By Nikki and David Goldbeck

Reviewed by Katy Farber


If you only buy one vegetarian cookbook, then this should be it. American Wholefoods Cuisine by Nikki and David Goldbeck is packed with 1,300 meatless recipes, and is the most comprehensive vegetarian cookbook I’ve ever seen.

No, it doesn’t have glossy photographs of food that you will never get to look like the picture. And it certainly doesn’t have one of my biggest pet peeves about vegetarian cookbooks: exotic and hard to find ingredients. What is does have is recipes that are made of wholesome, easy to find ingredients, with simple to follow directions for preparation.

The recipe section is divided into helpful sections, with my favorite being “Short-Order Cooking”. This section is packed with quick delicious recipes that can take mere minutes to bring from the kitchen to the table. For me, this is worth the whole book! In each section as well, within different food types, there is a short description of each with helpful cooking tips. This is very helpful if you’ve never made a crepe before, for example.

Aside from the voluminous recipes, there is loads of other information in this book. There are sections on wholefoods philosophy and nutrition, and at the end there is a section called “The Food Reader”, which goes into extensive detail about how to create a well stocked pantry, how to handle and store food, tips on cooking, kitchen math, and tips for eating out.

Like I said, this book is several other books packed into one. It is a cookbook, whole food nutrition guide, cooking instruction manual, and general vegetarian lifestyle guide. No wonder it took the Goldbeck’s five years and endless hours of testing recipes to write this book!

Buy this book now!

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