Skinny Bitch in the Kitch: Kick-Ass Solutions for Hungry Girls Who Want to Stop Cooking Crap (and Start Looking Hot!)

The first book, "Skinny Bitch," shocked me into a new awareness of what I was eating. I decided to try the vegetarian lifestyle to see if it would work for me. I started by eating a few prepackaged meals (spring rolls with soy and a veggie pot pie) to jump-start my efforts. It took me about a week to gather the necessary ingredients. In the meantime I had veggie burritos at Taco Time and vegetable fajitas at a local Mexican restaurant. You may find a health food store that stocks nutritional yeast flakes, Ener-G egg replacer and Bragg Liquid Aminos. In general this book uses safflower and olive oil. The truth of the matter is that many of the recipes call for coconut oil (a little expensive $10 for 414 ml), which may or may not work for you. I found it less appetizing in savory dishes and appropriate for sweet foods like cookies. It is easy to substitute olive oil for the coconut oil in some of the recipes like Hummus and Macaroni and Cheese. Why you would want coconut oil in those recipes is beyond my understanding. The recipes are divided into interesting sections like Bitchin' Breakfast, PMS ( Pissy Mood Snacks), Grown-Up Appetizers, Sassy Soups and Stews, Skinny-Ass Salads, Hearty-Ass Sandwiches, International Bitch, Italian Bitch, Down Home Cookin', Skinny Bitch Staple Meals, Divine Dressings and Happy Endings. This book has a sassy style and is actually quite funny in places. Some of the more gourmet offerings include: Pecan-crusted French Toast Crabby Cakes with Remoulade Sauce Potato and Pumpkin Curry with Brown Basmatic Rice Penne with Butternut Squash, Sage Pesto, and Almonds Roasted Sausage, Peppers, Onions, and Garlic over Soft Polenta Balsamic Portobello Mushrooms over Grilled Vegetable Couscous Since I was throwing myself into this vegetarian lifestyle with a sense of abandon I decided to try twelve recipes. I managed to make four of the recipes in one night without much trouble. The buttery shortbread cookies looked easy enough until I noticed the quantity of orange juice and knew it wouldn't work. So I decided to substitute 5 tablespoons soymilk for the 1 tablespoon orange juice. To get the crumb mixture to hold together you may need to add additional tablespoons of milk depending on where you live. The dough seemed to work best when the crumbed mixture was pressed together in small batches and then rolled out. Each time you just add some more crumbs to the top and proceed as normal. The recipe made 32 "Buttery Shortbread Cookies." While the cookies were baking I made the "Marinated Tofu Feta" which was the easiest recipe in the book. I'd recommend only using half the tofu and using half the salt. It would have been helpful if the authors mentioned how long you could store the marinated tofu. Actually it tasted pretty good so you might eat it up fast in a few days. Next I tackled a "Fruit Smoothie," which was easy enough. You may want to use orange juice with the "Very Berry" Smoothie. If you use soymilk be prepared to

The first book, "Skinny Bitch," shocked me into a new awareness of what I was eating. I decided to try the vegetarian lifestyle to see if it would work for me. I started by eating a few prepackaged meals (spring rolls with soy and a veggie pot pie) to jump-start my efforts. It took me about a week to gather the necessary ingredients. In the meantime I had veggie burritos at Taco Time and vegetable fajitas at a local Mexican restaurant. You may find a health food store that stocks nutritional yeast flakes, Ener-G egg replacer and Bragg Liquid Aminos. In general this book uses safflower and olive oil. The truth of the matter is that many of the recipes call for coconut oil (a little expensive $10 for 414 ml), which may or may not work for you. I found it less appetizing in savory dishes and appropriate for sweet foods like cookies. It is easy to substitute olive oil for the coconut oil in some of the recipes like Hummus and Macaroni and Cheese. Why you would want coconut oil in those recipes is beyond my understanding. The recipes are divided into interesting sections like Bitchin' Breakfast, PMS ( Pissy Mood Snacks), Grown-Up Appetizers, Sassy Soups and Stews, Skinny-Ass Salads, Hearty-Ass Sandwiches, International Bitch, Italian Bitch, Down Home Cookin', Skinny Bitch Staple Meals, Divine Dressings and Happy Endings. This book has a sassy style and is actually quite funny in places. Some of the more gourmet offerings include: Pecan-crusted French Toast Crabby Cakes with Remoulade Sauce Potato and Pumpkin Curry with Brown Basmatic Rice Penne with Butternut Squash, Sage Pesto, and Almonds Roasted Sausage, Peppers, Onions, and Garlic over Soft Polenta Balsamic Portobello Mushrooms over Grilled Vegetable Couscous Since I was throwing myself into this vegetarian lifestyle with a sense of abandon I decided to try twelve recipes. I managed to make four of the recipes in one night without much trouble. The buttery shortbread cookies looked easy enough until I noticed the quantity of orange juice and knew it wouldn't work. So I decided to substitute 5 tablespoons soymilk for the 1 tablespoon orange juice. To get the crumb mixture to hold together you may need to add additional tablespoons of milk depending on where you live. The dough seemed to work best when the crumbed mixture was pressed together in small batches and then rolled out. Each time you just add some more crumbs to the top and proceed as normal. The recipe made 32 "Buttery Shortbread Cookies." While the cookies were baking I made the "Marinated Tofu Feta" which was the easiest recipe in the book. I'd recommend only using half the tofu and using half the salt. It would have been helpful if the authors mentioned how long you could store the marinated tofu. Actually it tasted pretty good so you might eat it up fast in a few days. Next I tackled a "Fruit Smoothie," which was easy enough. You may want to use orange juice with the "Very Berry" Smoothie. If you use soymilk be prepared to

Ok. First of all you really need to read "skinny bitch" in addition to buying this recipe book so you can understand what is happening in the world of food meets politics meets major health problems. That way you can infect the people you love with your knowledge and bring to light many important reasons why to become a vegetarian. This recipe book is great because after you decide not to eat Ms. Piggy anymore you can learn how to cook with veggies and other organic meatless foods. This cookbook is easy to follow and has easy find to ingredients, and won't keep you slaving over a hot stove for hours.

If you are hostile to vegetarian philosophy, don't bother. Don't bother with the book, and you can save your ranting time for something more pleasant. Maybe get a massage? Shop for shoes? Help out in a soup kitchen? The list is endless. I was working in a bookstore shelving the nutrition section when I came across Skinny Bitches. I thought it was another martini diet/how the rich stay emaciated gimmick book. I was pleasantly surprised to find instead that it is a vegan primer, with attitude. That tickled me, because most vegan books either speak to the converted, or adopt a peacenik/I-spend-all-my-time-in-yoga-class-or-mediating persona. That's not bad in itself. I just like seeing something different, something that will speak to a new audience. As for me, I've been a vegetarian for more than twenty years, a vegan for a third of that. I'm middle aged but often mistaken for a college student. My doctor is all smiles at my check-up, and I have the vitals of a twenty-five year old. I have good genes, yes, but I give my diet great credit for my excellent health. My siblings who are not vegetarians have not fared so well. I really doubt someone eating a low-carb/high protein diet after twenty years would be in such good shape. Most of the low-carb people I know have dull, aging skin. Why is that? But that's another topic. As for this book as a cookbook, it has become my daily workhorse cookbook. That's pretty amazing, since I have over 200 vegetarian cookbooks in my house. No, Skinny Bitch in the Kitch isn't that innovative. But I have innovative cookbooks I use twice a year because I'm too busy to make big productions of meals. I'm a single mom with two kids, and food has to be fast, healthy, delicious and not too weird. These are comfortingly familiar kinds of meals, which appeal to me, even after years of experimenting with some very strange ingredients. The use of meat substitutes makes these recipes less strange to my kids, and presumably, to a new audience of vegan cooks. Moreover, the quality of the recipes are excellent. The seasoning and preparation make them special. For example, I've made mashed potatoes a zillion times, but my kids liked the mashed potatoes even better than my other recipes. The inclusion of coconut oil is a question mark for me. Even if you see coconut oil touted everywhere on the net as a 'miracle oil', and often promoted by the arch-enemies of vegetarianism who believe you need a lot of animal fat to be healthy, i.e. Nourishing Traditions, as a skeptic I will withhold opinion until the data is conclusive. If you "buy" the coconut oil sales pitch, we vegans needn't worry so much about the amount of saturated fat there, which is considerable, because we're not eating meat and dairy and getting it other places. Nonetheless, it did make the cooked greens taste fabulous--the sweetness of the coconut oil cuts down on the bitterness of the greens, and I'm sure I'll make them this way forever. Coconut oil is also a very

Well, I thought the recipes were fabulous, because I actually have *tried* the recipes. Yes, at first look at the titles, you'll think, 'oh jeez, I've made that a million times before as a vegetarian/vegan'. But they introduce lots of herbs and ingredients to regular vegetarian fare that makes you enjoy the flavor and want to continue to eat healthy, not just settling for vegan food for the vegan-ness of it. Last night I made the "beef" stew -- the one with the red wine and fresh rosemary. It was deeee-lish. I had to add a couple tablespoonds of dried thyme and you must cover while you simmer, but the recipe is very hearty and scrumptuous. I've also tried the caesar dressing, the one with the silken tofu, and it is very, very good. Enjoy!