Product Description

Considered "the new Joy of Cooking" by authorities from Food & Wine to Vegetarian Times, this major cookbook introduces a contemporary cuisine that "tastes great and happens to be healthy." 1300 recipes, plus 300 pages of valuable kitchen information. 580 pages, illustrated.

Amazon.com Review

Cooking maven M.F.K. Fisher gave her approval to these 1,300 high-fiber, low-fat, low-sugar, and low-salt vegetarian recipes. And for someone who lived for flavorful food, that's sure saying something. The Goldbecks have been fixtures in the American whole-foods movement for more than a decade, and here they have thoroughly succeeded with their goal of creating "mouth-watering food that tastes great and happens to be healthful."

They call the whole-foods diet a "Darwinian" one because it's similar to the diet that our ancestors followed 50,000 years ago--"foods provided by our habitat." The Goldbecks write, "Just as we cannot put unleaded gasoline in our 1950 Chevy pickup and expect it to run efficiently, modern technological foods may be inappropriate for our prehistoric bodies." The simplicity of this theory is outstanding, although rushed lifestyles and the ubiquity of convenience foods make it easy to eat overprocessed, unnutritious junk at every meal. With most of its delicious recipes utilizing seven or fewer ingredients, however, American Wholefoods Cuisine can help you take the plunge into a healthier way of feeding your body.

A Most Excellent Cookbook

I am a person who loves to cook and own about 100 cookbooks. This is among my top 3 favorites. So far, I have made about 12 recipes from this book and each one has been a "10". The recipes are simple, wholesome, DELICIOUS and satisfying. This is not stereotypical vegetarian food (i.e. tofu and twigs). The recipes are filling and many have the feeling of comfort food.

I brought the vegetarian chili to an office party and it was devoured in minutes. Yesterday, I made bean moussaka (which sounds complicated but it wasn't) and it was absolutely one of the most delicious things I have ever made.

Best of all, this cookbook does not use exotic ingredients. Everything is easily findable in your local supermarket and the recipes are easy to follow.

This is a wonderful cookbook for both vegetarians and carnivores alike!

American Wholefoods Cuisine

Trying to find a good all round vegetarian cookbook is quite a difficult task. Many of the vegetarian cookbooks I've come across are either gourmet and not really suitable for everyday meals or full of bland tofu recipes that resemble cardboard in taste and texture. Finding recipes that use only whole foods is even more difficult. I've only come across one or two good ones that had maybe a half dozen recipes that I could actually use in daily life. The rest were either extremely laborious or required fresh foods that weren't readily available in my area.

Then I stumbled across American Wholefoods Cuisine. I was intrigued with the notion of vegetarian recipes that contained all whole foods. I expected and would have been quite happy with a cookbook that gave me a dozen decent dishes to try. Therefore, when I received the book and it contained 1300 meatless whole foods recipes, I was thrilled beyond belief.

American Wholefoods Cuisine has already become one of my staple cookbooks, along with a few old standbys given to me by my mother and mother-in-law. This book has a lot of everything from quick tasty snacks that I can make in a few minutes to full gourmet meals that I can make when I'm in the mood. In between there are all sorts of appetizers, soups, sauces, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, and baking treats. All easy to create with ingredients that I already have in my kitchen.

Most importantly, the food made from these recipes actually tastes good. For the first time in my life, I can eat completely healthy and not feel like I'm missing out on something. What's more, I have an ever-expanding group of young adults that are devouring everything I make as fast as I can cook.

my favourite

I originally bought American Wholefoods Cuisine in the early 80's when my children were small. It quickly became our favourite cookbook. I like their philosophy, the recipes are very good and it has one of the most complete indexes I've ever seen. The introduction explains how to be sure you are getting complete protien when you eliminate animal protien from your diet. There is a section on food handling and storage as well as cooking techniques. I was pleased to see that it was available again. My current copy is much loved and I wanted to give a copy to each of my girls so they can recreate the favourite recipes of their childhood. In the past 20 years, hardly a week goes by without my consulting it.

So many great recipes, so little time

My sister-in-law recommended this book. She had prepared one recipe for a meal we shared during a recent visit and it was great. I asked for the receipe and she provided the title and said she had not found a bad recipe yet. I immediately ordered the book when I got home. My wife and I love this book. We keep going through it and writing down recipes we want to try. We have yet to find one that we don't like. Each is a repeat for the future

good veggie stuff

we are not vegetarians, but purchased this book as a part of our effort to incorporate more vegetarian meals into our weekly menu. i really appreciate that they mark the recipes with major, minor or protein complement so you can build a nutritionally sound meal that is also satisfying. i also like to short-list of themed menus at the back that makes planning meals easier. not all recipes have been winners, but we have enjoyed several quite a bit and nothing has been inedible. i dropped it from 5 to 4 stars bc the nutritional content of the meals is not provided and thus i have to do a lot of math in order to figure out how much fat/calories are in each dish.