Great American Vegetarian: Traditional and Regional Recipes for the Enlightened Cook

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.

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.

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.

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?