Very Vegetarian

I bought this cookbook when I was first transitioning into a vegan diet. It has been the most useful cookbook I have ever owned. I've made several recipes from it & they have all been fabulous! My favorite is the blueberry bran muffins - they're delicious! It also has very helpful advice on proper bean preparation as well as several different ways to prepare tofu. I don't know what I would do without this cookbook.

I am not vegan, but I got this cookbook 6 weeks ago and have been making nothing but its recipes ever since. So far, in the appetizers section, I've made the spinach and mushroom quesadillas (excellent, flavorful and beany) and the bruschetta with sun-dried tomato pesto and portobello mushrooms (beautiful presentation). The mushroom stock smelled great the whole time cooking. The miso soup was easy and quick, as were the potato and lentil soups. I've been delighted with how much flavor is in each dish. My friends have loved the basic, mustard-sherry and sesame-soy vinaigrettes. The potato salad was simple and tasty, although I did use real mayonnaise. Roasted red pepper coulis - I never would have thought of that on my own. The black bean burgers didn't hold together well, but the portobello mushroom burgers (cook in red wine) were AMAZING. Possibly my favorite so far. The spaghetti lentil sauce is delicious, and the sweet and sour eggplant stew was quickly eaten up in my house. The lemon zucchini risotto is summery and surprisingly light. I recommend soaking sun-dried tomatoes in hot water first, and then the farfalle with sun-dried tomatoes and portobellos is delightful. Macaroni and cheez - you have to enjoy the taste of yeast. I didn't care for it, but my housemates ate it up in one night. The apples in the curried couscous are a perfect pairing. The broccolli rabe dish was the best way I've ever had broccoli rabe before, although I omit the pine nuts because they're expensive. The acorn squash stuffed with wild rice and dried fruits is a perfect cold winter night dish - and it looked so pretty! The glazed tofu was amazingly flavorful considering how easy it is. No sheep's sheperd's pie has a delightful thyme flavor - I fed it to a true vegan who thorougly approved. You'd never believe there was tofu in the tofu banana bread. The pumpkin bread is great for sandwiches - not sweet, but savory. The whole wheat quick bread really is fast and easy - a great way to have fresh bread around without all the trouble. I decided pizza crust is too much of a hassle for me, but fresh pizza sauce is really not hard and wakes up your taste buds. The scrambled tofu and hash browns together make a great meal. Congee, a rice breakfast with pickled vegetables, was a new experience for me and I really liked it! The buckwheat cakes are great with the spiced apple maple sauce. I think of the muffins, I liked the good morning muffins best, but my house loved the blueberry bran and the polka dot muffins are good enough to be desert. Two of my vegan friends ate an entire pan of brownies in one sitting, and I brought the sugar cookies to a party and returned with an empty plate. The chocolate pudding was a bit too soy for me, but the pear betty was syrupy sweetness! That's all I've made so far, but it's inspired me to try so many new things, and the techniques just keep getting easier. It's making each meal time special. I would recommend

I have been vegan for 5 years, and I must say, I have never tried a better chocolate chip cookie, vegan or non! Even my siblings, who are picky and critical of vegan food, agree with me! The rest of the recipies in this book are just as amazing. The sheepless shepherd's pie was a delicous entree, and any meal is especially grand topped off with every-day chocolate cake. Despite the name, this no ordinary old cake.If you are looking for the best of vegan chow, I definitely recommend this book!

No doubt about it, this cookbook has some fantastic, delicious recipes that are great for adding some excitement to your daily vegan food rut. The author puts forth an effort to incorporate both simple comfort dishes (seitan sausage and macaroni and "cheeze", for example) and complicated, fancy works of meatless art (chilled soba noodles on painted plates...), perfect for presenting as an elegant entree. The dishes are all very flavorful and are ideal for entertaining non-vegan guests. Rest assured, they will be very impressed! However, be warned... many of the recipes have lengthy ingredient lists that may require a quick trip to the store to pick up a few things, including a wide variety of vegetables that you might not have at the time. But don't let that stop you, because once you get a feel for the dishes, you realize that they are very versatile and you can "play" with the ingredients, switching a vegetable here and there, using a different oil than is called for, or adding whatever you have leftover from the night before.One of my favorite dishes has become the curried cous-cous, which is easy to make, low in fat, and it tastes amazing with the addition of apples and/or raisins! Also, I recently made the Everyday Chocolate Cake, paring it with a layer of raspberry preserves, the thick chocolate ganache to hold the layers together, and the chocolate glaze to top it, and it was absolutely the BEST chocolate cake I (or any of my guests) have EVER tasted. It was gone in about 15 minutes, and no one knew that there wasn't a single dairy product in the entire cake (which really cuts down on the saturated fat level)! The pear betty is another fabulous dessert... super easy to make, and really delicious in the summer (or any time for that matter). In any case, this is a great cookbook with quite a few dinner ideas to set off that lightbulb in your head and get you cooking really delicious meatless, dairyless, meals.

I started with the Company Chocolate Cake which was absolutely fabulous! I'm not usually very good at making desserts, but I've already tried the Apple Cranberry Pie and the Gingerbread which turned out great (and were nice to look at too!) These are definitely desserts that you would never guess were dairy and egg free.There are so many good recipes like the White Bean Ravioli with Caramelized Onion Sauce or the Artichoke and Arugula Salad. This is the vegan cookbook I will turn to from now on when company is coming. I can't wait to try more of the dishes!