Vegan & Vegetarian Cooking Titles

Vegan Microwave Cookbook by Nancy Berkoff — Just about everyone would like to come home to a pot of soup that's been slowly simmering on the stove all day. Or wake up to hot muffins in the morning. Unfortunately, unless you have an enchanted kitchen, these dream dishes are probably not going to materialize until you become acquainted with your microwave.

The Vegan Microwave Cookbook by Chef Nancy Berkoff is your key to terrific vegan meals. Many of the recipes will take under 10 minutes to cook. Others may be more appropriate for entertaining. Helpful advice includes:

- Converting Traditional Recipes to the Microwave
- If You Can Boil Water, You Can Cook with a Microwave
- Microwave Baking and Desserts
- Curries and Casseroles
- Microwave Breakfasts
- Suggestions and Recipes for Holidays, Parties, and Entertaining

Chef Nancy Berkoff is a vegetarian registered dietitian who has cooked meals for one to a thousand. She has over 20 years' of experience working in the food industry. Chef Berkoff has received awards from the American Culinary Federation, California Restaurant Association, and the U.S. Department of the Navy for Culinary Training. Her columns appear in the Orange County Register, Vegetarian Journal, and elsewhere.

Vegan Cooking For One by Leah Leneman — Although they may be part of a large family, vegans often have to cook separate meals — this cookbook offers over 200 diverse and seasonal recipes. The recipes are both savory and sweet, main meals and light snacks, and have influences and flavors from around the world. Best-selling cookbook author, Leah Leneman, offers easy-to-make, delightful meals with healthful, all-natural ingredients.

The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein — The medical world has been touting the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet for decades. In The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen, Donna Klein provides more than 300 recipes suited to anyone who wants to eat a healthful diet free of animal products. Unlike many vegetarian or vegan cookbooks that simply take the meat or dairy products out of a recipe — or even worse, use tasteless substitutes — this book includes only recipes that actually exist in Mediterranean cuisine. You won't find any grainy cheese substitutes or spongy meat imposters here. In chapters on every course from appetizers to desserts, the author presents recipe upon recipe for flavorful and healthy dishes.

Conveniently Vegan: Turn Packaged Foods into Delicious Vegetarian Dishes by Debra Wasserman — A diet with no animal products can seem utterly bewildering until you know the ropes. Consider Conveniently Vegan to be the ropes. Not only does it tell you exactly what such popular vegetarian foods as amaranth, bulgur, and quinoa really are, it shows how to shop for and prepare them. Better still, it offers weekly menu plans, specific dishes high in calcium and iron (two nutrients tough to get enough of without meat and dairy foods), and dozens of recipes for soups, salads, main courses and desserts.

The Peaceful Palate: Fine Vegetarian Cuisine by Jennifer Raymond — The Peaceful Palate is a vegetarian cookbook that belongs in every kitchen. The first 18 pages are devoted to background information on choosing food for optimum health including facts about protein, calcium, fat, dairy products, eggs, sweeteners, cooking with dried beans, equipping the vegetarian kitchen, stocking the pantry for healthful eating, "what to eat when you don't eat meat", and foods which may be new to the beginning vegetarian. The rest of this delightful culinary treasury id devoted to vegetarian recipes for breakfasts, breads, sandwiches, salads and salad dressings, sauces, spreads, dips, soups and stews, vegetables, grains and side dishes, main dishes, and desserts. From Antipasto Salad, Tabouli, and Pasta with Peanut Sauce to Tofu Pot Pie, Poached Pears, and Sweet Surprise Pumpkin Pie, The Peaceful Palate demonstrates that a vegetarian meal is a gourmet's repast and a hungry family's delight.

Raw: The Uncook Book: New Vegetarian Food for Life by Juliano Brotman with Erika Lenkert — "Gourmet raw cuisine" — if that sounds like an oxymoron, you'll be amazed by the creativity of the recipes in this book. Every food is "live" (uncooked) in these vegetarian recipes from Juliano, the raw-food guru of Los Angeles. Juliano believes that fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, beans, and seeds in their rawest and purest form are the most nourishing foods. If your imagination stops at alfalfa sprouts and grated carrots, hold onto your cutting board. Juliano's recipes include Butternut Squash Soup, New Moon Fruit Stew, Thai Green Papaya Salad, Living Buckwheat Pizza Crust, Mango Essene Bread, Mock Salmon Sushi, Raw Spring Rolls, seven varieties of burritos, nine varieties of pizza, and nine unusual smoothies. Desserts? Try EZ Pudding or Cashew Gelato. There are also condiments, dressings, and sauces, and plenty of information about preparing raw foods, including how to soak and sprout beans, grains, seeds, and nuts.

It is a very good cookbook and I have yet to find a recipe that didn't turn out as it was supposed to.—Norm Peterson, Arizona
My hubby keeps looking in the cookbook, and asks "when will you cook this recipe?"—Lori Hamby, Florida