Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates: Festive Meals for Holidays and Special Occasions

I found this cookbook at a book fair a few years ago and it has become one of my most favorite. The recipes are just wonderful and the descriptions about them informative. I use it a lot at my children's elementary school where we try to learn about different cultures and the food that celebrates them and we have made many of the recipes as a class.

After reading the reviews, I took this book out of the library to try it out before buying it. I have made several of the salads, the roasted vegetables, the beets and greens, the cranberry-chocolate pie (three times!), and several more recipes. The salad dressings are wonderful, and the combinations of fall salads are also delicious. I love it when people say "Mmmm" when they take the first bite, and it has happened with every recipe I've tried. I have a list of about 50 more recipes to try so I just ordered the book. I can't bear to return it to the library before mine arrives. If you are looking for new ways to prepare vegetables, this is your book. Many recipes don't contain dairy products, a plus for allergic people.

This is another brill book from a place I would dearly love to visit,

I love this cookbook. I have made three recipes from it: the lemon-basil deviled eggs, the grapes with gorgonzola, and the jazzed-up cranberry sauce. They were all spectacular. I made the cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, and it was so good I sat there and ate it with a spoon right out of the bowl - it had such a tangy and unique flavor. I made the deviled eggs and grapes with gorgonzola (I used blue cheese) recently for a party and they were both well-received. In fact, people went ga-ga over the grapes. All three recipes are very easy to make, can be made in advance, and have no hard-to-find ingredients. Easy and unique recipes that produce results fit for company - this is my kind of cookbook! It's also one of those cookbooks that's fun to just sit down and read.

What a great idea for a cookbook - food as the symbol of celebration and tradition. Want to plan a vegetarian or vegan Thanksgiving spread? You're in the right book. Even if you are not cooking, the book is a pleasure to read and browse through because it explains the origins of vaious holidays and the foods that are made to celebrate them. The recipes are organized by season and by holiday (multi-cultural holidays such as Hannukah, Ramadan, and Christmas, as well as Fourth of July and Father's Day BBQ). There are tasteful illustrations and helpful hints about how to plan a meal so that everything arrives hot at the table. My only qualm is that many of recipes look as if they might take a long time to make; although there is an index for 30-minutes-or-less cooking.