Customer Reviews

American Wholefoods Cuisine: Over 1300 Meatless, Wholesome Recipes from Short Order to Gourmet (Plume)

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The recipes in this cookbook are great. There are meals for every cooking skill level, and for almost all tastes (excluding meat, of course). The recipes don't include refined ingredients, opting instead for whole wheat pasta, brown rice, molasses, etc. The recipes are filling and delicious. Of all the recipes I've tried in this cookbook (and I've tried LOTS), there's maybe two that I didn't care for.

One of my favorite things: There's a detailed section on bread baking, which has been very helpful. (The pumpkin pan rolls are some of the best dinner rolls I've ever had.)

One thing to note is that this cookbook was written some time ago, so it can seem a bit...stodgy...at times, especially considering how far vegetarian cuisine has come in recent years. But I really enjoy classic (and, yes, sometimes stodgy) dishes, full of lentils and brown rice and the like. The barley-mushroom soup is amazing.

But here's the downside. Since falling in love with this cookbook, I've gone vegan. And there's a lot of eggs and dairy used in this book. Some substitutions are easy to make (soy milk for cow's milk, for example), but others aren't. I used to use this cookbook several nights a week, but now it's more like once or twice a month.

All in all, I recommend this cookbook, particularly for people who don't believe that meatless meals can be good. It was the first vegetarian cookbook I bought, and because of it I realized that doing without meat is not only possible, but very tasty!

I am not only astounded that anyone would give this excellent cookbook 1-star, but I'm equally astounded that Amazon would pick that one as its Spotlight Review. Every other reviewer gave this cookbook 5-stars. And so do I. This is by far the best cookbook I own. I completely wore out my first copy. Not only are the recipes delicious, but the ingredients used are mainly items you can purchase in a normal supermarket...a big plus for those of us who don't live within easy access to exotic markets. These recipes are great for the person who just wants to improve their diet, as well as for the hard-core vegetarian. Even meat-eaters would enjoy this food. I can't recommend it highly enough. I only hope that someday the Goldbecks come out with a new and expanded version!

Good job!

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! -Katy Farber

This is mainly in response to the member who rated this book one star. I have been thoroughly happy with this book, and also am on my second copy. My wife, I and the rest of my family, as well as the many guests we have entertained with the recipes have nothing but good to say about it. If you want recipes for real food, not just gourmet vegetarian recipes with over=priced ingredients, this is the book for you. I feel the Goldbecks went out of their way to write this book and helped many of us in doing so. I am sorry the person who rated the book 1 star had such a bad experience with the book. If she wants to get rid of it, I'll send her my address to take it off her hands.

This IS the only cookbook you'll ever need. I got it when I first began to cook and it is full of simple recipes and good cooking and nutrition tips. 15 years later, I make the more complex recipes as well, still refer to the tips, and often use the recipes as a base for my own experiments. It includes recipes for almost anything you could ever want to cook and even meat-eaters will appreciate the soups, breads, side dishes, salads, sauces, dressings, drinks, desserts, etc. I buy new cookbooks all the time but I always rely on this one.

This is a fantastic reference cookbook for vegetarians and others interested in healthy cooking and eating. Recipes are organized into chapters including short-order cooking, appetizers, soups, main courses, side dishes, condiments, sauces, breads, snacks, desserts, and beverages as well as a chapter on making your own yogurt, spouts, and convenience mixes from scratch and putting up produce. The authors also include chapters on vegetarian nutrition, meal planning, stocking your pantry, food handling, cooking habits, kitchen math, and healthy habits for eating out. In order to cram as many recipes as possible into a small space, there are no pictures, and there are 2 columns of recipes on every page, with over 1300 recipes in total.

The recipes are gathered from throughout the world, as well as created in the Goldbeck's own kitchen. A typical chapter includes Kisheri (India), Kedegree (Egypt), and Arroz Con Queso, followed by Rice with Cabbage and Cheese (Italy), and Paella (Spain). Vegetarian versions of all the standard American dishes are also included, like Mac & Cheese, Sloppy Joes, and Apple Pie. One of the great strengths of this book is that the authors provide instructions for making just about any food from scratch, from French onion dip to quick cornbread mix. Such recipes will not only save you money, but they will also introduce you to the delicious flavors of what food should taste like without all those yucky chemical additives.

Having been a vegetarian for 20 years, I have dozens of vegetarian cookbooks, including most of the Moosewood cookbooks, Horn of the Moon, etc. But when it comes down to it, if I needed to choose just one vegetarian cookbook to get by on, this would be the one. The comprehensiveness, variety, and creativity in this book just can't be beat.

This is my favorite whole foods cookbook because the ingredients are not exotic or hard to find. This is regular people cookin'! I bought it years ago and will soon replace my dog-eared copy. The flavor of the recipes is delicious. I appreciate that many of the recipes have alternate ingredients which is helpful for those with allergies. It's not only a book of recipes - it's also a how-to-cook-with-whole-foods book. It is not full of fancy pictures - just tasty, simple, real food. Comprehensive and a real value. Buy it!

I have not even tried any of the recipes yet, and I'm already happy I bought this book. I never went to chef's school. My parents weren't rich chefs. So I didn't learn how to store many of the foods I buy properly until I read this book. My previous idea of food storage was cans go in pantry, veggies and fruits all get crammed in the crisper box in the fridge in the plastic bags they were bought in, and spices go on the rack over the stove, imagine my suprise to find out that some veggies and fruits can be left OUT on the counter and in the pantry! I always wondered why the crisper bin was so small! The whole last 50 pages or so is PACKED full of GREAT information on things like how to store, prepare, and safely handle and cook every vegetable, grain, and otherwise whole food under then sun. The diagrams that show the EASY way to cut your veggies to make little squares and sticks are SO easy to understand, and things you just would never think of on your own (you don't have to peel carrots)! The kitchen math section give the conversions for just about every measurement I can imagine exists in the english language. A great help to my math-poor brain! Tips and short cuts such as storing unused portions of tomato paste frozen in ice cubes trays are just dead on BRILLIANT! The pantry lists give you a great starting place to copy down and take on your shopping trip to stock your pantry, freezer, and fridge with all the useful stuff you'll need to cook the recipes in the book, very helpful to me since I don't have ANY of this stuff on hand, and otherwise would be making daily trips to the co-op to buy each recipe's ingredients. I may not have to leave the house for DAYS thanks to this book! Being able to cook a meal without making a grocery trip is something I have never been very good at. Basically, the tips in this book are idiot proof. Maybe that's why it's gotten a few bad reviews, because it's got a lot of info that most of the "professional" and "lifetime" cooks who buy it already knew, but if you are in your twenties and not very experienced in the kitchen, or are a new convert to the vegetarian world, I think this book is the BEST guide I've seen so far. SO many of the other vegetarian cookbooks I've bought were SO over my head and out of my league. This book really helps! Even if every recipe in it is bad, I will still be happy I bought it! I have skimmed over some of the recipes, and the stuffed veggies section looks very promising, and the recipes sound very good, so I don't think that will be the case anyways.

All that, and it looks pretty on the shelf too, with it's checkered print spine. :)

hi there.

i rarely write reviews, but i did want to add my voice (or, as it is, my 5 stars) to the now & hopefully forever growing commending fans of this quietly spectacular cookbook.

i certainly second, third, fourth or even fifty-hundredth the idea that "this is the only cookbook you will ever need," or "this is the vegetarian joy of cooking."

absolutely!!

as an ex-vegetarian cook/chef (take yr pick. add caterer. note: turned bookdealer), & one who has at least 100 cookbooks, i can honestly commit to this as being my all time favorite. i buy it every time i see it (the bookdealer business) & make sure everyone i know has a copy.

& as much as i love the "greens"/deborah madison series, as much as i coveted (& finally got for Xmas) her giant basics cookbook, this one is better. in its subtle way it even beats "moosewood." & not that any of these are in the slightest bit bad -- just a note to convey just how phenomenal this one is.

its secret?? that it is the best build-from-the-ground-up vegetarian cookbook around. meaning: the goldbecks give you the quick & dirty. anything you make following directions straight from the book will turn out grand. but, in addition, they give you the foundation from which to expand upward into the vegetarian cooking skyscraper stratosphere. you can start from what they give you, move, delete, exchange, fiddle -- figure how to cook the base recipe to yr particular taste or demands -- & it works!! it always works!!

this is a great cookbook.

as to its vegan content, take 2 from yr long longterm animal-free (at least eatingwise) household:

* when this cookbook was written veganism was an extremely difficult business to accomplish (yr correspondent tried valiantly -- & this was later, in the 80s -- & still was beset by an onslaught of hidden ingredients).

* &, of course, SUBSTITUTE!! finagle those ingredients!! tofurella for cheese -- i believe it is applesauce for eggs (maybe it's butter) -- but it CAN be done!! & if ever there were a cookbook adaptable, this is it.

I disagree with the reviewer who gave this book only one star and said it was not good. I've used this book for years, everything I've made out of it is great. I've made the Mexican Pasta Bake for my family over and over again and they love it. The best thing about this book is the amount of information it gives you on different aspects of cooking, such as bean cooking, freezing, canning, etc, and pitched for vegetarians. I would never be without this book, and have bought another copy to keep for when my original one finally gives out. I can't believe anyone would find this book bad, maybe that person was having a bad kitchen day.