The New Laurel's Kitchen [Paperback]

Laurel Robertson (Author), Carol L. Flinders (Author), Brian Ruppenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1986

The New Laurel's Kitchen includes plenty of simple, beat-the-clock recipes - who doesn't need them? But it refuses to blur the distinction between natural foods and fast foods. If you need forty-five minutes to bake a potato or cook brown rice, fine. That's good, solid wind-down time, precious in today's hurried world: time to cut up green beans, or prepare a cauliflower curry; time for the children to dry the lettuce and help make an Appley Bread Pudding. Laurel's kitchen has its own pace - a human pace, that lets other things happen besides just dinner. Good health is the first concern here, and foods that support it are rendered irresistible: dishes like Mushrooms Petaluma, Poppyseed Noodles, Lazy Pirogi, and Sebastapol Pizza. These are well-tested and innately manageable recipes, homespun, but with a generous splash of the sophistication that has swept the food world in recent years.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The original Laurel's Kitchen, now 10 years old, demonstrated that vegetarian food can be nutritionally sound and need not be dreary. It has been enormously influential and remains so, even now when vegetarian and whole foods cooking has joined the mainstream. For this sequel, almost every recipe has been revised to lower fat content or enhance nutrition, and 150 new recipes have been added, along with a long final section on nutrition that is all new. As in the original volume, recipes are excellent. This new version deserves to be as popular as its predecessor. RD
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press; 6th Printing edition (October 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 089815166X
• ISBN-13: 978-0898151664
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 1.3 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,790 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

128 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book was a light in the darkness for me!, November 10, 1999

By 

ktjpsmom (san francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Laurel's Kitchen (Paperback)

I first encountered Laurel, Carol et al. in 1985, after reading and being impressed by Diet For A Small Planet but feeling constrained by the narrowness of protein complementarity as it was then understood. I had been told by my doctor to lose the fifty pounds I had gained with my first pregnancy or she wouldn't be around to help me with a second one. A vegetarian friend suggested I try changing the way our family ate. Since I did then and still do love to cook, I was ready and willing to make whatever changes might be necessary. Laurel's Kitchen was a light in the darkness for me. The recipes were fun to make and best of all, they tasted great. My formerly meat and potatoes or nothing Irishman husband took to our new way of eating with real enjoyment. I took great heart from the philosophical musings that began the book and were interspersed with the recipes. When the second edition came out, in 1986, I was fifty pounds lighter and beginning a pregnancy as a well-nourished lacto-ovo vegetarian. My 11 pound son's birth left me two pounds lighter than I had been at his conception. I have gone through 3 copies of the 1986 edition, and have memorized (with our own personal modifications) all our favorite recipes, which have become family classics. I have never regained the weight I lost fourteen years ago and am in my twenty-fifth year of teaching high school history. My husband and our two teen-agers are healthy, slim and energetic. My daughter, at 16, takes a lot of static from well-meaning "friends" about her vegetarian diet, but she remains committed but never censorious of others' eating habits. We are happy with our choice and eternally grateful for the wit, wisdom and just plain good eating to be found in Laurel's Kitchen. As Carol states,"Laurel didn't believe just in cooking vegetarian...it had to taste good."

62 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Family Used This book Even When We Weren't Vegetarians, January 5, 2002

By 

Kelly Mathews - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Laurel's Kitchen (Paperback)

This book really has in-depth information on nutrition that's good for any family. In the nutrition section, vegetables and fruits are listed along with the vitamins they contain. This way, you can plan better on getting vitamins in your meals. Laurel talks about how by eating less meat protein, we absorb vitamins in our fruits and vegetables easier. This makes it easier for the vegan and vegetarian can meet al their health needs. The bread recipes are easy as (forgive me!) rice crispies, but the results are often artisan breads because of their fine, simple ingredients. Try the english muffins, pumpernickel bread, whole wheat french, the black bread and my favorite, oatmeal. My husband loves the tamale pie. The vegetarian shepherd's pie is another staple. I also love the minestrone soup, the baked eggplant parmesan ( you can use any crumbs, not just crackers!) and stuffed peppers. I like the way the menus are layed out. It makes it easy when you first start out. It's also a good book for introducing yourself to the concept of whole foods and getting away from packaged foods if you haven't already. They are very strict about sugar when they talk about nutrition in this book, which makes alot of the recipes great for diabetics. However, it's a little too strict at times, if you're not a diabetic since as the main author states her belief is that, "sugar is sugar is sugar." There are too many important enzymes in fruit to worry so much about the sugar! So much of the information is in depth, and that's what makes this book a standby for me. There are instructions on how to make yogurt at home, also soybean milk. There is eomthing really wholesome about the book, which I find appealing as well. Well-put together and organized I definitley suggest this book for your cookbook and nutrition library.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a "must-have" guide to vegetarian cookery, August 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The New Laurel's Kitchen (Paperback)

I first learned of Laurel's Kitchen in the mid-1970s when my parents gave my sister Laurel a copy for Christmas. Being an artist, I really admired the woodcut illustrations. However, I didn't start to use the book religiously until 1978, when I and all my grad-school friends decided to pursue a vegetarian life style. My copy, which I bought at the food coop where I volunteered is now in pieces, but I still use it regularly. I can count on the book to contain information about vegetables I'm not familiar with, and how best to prepare them, plus providing clear instructions for making such things as yogurt and sushi nori. Though no longer a strict vegetarian, having a husband and two children who like meat far too much to give it up just yet,I eat meatless meals at least several times a week. The recipe for Sultana's Spanakopita (a real winner!) has inspired a family favorite: broccoli pie, in which we've substituted broccoli for spinach.