Customer Reviews

The Book of Whole Meals: A Seasonal Guide to Assembling Balanced Vegetarian Breakfasts, Lunches and Dinners

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

 

 

I recommend this book to anyone interested in macrobiotics, vegetarianism, and general healthy living. The book begins with the theories on why it is important that we eat organic, locally grown, natural foods. It explains how to choose your meals, what those "wierd" natural foods are that were unfamiliar to me before I read this book, and even how to set up your kitchen. The recipes make up the second half of the book. It is divided into winter, spring, summer, and fall with seven complete meal plans for each season. These meals are something you could actually make. Leftovers from dinner are combined or changed into something completely different for lunch and breakfast the next day. In the sidebars of each page are directions for how to prepare the complete meal in the proper order. For example, it might say 1. Cook rice. Go on to soup. 2. Chop vegetables. Go on to tofu. 3. Marinade tofu. Go on to etc. Then the complete recipes are listed on the main part of the page. All the recipes in this book are easily adaptable to your particular tastes. The only thing I don't like about it is there are a few recipes involving fish or eggs. I am a vegan, so I don't use either of these.

With this book, I started at the first fall menu and started cooking my way through it. It's been totally doable. The recipes are so simple and laid out with directions of what to do first, second etc. that preparing entire meals with dessert gets faster with time. (She includes a healthy dessert in most of them.) I have noticed a couple mismarkings that would've affected the whole dish if I hadn't caught them, and while some of the recipes are really wonderful, others are just plain yuck! (I know it's health food but sometimes it goes too far!) As for flavor, it's definitely on the side of the old "healthy" stuff. If you're looking for the creative haute-cuisine vegetarian/vegan stuff you can find today, this is not it. However, the meals make me feel good and satisfied. They are so balanced, I find I don't crave sweets afterwards. The suggestions for what to do with the leftovers are really useful. Also, if you are nervous (as I was) about using all of these strange ingredients, the directions are simple enough that you'll become a pro in no time. One more thing - my complexion has really improved since I started using this book.

this book was not what i expected. it may be a very good book for those who cook or intend to cook 3 meals a day. But when i bought this book, i thought it was about making a full balanced meal at one time. this book is set up a bit differently. it gives instructions to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once. the breakfast needs some bit of dinner leftovers, the dinner requires some part of lunch leftovers and the lunch needs some ingredient from the breakfast. So in order to make one meal, you have to make all 3 meals. so if you just want to come home and cook a single meal of dinner, then this book is not for that.

I am not a vegetarian but I would like to become one. I bought this book because it offered balanced vegetarian breakfasts, lunches and dinners - just what I was looking for. However, the dinners are HUGE! Of course, a person does not have to cook every dish on the menu, and she does state that, but the whole reason I was drawn to this book was I wanted a book that would say, "Here eat this and you'll get all the nutrients you'll need as a vegetarian." I did not have a problem, as one reviewer did, with the idea that I would need ingredients from dinner, for example, for breakfast the next day. In fact I liked that idea. The first fall menu is: Miso Soup, Brown Rice, Aduki Beans, Sauteed Carrols, Onions and Squash and Cabbage Salad. Doesn't that sound great? For this meal, she writes that you will need TWO 2 or 3 quart covered pots, a 4-quart pressure cooker or 3-quart covered pot, plus a skillet or saucepan. Do you have, or usually need, that many pots? I don't. The next day after cooking this dinner, you use the left-over rice for breakfast, the left-over aduki beans for a soup for lunch and the left-over sauteed carrots-onions-squash in a dish of fried rice with vegetables, also part of the lunch. I like that but I would have to make the lunch for the next dinner because I just don't have time to spend over a half hour cooking a lunch. I will screw up my courage eventually to try to see how I can use this book, perhaps even buy some more pots and whatever, but I wish someone had written a review warning me about the cooking vessels needed to do the menus as written. (Waffle iron needed for breakfast number three, by the way.)

It's so - so. I didn't think it was that fantastic -- at least not as great as one of my friends who owned a copy raved about it. But, then again, she's not a vegetarian either. I'm not a vegetarian either, but am a Vegan which means I eat a much more restrictive diet and try to stay away from soy products because they block digestion of such things as Iodine.

I have had this book since the mid-1980s, when I got it as a gift. It's kind of an oddball book in a couple of ways. Although there are separate recipes, the book is designed in a seasonal and whole-meal format. Some of the recipes are a little curious, some work OK, and others are puzzling unless you are a fan of traditional macrobiotic ingredients.

However, in this somewhat hodgepodge compilation, one recipe stands out completely, and that is the one for tofu cream pie. This alone is worth the price of the book if you like a healthful dessert that's not too sweet (of course, you can adjust the sweetening, as I do, but I make it even less sweet).
You have to like the taste of tofu and tahini to fully enjoy this pie. The crust is simple - although a bit tricky to put together - and goes well with the filling. I have found that this pie is really good topped with some soy or coconut ice cream. Anyway, truly the book is worth it if only for the tofu cream pie recipe, which I have never seen anywhere else and does not even seem to be on the web.

Be aware: I do not know if the current version is the same as the one I have and includes this recipe.

I eat macrobiotically, and although this book is not macro specific, it does a GREAT job laying out how to plan meals to minimize time spent cooking...

This is an exceptional book for anyone new to vegetarian cooking and concerned about getting the nutrients that are necessary. The recipes are hearty and the meals are robust.