Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates: Festive Meals for Holidays and Special Occasions (Paperback)

~ Moosewood Collective (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Moosewood Collective and its Ithaca restaurant celebrate 30 years of good vegetarian cuisine this year. With the increased popularity in vegetarian cooking, Moosewood has grown and developed its style in its roster of popular cookbooks. This new volume covers festive occasions and holidays from weddings to Father's Day, Halloween to Kwanza, which are challenging for everyone and more so for the vegetarian cook or those with vegetarian guests. Divided by season and then by celebration, this volume offers for each occasion a menu with recipes and useful hints for timings and presentation. The dishes have a modern, international feel. From the Southwestern Dinner Party with its refreshing Avocado Citrus Salad that brightens the Winter section, to the luscious Chocolate Souffl‚ Cake that would happily grace any dessert buffet, most of the recipes are simple to produce. The ingredients are described fully in a very helpful glossary, and the recipes carefully explained and often finished with alternative variations. After three decades, this book shows how vegetarian cuisine has come of age and can be appropriate for any occasion.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

For three decades, the famed Moosewood Collective has prepared innovative meatless meals that have left vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike clamoring for more. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of their internationally acclaimed Ithaca restaurant, The Moosewood Collective presents their first-ever collection of menus for memorable occasions, with vegetarian specialties for every season.

Holidays and celebratory gatherings can present a challenge for vegetarian cooks who want to serve festive meals that will satisfy all of their guests. The Moosewood Collective has met this challenge brilliantly, with more than thirty-five ingenious menus that can transform even casual get-togethers into a party. Covering a diverse array of holidays and occasions both traditional and spur-of-the-moment, Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates provides the perfect excuse to get to-gether with friends and family more often. You’ll find inspiring food ideas for all these and more:

• Traditional holidays, such as Thanksgiving, Ramadan, Kwanza, Passover, Diwali, and Christmas
• Family gatherings, from a casual Rainy Day Picnic on the Porch to an outdoor Labor Day Get-Together to a fully orchestrated Wedding or Commitment Celebration
• Just-for-fun events, perfect any time of year, including a Tapas Party, a Birthday Breakfast in Bed, and a Sports Night Supper

There is even an additional section on versatile party nibbles and celebration cakes to choose from, plus a chapter of delectable foods you can make to give (or mail) as gifts.

Filled with practical advice on preparing holiday feasts with the minimum amount of fuss, and incorporating the rich flavors and ethnic influences that the Collective is renowned for, Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates is an indispensable assortment of lively vegetarian menus spanning a dazzling array of cultures and occasions.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; illustrated edition edition (September 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609808117
• ISBN-13: 978-0609808115
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #384,689 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Cookbook for Entertaining, January 9, 2005

By	Stepford Wife (Midwest) - See all my reviews

I love this cookbook. I have made three recipes from it: the lemon-basil deviled eggs, the grapes with gorgonzola, and the jazzed-up cranberry sauce. They were all spectacular. I made the cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, and it was so good I sat there and ate it with a spoon right out of the bowl - it had such a tangy and unique flavor. I made the deviled eggs and grapes with gorgonzola (I used blue cheese) recently for a party and they were both well-received. In fact, people went ga-ga over the grapes. All three recipes are very easy to make, can be made in advance, and have no hard-to-find ingredients. Easy and unique recipes that produce results fit for company - this is my kind of cookbook! It's also one of those cookbooks that's fun to just sit down and read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars slightly disappointed, January 1, 2006

By	Rowan (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews

I love Moosewood- I love visiting and I love their cookbooks, and, like many people out there, I owe much of my culinary incliantions to them. I can't place what it was, but somehow this book just didn't measure up to the others in their collection. It isn't that these are not meals you would serve for "festive" occasions, it is just that none of them really struck me as something I would want to serve while playing hostess to people whom I have never cooked for before. There are so many other great recipies from the Moosewood that would be more appealing- especially if you are serving guests who are not vegetarians (meaning, I don't think any of these meals would really impress non-veggies). I would suggest getting one of the other books in the collection, and choosing meals for yourself that you think would best suit your occasion.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Heartwarming Cookbook, November 14, 2003

By A Customer

What a great idea for a cookbook - food as the symbol of celebration and tradition. Want to plan a vegetarian or vegan Thanksgiving spread? You're in the right book. Even if you are not cooking, the book is a pleasure to read and browse through because it explains the origins of vaious holidays and the foods that are made to celebrate them. The recipes are organized by season and by holiday (multi-cultural holidays such as Hannukah, Ramadan, and Christmas, as well as Fourth of July and Father's Day BBQ). There are tasteful illustrations and helpful hints about how to plan a meal so that everything arrives hot at the table. My only qualm is that many of recipes look as if they might take a long time to make; although there is an index for 30-minutes-or-less cooking.