Fix-It-Fast: Vegetarian Cookbook [Paperback]

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.

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

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!