Fix-It-Fast: Vegetarian Cookbook (Paperback)

by Heather Houck Reseck (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Now the Best Fast Food Comes From Your Own Kitchen!

Heather Reseck's proactive approach to vegetarian cooking is just what you've been looking for-a way to raise your pleasure-to-work ratio by cooking smarter, not harder. Learn how minutes of planning and cook-ahead shortcuts will save hours and reduce stress at mealtimes you because "you have it made."

The author introduces innovative solutions called investment cooking. A few deposits in the fridge will pay rich dividends for quick and tasty nutrition when you're too pushed or bushed to cook. The sections on fix-and-freeze, fix-a-mix, fix-and-forget, and fix-it-fast foods will banish panic in the pantry and free you up for spontaneous lat-minute hospitality.

A host of vegetarian convenience foods will make your meals delicious, nutritious, and fast. And each recipe includes a nutritional analysis for those on a specialized diet, along with multiple cooking and serving variations.

In the front of the book you'll find cooking tips, strategies, and principles of nutrition. Included are ideas on how to use this book to teach a cooking school, a bibliography, glossary, food storage chart, substitutions list, resources list, and an index.

Move over, Joy of Cooking! You've met your match, Julia Child! With this comprehensive resource a new bridge can become an experienced cook, or an experienced cook a master chef.

About the Author
Heather Reseck has 18 years of experience as a registered dietitian, specializing in vegetarian nutrition and teaching cooking classes. Being a lifelong vegetarian, she has a passion for palatable, healthy foods. Many of the recipes in her book have been tested dozens of times on her husband, Greg, and two children, and she loves to give gifts of food!

Product Details

• Paperback: 447 pages
• Publisher: Review & Herald Publishing (May 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0828015538
• ISBN-13: 978-0828015530
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #287,949 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heather's cookbook is a winner!!, April 2, 2003

By	Reggie Dwork (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I have come across a real treasure of a cookbook this time. This is a vegetarian cookbook that not only vegetarians will love but omnivores will love it too. It is one of the few vegetarian books that doesn't try to convince the reader that vegetarianism is the only way to eat and live your life. This cookbook shows one how make-ahead cooking makes sense and how you can cook once a week for a week or month of meals. You can then stock your freezer and take out each day's meal and heat it up for quick, easy, stress-free weeknight meals. Heather has shared guidelines for multiplying recipes. Another chapter is devoted to setting up the kitchen, tracking the inventory, stocking your refrigerator, freezer and cabinets and bulk foods. She has a very interesting chapter on mixes. She starts with the advantages of them to the magic of mixes - which includes the efficiency to the timeliness of them. She gives tips for preparing mixes and guidelines for converting recipes. Other chapters include slow cookers. The fix-it-fast chapter includes a brief discussion of pressure cooking as one of the time-saving techniques. I think every chapter has many charts, tips, real life situations, conversion guides etc. The chapter I really enjoy is the slow cooker chapter. There are 15 tips, 11 hints for adapting a recipe to the slow cooker, a cooking time conversion chart and a slow cooker start times chart. (The last 2 charts are so incredibly helpful for me that they are book marked for quick lookup.) Other chapters are Eight Traits of Great Cooks, Sharing Delicious Dividends (hospitality), and Gifts From the Kitchen. All these chapters before you get to any recipes!!

The book is easy reading -- I got into bed and curled up under covers and enjoyed it as much or more then any book I have read. The recipes use easy to find ingredients, They are laid out in such a way that they are very easily read and followed. Each recipe has a Prep Time, Bake Time, and Yield in the area next to the list of ingredients. After the directions are completed there is the Nutritional Facts which includes Daily Values and Diabetic Exchanges. Following that are Serving Ideas and Variations. Quite a few of the recipes are made even faster by taking advantage of the previously prepared mixes that have been stored.

She has included a very conclusive Bibliography, an excellent Glossary, a Resources section, and an extremely handy U.S./ Metric Equivalence Information area with quite a few charts and finally the Index.

This book contains so much useful information, real life situations and charts that I have not seen in any other book. What a great help to people. There are so many unique items that make this book a one of a kind.

We prepared 2 of the recipes ... Breakfast Barley and Split Pea Soup. They were both very, very good!! Quick and easy, nutritional information for each recipe, and the layout of the pages is clear. There is so much about the book I enjoyed that I can't list everything here. If you buy the book I don't think that you will be disappointed.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vegetarian Food in a Flash!, September 30, 2005

By	Melanie Wilson "vegetarianbabydotcom" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The first thing you need to know about Heather Houck Reseck, the author of this book, is that she's a member of the Seventh Day Adventist church. Not that it matters what religion your cookbook author is, but I didn't know this when I started reading this guidebook and I was distracted by her talk about the Sabbath and going to church until I realized what church she was talking about.

She's also a registered dietician and health consultant dedicated to helping hurried families eat healthy meals. Her book is big on shortcuts, from mixes to slow cooking, marathon cooking sessions to buying in bulk.

The book includes more than 100 pages on meal planning, nutrition and quick cooking methods, while the rest of the book features recipes for mixes, breads, dishes with fruit, entrees, side dishes, bean dishes, salads and food gifts.

All of the recipes include many variations so you can get a lot of mileage out of this book just by trying the same recipe in a different way. For instance, the recipe for bean enchiladas is a delicious but pretty standard bean, cheese and sauce situation that initially calls for refried beans, but includes variations that add brown rice, meatless burger, green chilies, sautéed vegetables and extra spice or exchanging the refried beans for black beans (which is the way I tried it, and I would definitely do it again).

Many of the recipes also include variations on how to cook the meal, from using the microwave, oven or stovetop to plugging in the slow cooker. There are tons of hints, tips and techniques for cooking quick, healthy meals that your family will love. If you want to know how to use a slow cooker or a pressure cooker, freeze meals for your family or get in and out of the supermarket faster, you'll find something of use in this book.

This book provides a very solid education in planning and eating vegetarian meals. Reseck is a little obsessed with clever plays on words and acronyms, but mostly these puns just serve to highlight her enthusiasm in her topic.

Reseck says there are eight traits of great cooks: they plan proactively, prepare nutritious food, produce delicious food, preserve simplicity, prize beauty, pursue timesaving strategies, practice ingenuity and persevere at learning. With the help of this book, you will build up a bunch of these traits, becoming a better good and giving your family more nutritious food in a flash. --Sarah E. White

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loving this Cookbook!, July 15, 2008

By	Janine - See all my reviews

I can't say enough good things about this book! I had read The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health and was impressed enough to rethink my eating. But I wondered how it would ever work.

Well, I bought this cookbook two weeks ago, and every meal has received either four or five stars from my kids! I never thought they would actually eat and ENJOY tofu, but they loved the Chili-Mac, Spinach Lasagna, and Stir-Fry recipes in this book. I have also made the potato salad, apple crisp, and peanut butter crispy squares. Yum! I like the make-ahead mixes and freezer ideas. That fits with my cooking style, and I thought I couldn't do it with vegetarian cooking. Yay! Thanks, Heather, for a great book!