While the wind whipped through Pittsburgh last week, I got to watch and listen to it from a beautiful retreat center out in the middle of nowhere. It was a lovely few days, filled with meditation, contemplation and prayer. Now I’m back, rejuvenated and inspired… to revisit my vegetarian past. I’m telling you, the food at this place was great! All vegetarian, healthy and delicious; even the meat-lovers were full and happy. If I were to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t say the food was the best part, but it was darn close! And I am ready to pull out the vegetarian cookbooks, my old favorites, the ones I’ve always wanted to try, and some new ones we’ve gotten in that have piqued my interest.
Old favorites:
Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day: While I love the original Moosewood Cookbook, too, the “fast and easy” aspect of this cookbook by the Moosewood Collective pushes it to the top of my list. Try the Peanut Dip or the Carrot and Parsley Salad.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison: This is a bible for me; it’s both a cookbook and reference book. For any vegetable or grain I don’t know what to do with, this book has a recipe, my particular favorites are the Tomatillo Salsa and the Couscous with Pine Nuts and Dried Fruit.
I have been wanting to try the following books for a long time:
Yamuna’s Table: Healthful Vegetarian Cuisine Inspired by the Flavors of India, by Yamuna Devi: This cookbook won a James Beard Award in 1992, as did her 1987 Lord Krishna’s Cuisine, and I love Indian food, so it’s time to take this off my must-try list and give it a go. The Broccoli-Spinach Spread sounds particularly intriguing, as does Shredded Beets with Fresh Coconut.
Passionate Vegetarian, by Crescent Dragonwagon: The author’s name alone makes me want to borrow this cookbook, but it also has over 1000 pages of creative recipes and writing. How often do you find the word “pulchritudinous” in the table of contents of a cookbook? I could go for the Mockamole or the Fresh Artichoke-Eggplant Lasagna with Lemon Sauce. Mmmm.
These relatively recent additions to our collection have also caught my eye:
Vegetarian Times: Fast and Easy: Great Food You Can Make in Minutes, by the editors of Vegetarian Times: What I really need is ‘great food you can make in seconds,’ but until that cookbook comes out, this looks like a good one. I really want to try the Clementine Salsa, and apparently it’s possible to make Black-Bottom Pineapple Tofu with Cashew Coconut Rice in 30 minutes.
Rose Elliot’s Sumptuous Suppers: Veggie Food with Style: With several bestsellers and a long backlist of vegetarian cookbooks, Rose Elliot’s latest looks pretty appealing. In fact, I’ll probably just look at the pictures.
Now that my mouth is watering, how about you? Any favorites you’d recommend?
-Kaarin
Eleventh Stack 