Vegetarian Cookbooks
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Vegetarian Cookbooks
June 2010
i'm trying to incorporate more vegetarian dishes into our
meals. so far, my 3 and 5 year olds love cheese tortellini
with alfredo sauce. I make it low-fat but my husband and I
are not too keen on this heavy and rich dinner. I'd love to
get my hands on some really great and not too complex veg
cookbooks!
My ideal vegetarian dinners tend to be Indian - with good
spices and legume. I'd like to learn to cook with less
cheese/oils too.
All the recs I saw in the archives are a bit dated. Are
there any great cookbooks that you would
recommend? trying one meal at a time
There are a lot of great vegetarian cookbooks out there. For
easy weekday meals, we love Simple Suppers; for Indian food
we love Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East. My favorite
cooking blog is Smitten Kitchen, a great place to get ideas.
Kevin
Good for you for incorporating more vegetarian meals! One of
my favorite cookbooks is the Vegan Planet (Robin Robertson),
which has a lot of simple, tasty recipes. A little more
complicated but also delicious are recipes from Ann Gentry's
Real Food Daily Cookbook. Also love Vegan Cookies Invade
your Cookie Jar (Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope
Romero). Indian choices are always good and there are tons
of great Indian restaurants in the area. Also check out
Nature's Express, the new vegan 'fast food' restaurant on
upper Solano near Peet's. Good luck! happy vegan
I've made many recipes from the Vegetarian Family Cookbook
by Nava Atlas, and most have been hits -- tasty, varied,
easy to prepare, and kid-friendly. The ones that use dairy
are not heavy with cheese, and there are vegan options for
almost all recipes. Her site is vegkitchen.com. We also find
recipes we like in the Vegetarian TImes magazine. They have
lots of recipes on vegetariantimes.com, but not the most
recent. Another excellent source of family-friendly recipes
is The Teen's Vegetarian Cookbook by Judy Krizmanic. Enjoy!
I am sorry I did not see the original post but I have been
using my Laurel's Kitchen cookbook since college. It is
pretty thrashed but I still use it all the time. Most of my
favorite dishes are from Laurel's Kitchen - great soups,
lentil loaf, banana bread. The food is not especially fancy
but delicious, easy to make, and healthy.
My new favorite is Supermarket Vegan. The last issue of
Vegetarian Times had a few of the recipes. I made a curry
dish, a pasta dish, and cobbler. They all were great and I
bought the whole book. I think the 'supermarket' partof the
title refers to the ingredients being easily avaliable.
Both books give nutritional information, which I appreciate.
Long -term Veg
Our family likes the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home,
ISN-13 978- 0671679927 I also subscribe to the Savvy
Vegetarian e-newsletter and they have wonderful recipes:
http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/ Marjie
Feb 2009
I'm interested in moving our family's diet towards less meat and a
more vegetarian diet, for nutritional and financial reasons. Can
people recommend good books or websites that help with vegetarian
recipes and nutrition for kids? On a really specific note, my
three year old daughter is one of those picky eaters who tends to
reject food that's mixed up (she won't even touch sandwiches), so
a book that's mostly yummy casseroles probably won't work. I'm
really familiar with the 'multiple exposure' idea for new foods
and am patiently working on mixed foods, but it's going to take a
while . I also like 'cutesy' kids foods, so a book with fun food
pictures or green fields of kale would be right up my alley.
thanks,
Laura
I really like The Vegetarian Family Cookbook by Nava Atlas. Many
recipes are very basic, and then she includes notes on how to
''Embellish It'' for grownups and more adventuresome eaters, and
how to make it simpler ''For Picky Eaters''. Makes it easy to
feed a family using one basic recipe.
Tamara
We eat several vegetarian meals per week, also for health and
finances and also because I am often too lazy to wash a pan that
has been used for cooking meat.
Anyway, kids who won't usually eat mixed foods often will if they
mix it themselves on their terms. For example, we have ''make
your own rice bowl,'' ''make your own burrito,'' and ''top your
own pasta'' fairly often, all of which work well with vegetarian
components.
-- low stress cooking mom
March 2005
Can anyone recommend a great vegetarian cookbook that would be
useful in getting my family to eat more fruit, veggies and soy
products? Ideally the recipes would be tasty AND quick.
Thanks!
Hungry for veggies
I cook a lot and have been a vegetarian for many years. Two of
the quickest and easiest books I've come across are written by
Jeanne Lemlin. The first is Simple Vegetarian Pleasures and the
second is Quick Vegetarian Pleasures. The recipes are indeed
quick and simple, and delicious! I have a few of her other
books as well.
Another book I've used when in a hurry is The 15-Minute
Gourmet: Vegetarian, written by Paulette Mitchell.
Good luck!
anon
My absolute favorite easy vegetarian cookbook is the Garden of Vegan. The recipies
are simple and quick. The ingredients are available at most stores. It is so easy
that many recipes even work for a college dorm room with a microwave and
hotplate.
Also, Millennium's first cookbook is good, but can be a little complicated. But
some of the recipes in there are to die for.
Online, there are so many places for vegetarian and vegan recipes too.
http://vegweb.com/recipes/
www.vegcooking.com
are a couple of them.
al30sh
I have recently discovered a fabulous vegetarian cookbook.
Every recipe I have made has been a hit with my non-vegetarian
husband! They are easy and have simple ingredients put
together in interesting ways. It is called 1,001 Low-fat
Vegetarian recipes by Sue Spitler
Diana
I highly recommend the ''Moosewood Restaurant Cooks At Home.'' There are many
Moosewood cookbooks so make sure to get the Cooks At Home one. They are all
easy, nutritious, kid-friendly meals. Some of our favorites are Winter Vegetable
Stew, Curried Chickpeas and Tofu, and Red/Gold/Black & Green Chili. I hate to cook
anything complicated and these are easy (aside from lots of vegetable chopping) but
at the same time tasty and interesting.
Vegetarian Mama
Here's the name of a vegetarian cookbook I've been using for a
few years: ''Better Homes and Gardens Vegetarian Recipes: Cooking
For Today.''
Nancy
There are already good recommendations on the BPN website, but
one book that's not mentioned, and that I like a lot, is 'The
Accidental Vegan' by Devra Gartenstein. It's got lots of very
easy and tasty recipes. So far, everything I've tried has been good.
IC
Jeanne Lemlin has a series of vegetarian cookbooks - Vegetarian
Pleasures, Quick Vegetarian Pleasures, and Simple Vegetarian
Pleasures. All are just amazing cookbooks - I use them almost
every day and have given them frequently as gifts. The recipes
are simple, well written, and always reliable. Lemlin makes
good use of vegetarian ingredients, like beans, tofu, and
tempeh, but the recipes for baked goods and desserts are also
wonderful. Lemlin presents a well balanced diet of natural
foods, where the occasional slice of chocolate cake is okay. The
dishes are not always low-fat or vegan, but that probably
increases the odds that kids will enjoy them.
Kristen
One of my favorite cookbooks is ''Moosewood Restaurant
Cooks at Home''. Many of the recipes are very simple and
are ones that I use again and again. I can't wait to see what
other suggestions you get - I am on the prowl for good, easy
to use cookbooks myself.
Nanu
Jan 2000
Does anyone have a recommendation for a great vegetarian cookbook?
I'm
looking for easy, simple, lowfat, delicious recipes, using minimal milk,
cheese and eggs. And I'm especially interested in ways to use greens
(collard, bok choy, kale, mustard greens, etc.). Thanks.
Susan
My all-time favorite cookbook is Laurel's Kitchen (and the New Laurel's
Kitchen). While many of the recipes include dairy and eggs, many do not,
and many (or most?) of the recipes are low in fat (though if you're not
eating, meat, dairy, eggs and junk food you may need to make an effort to
eat enough fat!). For a non-dairy and egg cookbook, I also like The
Book
of Whole Meals, by Anne-Marie Colbin. This cookbook has some
interesting
ideas for cooking greens. And on the subject of greens, we often sautee
chopped fresh greens (kale, collards, etc.) with garlic, olive oil, herbs
and other veggies (sweet bell and hot peppers, mushrooms, etc.) and
serve
them over or tossed with pasta (and lots of parmesan). Happy cooking
and
eating!
Moosewood LowFat Cookbook
It's great and all the things you asked for!
Maia
I just have to add, since no one did, that Maddhur Jaffrey's cookbooks
are
excellent. She has one called Asian Vegetarian and a new one, that I
haven't tried, called World Vegetarian cooking. There are a lot of
wonderful vegetarian recipes and even whole vegetarian cuisines out there
that are easy to make with ingredients that can be purchased at the
Berkeley
Bowl and any of the small ethnic markets in the east bay. Bon Appetit!
Rachel
The first book I recommend these days is Deborah Madison's The
Savory
Way. It's full of delicious, straightforward, relatively simple recipes
which do not rely too heavily on dairy. Her recent-ish follow-up,
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, is much larger and fairly expensive but
similarly useful, and both books are pretty good on using greens.
I am also a pretty big fan of the cookbooks put out by Moosewood
Restaurant, including Moosewood Cooks at Home and a newer one,
called
something like Moosewood's Daily Specials. And Mollie Katzen's books
are pretty good, too, although they just don't really stack up against
Deborah Madison, IMHO.
Wendy
I'm very fond of the Moosewood Restaurant's Low Fat Favorites. It's
emphasis is on low
fat cooking which some of the other Moosewood's are not. There are a
ton of
high fiber
low fat vegi recipes that are not annoying to make. I like also Vegetarian
Cooking for
Everyone by Deborah Madison, although the recipes can be higher fat, I
can
usually
adjust for lower fat. I found the 1001 Lowfat Vegi recipes far less
successful since they
seem to want a lot of fake ingredients which I think just don't taste good.
Green's cookbook has
good recipes but halfway through some of the recipes you figure out that
you are making homemade
tortillas and as delicious as they are, it's not worth the time in my
opinion... And they are often
fairly high fat.
I've been eyeing the Millenium Cookbook which actually would be good,
since
the restaurant is so
great, but might include a lot of not readily available ingredients and
difficult techniques.
Myriam
Any of the Moosewood cookbooks are excellent. The first cookbook
now
includes more lowfat options and is still easy to use (no mortar and pestle
stuff). My favorite is probably "Sundays at Moosewood", which is all
different ethnic foods, including several Asian countries represented (for
greens recipes). Moosewood fits the bill best for what you are asking for.
Sharon
"Feeding the Whole Family" is a great vegetarian
cookbook with good ideas for making food appealing to
children, packing lunchboxes, etc. It's by Cynthia
Lair; there's a website for ordering called www.feedingfamily.com
Alexandra
I have a ton of vegetarian cookbooks, and here are some of my favorites:
Vegetarian Planet, Didi Emmons; The Millennium Cookbook, Eric Tucker
(one
of the fancier ones); Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison
(has
complicated AND simple); Eat More Weigh Less, Dean Ornish; Verdura,
Viana
La Place (not veg specifically,but mostly); Vegetable Heaven, Mollie
Katzen; Recipes for an Ecological Kitchen, Lorna Sass. Also, I would
recommend either subscribing to Vegetarian Times, or getting any of their
recipe compendium books. They tend to be nice and simple.
Hilary
Deborah Madison's books are great. The Savory Way is a little shmancier
than
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, but they are both wonderful.
GS
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