Cookbook - "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone"

This past weekend I made two recipes from a cookbook I received as a gift (thanks, Kristen!), Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone: Banana Oat Muffins and Braised Chard with Cilantro.

Both turned out well. I added walnuts to the muffins, and used chard I'd bought that morning at Durham Farmers' Market. The chard has way more flavor than the muffins (likely due to the muffins being "guilt-free" - no butter and very little sugar), but both were worth making.

I like this cookbook for its accessibility, variety, and universal appeal - just because it's made up of vegetarian-only recipes by no means limits it to a vegetarian cook or eater. Furthermore, Madison's approach to and feelings about food are very much my own: "My primary interest in food has long been based on such issues as the variety of the food I'm eating, how it is raised, and where it comes from." She too is anti-nutritionism: "In the past ten years the idea of vegetables and fruits as containers of useful antioxidants and micronutrients has spawned a functional rather than a pleasurable approach to eating....Who really cares if a sweet potato is loaded with beta-carotene? What we do care about is that what we put in our mouths nourishes us and tastes good." Indeed!

I want to start taking better advantage of my sizable vegetarian cookbook collection, and will continue to share and recommend those cookbooks whose recipes I enjoy most and find most user-friendly.