The apartment vegetarian cookbook

You don't have to be a vegetarian to use this cookbook. My broken spine, stained and annotated paperback was given to me by my brother, some 25 years ago. I immediately figured out that it had healthy stuff that tasted good, and tried many of the recipes. I just went back to it and tried one that I had never cooked--a whole wheat orange and honey coffee cake--DEElishous! It covers just about every category of food, except the now common "finger food" group--salads and dressings, breakfast pancakes and waffles, veggies, casseroles, main courses, breads and even pies. At at the bottom of each is a protein and calorie breakdown of the contents. I recommend this cookbook for beginners, to learn the tricks of dealing with whole wheat flour, cooking with whole grains, and meatless main dishes. I recommend this book for journeymen cooks, who want to expand their repertoire and stretch their wings. I think even the Master Chefs might gain some ideas and inspiration from these recipes. In fact, I'm buying a copy for a friend of mine who runs a catering business here in Austin Texas. She normally cooks Texas Country Cookin', but once a year, caters (literally!) to our Zen group on retreat. I've winnowed the kitchen bookshelf many times in the last 20 years, but this one stays every time. Someone will have to inherit it when I die.

This is the book I used back in the early 1980s when I went through my first vegetarian stage. The author does all the math for you to assure you are getting complete protein in each recipe and the portions are geared for 1-2 people so you're not tired of eating the same thing for days on end till it's gone. This book laid a foundation for me of solid nutrition-- in fact the author was talking about "free radicals" 20 years before mainstream health publications. Her conversational style is pleasant. Over the years, I incorporated meat back into my diet and gave away my copy of this book. Now that I am entering menopause, my metabolism is changing, food is expensive, and I only have one child left at home, I went looking for this book to get back to basics. I won't give it away again!