill their individual needs. My husband and I were in the health club business for 30 years (before it became popular!), and we see the tremendous nutritional value of recipes in this book. Sometimes, it takes real talent to make "healthy" foods taste great...and Grace Bass and Lynda Anderson have done just that.

The Spicy Veggie Sticks is one of my favorite recipes. I use the Spicy House Seasoning found in this recipe on almost everything I eat! And, because the authors included information about necessary cooking tools, I found a tool that makes cutting these sticks a breeze. It's a Progressive Vegetable Cutter, available at Linen's `N Things. I also bought the Vidalia Chop Wizard they recommend at CVS. I must confess that I don't like to cook, but the tips and recipes in this book have certainly given me inspiration.

Jean Dunham
Author, Laugh Out Loud

We've been searching for this cookbook since 2003. What encourages us most about Grace and Lynda's Daniel's Fast Cookbook is that it is endorsed by Elmer Towns, who created the Daniel Fast for Spiritual Breakthrough in his book Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough.

"I believe in Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough, this is a discipline that God has given to the church for renewal, revival, and worship of the Lord. I am so glad that Grace Bass and Lynda Anderson have written this cookbook on The Daniel Fast. I pray that God will use it in the lives of many people."

Elmer L. Towns
Co-Founder, Liberty University
Dean, School of Religion
Lynchburg, Virginia

Their cookbook contains more than 100 healthy, tasty and easy to prepare Daniel's Diet recipes. It also includes helpful nutritional information, practical advice for fasting as a church, list of restaurants that have foods we can enjoy on their menu, list of recommended stores we can trust and products we can enjoy. Grace and Lynda also included a section about food options depending on our own personal spiritual convictions. This is an excellent cookbook for Christians considering a Vegan Diet. Thank you Grace and Lynda!

Very pleased with the book and extrenely pleased with Amazon and the service they offered in replacing a damaged copy.

This certainly not the be all and end all of vegetarian cooking (I am an omnivore) - indeed many things Delia sees as suitable for vegetarians apparently must all contain cheese of some sort; that can get a little tedious at times I must admit! And what about vegans?

That said, for dealing with basic vegetables and some interesting accompaniments for meats or for enjoying alone, I think nobody should be without this book in their library. Wonderfully illustrated with clear, concise instructions. Highly recommended, as are all of Delia Smith's cookery books.

This is the one that you should really own above all others. Being of English stock, I was brought up with Delia all my life. to be short and sweet, the recipes are inspiring easy and very tatsty. I am not a vegetarian but would be more than happy to make most of these recipes for myself.
If you really want to cook something that is different from your average American recipes, this is the one to buy.

Well worth paying the extra money for.

While this was not my first vegetarian cookbook, it does rate among my favourites - for those nights when I have a bit of spare time on my hands.

The book itself is beautiful, with a solid hardbound cover, thick smooth pages, and absolutely gorgeous photography. The pages are crisp and vibrant, and the design is elegant and reader-friendly. The makers of this edition had an eye for quality and for readability.

The food is in keeping with the care put into designing this book. I've prepared quite a few of the recipes therein and have had fantastic results - and I'm no gourmet chef. The food is incredible. The only cautions I would give are as follows: (a) it's not an everyday cookbook... some recipes are complex, and some take quite a bit of time and patience to prepare; (b) some of the ingredients are a bit rare, or don't translate well from UK to Canadian terms; and (c) there is no nutritional information accompanying the recipes - but looking at the ingredients suggests an overall moderate to high fat content.

That said, the recipes are more than worth the time and effort. And we all need a little sweet in our diets. You do, however, have to enjoy cooking to fully appreciate this book.

A final disclaimer: this book is ovo-lacto-vegetarian, and uses eggs, milk and cheese in a good number of its recipes.

When I became vegetarian I worried about missing out on some of my favorite flavors like jamaican jerk. This book has a number of terrific recipes for doing jerk potatoes, jerk vegetables and even jerk tofu (I haven't tried that yet but certainly will). It has all the classics in here - pepperpot soup, plantains, etc.I've only scratched the surface in terms of making my way through the recipes but so far so good.

We bought this book last year before leaving for a vacation in Jamaica. In Jamaica we had rented a house that had a cook. She was a wonderful Jamaican woman unfamiliar with vegetarian cooking. We showed her this book. She was familiar with many of the dishes in this book, but in non-vegetarian forms. With this book she was able to adapt her recipes and we had a wonderful week of home-cooked Jamaican, vegetarian meals. At the end of our vacation she was delighted when we left her our copy of this book.

I had the pleasure of meeting and dining in the home of Yvonne Mc Calla Sobers of Kingston, Jamaica in July 1997. It was indeed memorable, to sit and rest after the long drive from the northcoast, in the hot midday, and enjoy the quiet breezy veranda of the Lingunea Mansion gifted to her by her childhood friend, Prime Minister Hon. Michael Manley, Chatting in depth about Jamaica, Food and Life, with her Sons and Herself, and reminesing of a childhood in Jamaica when "Bustamante Backbone" was a treat.

The Ben Johnson Vegetable Stew, made of all the great leftovers and pieces of vegetable in the fridge made for an adventurous treat on a hot afternoon, when shopping was out of the question. Sweet, Flavorful, Rich, Filling, Heaven in a bowl.

Yvonne treated us to her Fried Breadfruit, and some creamy vegeterian Solomon Gundy, which I have yet to locate outside Jamaica, namely in Kingston. Her conversations about the 38 different Mango's that were introduced to Jamaica and the West Indies, assures you that this isn't just some Local Cook.

We brought with us 2 bunches of country Gynip to the dinner party, and that was the payment for the truly fabulous country delicacies. approximatly $1.00 u.s. Unbelievable.

Indeed Mrs Sobers, is an internationally known consultant, responsible for bringing many international development projects closer to the people of Jamaica, instead of just the Tourist Regions. Hearing Her name mentioned daily on the radio stations in Jamaica, and seeing her Photograph in the Newspapers Islandwide, makes one know this is a Very Special Lady, and to be invited to sit on her special part of the earth and enjoy the treat of her hand is truly a dream come true for this aspiring cookbook writer.

I Advise, if you are looking for a Great New concept in Vegeterian Healthy Cooking Buy This Book and Share it With someone You Love.

My Recommendations - Hot and Spicy Shepards Pie, Ben Johnson Stew, Cashew and Gungo Loaf, Jamdown Curry, JamaicanStyle Veggy Burgers, Maro! ons, Callalalu - in all the styles; and of course Breadfruit, Tropical Gingerbread, Number 11 Mango Chutney named for one of the 38 types of Mango found in Jamaica; and Chef Yvonnes' Special Ital Rasta Pasta; (much better than that place on the hill in ochi.) This book is recommended for Senior Citizens, Dieters, Fat Free and Low FatDiets, Diabetics, Children, and Fussy Folks. The food is so delicious they will never know how healthy it really is. Guaranteed.

Last week I went through my cookbooks, to see if I could weed some out, because I have too many to mention. It's hard getting rid of a cookbook, especially one with a few recipes in it that you've come to love. But I've scanned the recipes I need to keep forever into my MacBook. However, there were an even dozen I couldn't part with. These are books I turn to time and time again, even though I consider myself somewhat of a gourmet chef.

DELICIOUS JAMAICA is one of the books I kept and to my way of thinking it's just about the best vegetarian cookbook out there. If you like exotic cooking and you've given up meat or just plain don't eat it, then this is the book for you. Veggies don't have to be bland, just try the "Callalu Run Down" on page 30 and you'll see what I mean. Then there's the "Yam Run Down Casserole" which is simply too tasty to be true. If you're not a vegetarian, you can make a lot of the recipes in this book as a side dish. The "Spice Rice" for example works very well with just about anything. There is a whole lot more in this nifty cookbook that belongs with any serious collection of Caribbean cookbooks.

Review submitted by Capatin Katie Osborne

This book is ideed Tarla Dalal's best yet. I have always sweared on her cooking and always will. She has amazing recipes and very easy to follow steps. You've got to love it!!

I've tried many of the recipes in this book. They tend to be simple and rarely go wrong. i would avoid trying to cook italian food using her recipes though.

Tarla Dalal is excellent for Vegetarian cooking. My husband hates Vegetarian and I always have a tough time preparing meals for him when we are veg. But with this book it is sooooo much better. Her recipes are VERY Simple to follow and each of her recipes turn out DELICIOUS...from her starters to her desserts...she has them all.

I have been refering to this book since I was in my teens and a total novice at cooking. It is a book par excellence. The recipes come out perfectly . This book has been my best friend in the kitchen for last 10 years. In fact I would love to translate it into marathi which is my mother tongue so that more women can benifit from it. Thank you very much Tarlaji.

Anupama

Pickarski's two books together make a great team. He uses healthy ingredients to come up with interesting and tasty flavors. The calzones with seitan, and especially the dough recipe, were fabulous. Definitely recommend this one!

This cookbook is a realy impressive collection of dinners, appetizers and desserts. I particularly appreciated the desserts which were tasty and beautiful. There are color pictures of osme of the dishes in the book. The back has suggestions for holiday menus. I recommend this highly!

A damn fine vegetarian cook book. Pickarski introduces a lot of unusual ingredients and methods in sometimes quite complicated recipes but very tasty. Also an excellent reference for info about various inscrutable ingredients. I have to have it!

This is a terrific vegan cookbook that you can certainly use to cook just for yourself or for having friends over. The ingredients are all things that you can find. Tofu is used but not in all the recipes. There's lots of variety and lots of great sauces and even vegetable side dishes and deserts to go along with the main entrees. There's a wonderful Boston Chowder here that I just love! It uses wakame (a seaweed) for the sea flavor along with the usual ingredients of celery, potato, red bell pepper, and thyme. Soy milk is used and oyster mushrooms are also in here. Its delicious!! There are other terrific soups too (I love soups!) but there are also great salads - I recently made the asparagus salad which was great. There are also excellent sandwiches and pitas with yummy dressings. At the end there are some seasonal menus which I love since we belong to a community supported agriculture (CSA) group so I tend to cook with whatever the harvest brings during the growing period.

In the age of pre-packaged, heat and serve, mealtimes often lack nourishment; that is, food that satisfies both body and spirit. But fortunately there's a remedy: "Going Wild in the Kitchen." This cookbook not only offers 150+ healthy, palate-pleasing vegetarian recipes, but also inspires and guides readers toward greater creativity in the kitchen.

There is much to like about Going Wild in the Kitchen, not least of which are the many glossaries, charts, and tables that provide all the information one will need in order to prepare the delicious and exciting vegetarian recipes contained in the book - and perhaps a few of your own culinary creations! One particularly handy table details cooking instructions for over eighteen different varieties of grains, including a few "ancient grains," several of which I've never heard of before. And then, of course, there are the recipes! Quinoa with Cauliflower and Feta, and Italian Lentil Stew with Creamy Grano are just two favorites. What's grano, you ask? No worries, it's all in the book!

"Going Wild in the Kitchen" is beautifully illustrated, however one will not find it includes any glossy photographs, yet surprisingly they are not missed. The author, who is an expert cooking instructor as well as a gourmet organic caterer, awakens the imagination by sharing her knowledge, experience, and passion in this superbly substantive vegetarian cookbook. Indeed, "Going Wild in the Kitchen" is bound to present more than a few welcome surprises for even the experienced chef.

In short, I love this cookbook!

My kids demanded I make the peanut butter teff cookies two days in a row. Blueberry cornbread was also delicious. No refined sugar, eggs or milk and many grain alternatives. Quite impressed.

This book gives great ideas about how to improvise in the kitchen as well as incredible recipes if you are a bit more shy about experimenting. For anyone learning how to cook healthy, nutritious foods that taste great this is the book.

Don't be shy if you aren't vegetarian it still has fabulous ideas for creating healthy meals and expanding your kitchen tool kit.

Great for food allergy sufferers as it has lots of grain variations available too.

This book truly helps the creative cook go wild and have fun in the kitchen. I've tried several recipes and each one came out perfectly, and was a big hit. but the beauty of these recipes is that you don't have to stick to a recipe exactly for it to turn out great. In fact, the author, Leslie Cerier, includes lots of variations and encourages the cook to experiment and play.

I like the fact that the desserts are vegan and that she uses lots of berries, herbs, and unusual whole grains in a number of dishes. The layout is easy on the eye and graphics are fun. This will be a kitchen favorite of anyone who loves healthy, delicious foods, whether vegetarian or not. Buy it, you won't be sorry!

Nava Atlas has updated her original American Harvest cookbook and renamed it The Great American Vegetarian: Traditional Regional Recipes for the Enlightened Cook. She has added more than 50 new recipes and expanded the section of suggested menus.

Each recipe includes a complete nutritional analysis.

Atlas says "the criterion for choosing the recipes in this book was that they fit in with today's emphasis on healthy, lighter eating. . .." She has included regional cuisine from New England, the Pennsylvania Dutch, the South, Creole and Cajun, and the Southwest.

Cooks can spend the day with Atlas, starting with her special breakfast muffins and eggs, lunching on breads and soups, and finishing with salads, rice, beans, corn, or vegetable specialties. She didn't forget to include plenty of mouth-watering deserts.

Atlas's humor shows in the charming illustrations gracing nearly every page. She also sprinkled quotations from old books, such as "the cook who can do without onions has yet to be born," throughout her cookbook.

Married, and the mother of two, Atlas has written and illustrated several other cookbooks, and published numerous healthful food articles, as well as writing humor.

The Great American Vegetarian cookbook is not for vegans, as many recipes include dairy and/or eggs. Others will enjoy Nava Atlas's adaptions of their favorite regional recipes.

A big book of comfort foods. The first thirty pages of recipes in here are different breads and biscuits. I don't really make these so I haven't tried them but I wanted to mention it since there really is a great selection here. I've been enjoying the soups and chowders the most. They're written for the stove top but I love to use the slow cooker and the recipes have been really great for that too. There are lots of creole derived recipes like the red bean and black bean soups and the eggplant soup. I had never tried these before but both were great. The eggplant soup was particularly unique. I'm usually one to increases the spices in recipes or play with amounts but these were quite to my liking. Beyond this chapter I've tried a few of the salads and the guacamole is delicious in that it has a little green pepper and tomatillo added as well which I hadn't done before. I haven't tried the jambalaya yet but it looks great - using brown rice.

After checking this book out of our local library, I quickly realized that I would use it more than many other vegetarian cookbooks. Her choice of recipes is very interesting - simple, with different combinations of foods from across the country. Did you know that when you're "on the red and white" in New Orleans, you're low on money and eating a tasty kidney bean and rice casserole?

GREAT AMERICAN VEGETARIAN by Nava Atlas isn't the most comprehensive or best vegetarian cookbook I've ever used but it is a good cook book, and a good place to start if you're thinking of taking up the vegetarian lifestyle or you've just been read the riot act by your heart specialist. If you're an ovo-lacto kind of vegetarian, you'll apprectiate it more than if your pure vegan. Many of Atlas' receipes include eggs and cheeses.

I find too many of the receipes in VEGETARIAN include peppers (green, yellow, and red) and I am not fond of peppers but if you are then that won't be a negative factor for you. From my perspective, there are not enough receipes with eggplant(2). She has included a number of bean dishes, including a luscious one for Beer-Stewed-Pinto-Beans, which unfortunately for my gastrointestinal problems includes Jalepeno peppers, but I leave out the peppers. She highlights the squash-bean-maize connection and includes a lovely receipe for patty-pan squash.

There are any number of vegetable dishes from the south she might have included, but I suppose they fail the fat test. She includes a coleslaw recipe from North Carolina that must have been imported by a yankee cook after I moved away. The best coleslaw I ever ate was made in North Carolina by my mother-in-law Rachel who served it with barbeque. Rachel's secret ingredient was sugar. If it don't have sugar in it, it ain't Southern.

Though Ms. Atlas has made a heroic attempt to compile a cookbook that reflects traditional Southern and other regional dishes, she has included southern recipes that appeal to New England tastes (if they're Southern at all). That's okay if you have New England tastes, but the real taste test for a Southerner is based on the GASS factor -- Grease, Alcohol, Sugar and Salt. Ms. Atlas has compiled a bunch of healthy recipes. Give me a plate of pinto beans with fatback, collards with fatback, fried okra and cornbread (oh, and add a few slices of sweet onion on the side). Okay, okay, I'm going back on my diet.