Cookbook Potpourri

This is something that's a little off my beaten path, but we all have to eat. Summer is a more relaxed time for me; there's more time for cooking and eating leisurely meals.  Here are a few cookbooks that are keeping us well-fed this summer:

Vegan Yum Yum: Decadent (But Doable) Animal-Free Recipes for Entertaining and Every Day
by Lauren Ulm
Health Communications, Inc.
2009
290 pages
$18.95

This is a great everyday cookbook with simple, easy to follow instructions and plenty of gorgeous, full-color photographs.  Lauren Ulm has a website veganyumyum.com.  Her book has more than 100 recipes for everything from breakfast, to dinner, to dessert.  A few recipes call for exotic ingredients, but most of the meals here can be made from ingredients found at your local grocery store.  You don't need to be a gourmet chef to execute these recipes, and there are some vegan variations on traditional comfort foods, like baked macaroni and cheese.  I love the blueberry grunt, which sounds like a bizarre dish, but is really a sort of cobbler--super easy to make, and delicious.  This is a well written cookbook that is easy to use.

If you like desserts, you'll love the next two cookbooks:

Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar:  100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone's Favorite Treats
by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero
paperback, $17.95
DaCapo Life Long

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World:  75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule
by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero
paperback, $15.95
DaCapo Life Long

I love cookbooks that have lots of pictures:  I really need to know what the finished products are going to look like.  Both of these cookbooks have full-sized photographs for each recipe.  More importantly, these baked goods are so wonderful that you will never miss the dairy ingredients.  The cookies are to die for.

Finally, by the same authors:
Veganomicon:  The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook
Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero
DaCapo Long Life
2007
298 pages

This cookbook is an inclusive and very instructional book for cooks who are already committed to a vegan diet, as well as those who might just be starting out.  There are great sections on stocking the vegan pantry, kitchen equipment, cooking and prepping terminology, and more.  There are also helpful and informative tips scattered throughout the cookbook--this is a book you might sit down and read, or you may just grab it and start on a recipe.  Again, the recipes don't all call for strange and exotic ingredients you'll only use once--a pet peeve of mine.  My daughter made "Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream" this weekend, and it was wonderful.  This is one of those cookbooks with the color photographs all in a center section, so you don't have the pictures right next to the recipes, but this is a minor quibble.  I'm looking forward to having this in our kitchen, and predict we will use it all the time.

Even if you aren't vegan, you might want to pick up a vegan cookbook and try a couple of recipes--you might be surprised at how easy vegan cooking is, and how little you will miss animal products.  It has been a slow journey for my family, and some of us still indulge in dairy products on occasion (names deleted to protect the guilty).  These days it seems as though there are vegetarians or vegans at every gathering, so its not a bad idea to have a recipe or two up your sleeve.

What are your favorite cookbooks?  Anyone out there tried any recipes from these cookbooks?  Or maybe you have a cookbook or a recipe you'd like to recommend?