Quick Fix Vegetarian by Robin Robertson

Healthy home-cooked vegetarian meals in 30 minutes or less

Quick Fix Vegetarian, Robin Robertson's new cookbook, should be welcome in every vegetarian household, even though all the recipes are vegan. It's complete without being too long, healthy without being inedible, time saving without cutting corners on nutrition. Ms Robertson fully understands the challenges and contradictions of wanting to eat delicious healthy food, but feeling like you don't have enough time to plan, shop and prep healthy vegetarian meals. The Quick Fix Vegetarian makes it easy to reconcile the ideal with the real in your vegetarian diet.

Chapter 1 of Quick Fix Veg thoughtfully provides kitchen tips and time saving strategies for the vegetarian kitchen, as well as information about the ingredients and the recipes – which in my opinion, raises this vegetarian recipe book to a whole 'nother level of usefulness – as a teaching cookbook. It establishes Robin Robertson's expertise as a vegan chef, and as a writer and teacher about vegetarian food.

As Ms Robertson says, "a 'quick-fix' kitchen is about more than easy-to-prepare recipes with short cooking times. It's also about keeping a pantry well stocked with meal-enhancing ingredients that can help you save preparation time, keeping a well-organized kitchen, and assembling your ingredients before beginning a recipe. It's also about incorporating strategies such as having sharp knives and other time-saving equipment, as well as menu planning and the judicious use of convenience foods, many of which are called for in the recipes in this book."

"For those who prefer to prepare these convenience foods at home, I provide recipes for making many of them from scratch, along with descriptions of their store-bought counterparts." That last bit means that she tells you how to make basics like soup stock and pie crust, as well as gourmet delicacies like hummus and guacamole –faster, easier and cheaper than a trip to the store.

The recipes give serving suggestions and amounts, although no nutritional info or calorie counts. A big plus to Quick Fix Vegetarian: The recipes are fantastic! I’ve 'borrowed' a couple of recipes to entice you to buy the book. Here's a simple tofu recipe: Tahini Green Bean Salad with Baked Tofu. Ms. Robertson doesn't neglect the slow cooker, which she and I agree is one of the greatest time saving inventions of the modern age. Try her slow cooker recipe, Jamaican Red Bean Stew. And look for another of her excellent cookbooks, "Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker", published in 2004.

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