Customer Reviews

Compassionate Cook: Or, "Please Don't Eat the Animals!"

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I collect vegetarian cookbooks and this is the one that I always go back to. I think it's especially great for people just going vegan because it has recipes for common everyday foods using common ingredients. I use the pancake and banana bread recipes on a weekly basis. I send recipes from this book to my sister who isn't a vegetarian but who is lactose-intolerant. She loves the recipes because she's a picky eater and won't eat anything "weird"!

I know that when trying to fine a good cookbook you read a billion reviews, so i'll make this short.

I'm seventeen years old and a brand new vegan, so i started out knowing nothing. This is the first cookbook i bought, it was simple and easy to follow, and it's recipes have "normal" ingredients. Once you learn what your staples will be: nutritional yeast, tofu, TVP, beans... it's easy to keep them on hand no matter where you live. Believe me, i live in rural north dakota, i know the value of "down to earth" ingredients. This book is an inexpensive must-buy, very beginner-friendly.

I have been vegan for 14 years and have had this book for most of it. To this day, I use it all the time!
I recommend this book to any new veggie *or* a parent who doesn't know what to cook for their newly veggie kid! Here are a few reasons why:

1. This is family-friendly food. There are vegan versions of favorites like pancakes, birthday cake, chili, etc.
2. None of the recipes are difficult, so they work fine for a young cook.
3. They only require ingredients that you can find at a regular grocery store (except a few things in the small asian section, and also powdered egg replacer, which can be found at any health food store, in some regular grocery stores these days, or ordered online).
4. All of the recipes are vegan.

I wish you well on your veggie journey! :)

P.S. I've tried dozens of recipes in this book, and they all came out yummy, except for the vanilla frosting (which was too "buttery" instead of sweet), but there are other good frosting recipes in the book, and oodles on the web, so it's no big deal. ;)

This cookbook is really great. Many celebrities contributed recipes to it, like Rue McClanahan's "Tofu Cheesecake"! Is Rue a vegetarian? k.d. lang contributes a recipe for Indonesian Salad with Spicy Peanut dressing. Even Kevin Nealon from SNL contributes a tasty recipe. My favorite section of the book has to be the deserts though. I made "Peanut Butter Drops" recently and they recieved rave reviews. Like many people, I only drink soy milk, and it is great to have recipes that are made with soy milk in mind, sometimes it is difficult because the soy milk can flavor some dishes in a not so great way. The Spinach and Cashew Salad is great also. I look forward to picking some phat recipes from this book to bring to my best friend's wedding picnic. It's a must have.

Although I have been vegetarian my entire life - now vegan for 5 years - I figured I could use some help in the creativity department. As a full time college student, I wanted recipes that were fast, easy, unique, good, and healthy.

There are more than a handful in this book that fulfill the above criteria. The Applesauce-Bran Breakfast Cake was fabulous!... I hate eggplant as a general rule, until I tried the Baba Ganoush recipe, now I'm hooked. The Avocado Chili Soup didn't work out too well with my blender - it was too whipped, but it had tons of potential. Overall there are some awesome recipes in here that I will forever continue to use (inspiring lifelong devotion is no small feat for a recipe!).

Several of the recipes have at least one uneccessary ingredient -stuff like sherry, sugar, oil, vegetable shortening, etc. Also, tofu use is way over done (as if vegetarians absolutely need tofu! Personally I can't stand the stuff - tempeh either.).

In addition, I didn't see anywhere that mentions what kind of sugar, margerine, oil, etc. to use. This may not seem important to some people, but ostensibly the people who use this book most will be new vegans (the book is put out by PETA), so it seems that it would be rather relevant to suggest the kinds of sugar/margerine/oil to use. Regular white sugar, for example, is bleached using bone char. In addition, most kinds of regular margerine use animal by-products as coloring and flavor enhancers (a.g. whey)... IMO this was a massive oversight.

Some of the recipes could easily have been made with more healthful ingredients. The aforementioned Applesauce-Bran Breakfast Cake calls for 1 cup (!!!) of sugar. About half a cup of organic maple syrup easily does away with that requirement and the cake tastes infinately better.

I would reccomend this book for the great recipes it does contain, but don't be suprised if you end up with just a few favorites and the rest of the book unused. Also, don't be afraid to make substitutions!

I have many different vegetarian cookbooks and yet this is the one I always use. It does not use ingrediants that are weird or unpronounceable. For anyone just starting out as a vegetarian or have been one for years. This cookbook is for you. Enjoy!

Being a want-a-be vegetarian it was nice to finally find a vegetarian cookbook that had recipes of menu items that I was already using. The ingredients were items that I now carry in my kitchen with very few off the wall ingredients. The recipes are easy to follow and familiar. Thanks from the bottom of my healthy heart!

I have been vegan for 14 years and have had this book for most of it. To this day, I use it all the time!

I recommend this book to any new veggie *or* a parent who doesn't know what to cook for their newly veggie kid! Here are a few reasons why:

1. This is family-friendly food. There are vegan versions of favorites like pancakes, birthday cake, chili, etc.
2. None of the recipes are difficult, so they work fine for a young cook.
3. They only require ingredients that you can find at a regular grocery store (except a few things in the small asian section, and also powdered egg replacer, which can be found at any health food store, in some regular grocery stores these days, or ordered online).
4. All of the recipes are vegan.

I wish you well on your veggie journey! :)

I have liked almost every recipe that I have tried from this book. I have purchased it twice. Once for myself and once as a gift for a friend. I would recommend it for anyone starting out a vegan kitchen. If you already have loads of vegan cookbooks, you might want to just skip this one and get a specialty cookbook like "The Mediterrean Vegan Kitchen".

As a resident of the world, I've bought and thrown away tons of books because they're heavy to carry. "The Compassionate Cook" is still with me after many years, and not just because it's compact. The recipes are good, many adaptable to nearly every country I've lived in, and for the most part simple to prepare. It also includes a couple good intro sections: "A note about nutrition" is more informative than many big books (in plain language too); "What to eat instead of . . ." offers ideas to the new converts as well as the old hands. It also has a satisfactory "Glossary of ingredients." This is no designer cookbook; it doesn't pretend to be. Its substance makes up for the lack of glossy pages and pretty photographs.