Vicki’s Vegan Kitchen Eating with Sanity, Compassion & Taste Vicki Chelf

ISBN: 978-0-7570-0251-9 Length: 368 Pages Size: 7.5 X 9-inch Format: Quality Paperback 2-color, Fully Illustrated Category: Cooking Price: $17.95 US Availability: In Print Click below for: Synopsis • Contents Introduction • Reviews

Synopsis

The book begins by offering tips for making nutritious food choices, as well as an extensive glossary of ingredients. Vicki then discusses the simple kitchen equipment you need to have on hand and explains basic cooking techniques. Following this are twelve chapters packed with recipes for delicious dips, scrumptious soups, pleasing pastas, decadent desserts, and much, much more. And from Louie’s Onion Pizza to Coconut Upside-Down Cake, every dish is a winner--easy to make, completely vegan, and utterly delicious.

Whether you’re interested in compassionate cooking, you value the benefits of a meat-free diet, or you just want to treat your family to a wonderful meal, Vicki’s Vegan Kitchen will bring delectable vegan fare to your kitchen table.

Vicki Chelf is an experienced natural foods cooking instructor, an accomplished artist, and an internationally recognized food writer. She has also served as head chef at a top natural foods restaurant. Ms. Chelf has written six cookbooks, including The Arrowhead Mills Cookbook and Cooking for Life.

Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Preface

Introduction
1. The Healthy Vegan
2. Stocking the Pantry
3. Let’s Get Cookin’
4. Bread-Making Basics
5. Eat Your Breakfast
6. Drink Up!
7. Dips and Spreads
8. Breads, Muffins, and Pie Crusts
9. Soups and Sandwiches
10. Salads and Dressings
11. Sauces and Condiments
12. Pasta and Pizza, Please
13. Veggie Favorites
14. Mainly Grains
15. Bean-Based Bounty
16. Desserts to Live For

Resources
Metric Conversion Charts
Index

Introduction

Welcome to my kitchen! Come on in and sit down. There’s always room for anyone who wants to experience the joys and pleasures of vegan cooking. Don’t laugh. I know that vegan foods may not have the reputation of being fine cuisine, but once you taste dishes made with fresh local ingredients that are properly prepared, you are going to find them surprisingly delicious ... and the healthiest that this planet has to offer.

Over the years, notable names in the medical field like Drs. Neal Barnard from The Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, and Dean Ornish with his famous heart disease reversal study, have repeatedly illustrated the health benefits of a plant-based diet. Now, these advantages are even more apparent. The dramatic results of the comprehensive twenty-year China Study--headed by health and nutrition researcher Dr. T. Colin Campbell in partnership with Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine--showed an undeniable connection between what we eat and our health. The study, which involved thousands of adults from mostly rural areas of China, found that the subjects who ate the most animal foods developed the most chronic illnesses. Those who ate the most plant-based foods were the “healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease.”

The conclusion of the China Study, which has been considered the “most comprehensive large study ever undertaken on the relationship between the food we eat and the risk of developing disease,” is obvious. Avoiding meat and dairy products and eating a whole foods plant-based diet can help prevent many serious health conditions, including heart disease, cancer, type II diabetes, and autoimmune diseases. As you are about to discover, Vicki’s Vegan Kitchen is the perfect cookbook to support this healthy dietary lifestyle. You will learn not only how to prepare divinely delicious plant-based foods, but also how to do so without spending hours in the kitchen. Taking the time to learn the basics of this diet will enable you to make healthy vegan cooking an integral and fulfilling part of your life.

To start you off on the right foot, the book begins with an overview of the vegan diet, including its nutritional benefits and impact on weight control. Consider the next few chapters a primer--a place to turn to when you have a question regarding ingredients, cooking techniques and food preparation methods. Extensive glossaries that cover each of these subjects put all the information you need at your fingertips. Setting up a vegan kitchen has never been easier.

What follows next are fourteen chapters filled with over five hundred of my favorite recipes and recipe variations. As a follower of the vegan diet and a teacher of vegan cooking for over three decades, I have accumulated a great many recipes for delicious foods and beverages in my cooking arsenal...and it is my great pleasure to share them (along with lots of guidelines, tips, and suggestions) with you.

For breakfast, you’ll find a collection of delectable choices to start your day, from pancakes and waffles to hot cereals and scrambles. Along with sensational smoothies and juice drinks, the beverage chapter includes recipes for making your own nondairy milks, including oat, almond coconut, cashew, and rice milks. You’ll also learn how to make heavenly breads and muffins, perfect pie crusts, and incredible homemade pasta (you won’t believe how easy it is). There is an assortment of spreads and dips that range from gourmet to everyday, and a collection of sensational soups that can serve as elegant beginnings to a dinner party or comforting quick meals in themselves.

Nothing is healthier than a delicious fresh salad, and I share many of my all-time favorites with you. Chapters devoted entirely to beans and grains--staples of a healthy diet--offer palate-pleasing dishes that are a joy to eat and a pleasure to share with even your most discriminating dinner guests. Typically, delicious desserts have the reputation of being dietary “no-no’s,” but mine aren’t. I will show you how to create scrumptious pies, cakes, cookies, and other baked goods, as well as crumbles, crisps, and refreshing sorbets that are made without refined sugars, flours, or unhealthy fats. They are nutritionally superior to any that you can buy...and I think even more delicious.

To help ensure successful results, step-by-step reader-friendly directions accompany every recipe, as well as instructional drawings for the more complex preparation methods. No matter what you decide to make, every dish is an absolute winner--easy to make, completely vegan and utterly delicious.

Thanks for stepping into my kitchen. Please stay awhile, look around, try the recipes, and ultimately enjoy the radiant health that comes from good food.

Reviews

“Get ready for a warm and welcoming friend in the kitchen. Covering every category of vegan fare, Vicki’s Vegan Kitchen is a Joy of Cooking for the 21st century.”
--Nava Atlas, Best-selling author of Vegan Express and The Vegetarian Family Cookbook

“With Vicki Chelf’s treasury of fool-proof, easy-to-prepare recipes vegan cuisine has never been more delicious.”
--Cherie Calbom, Best-selling author of The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet

“Whether you want to go vegan or simply add healthy choices to your menu Vicki’s Vegan Kitchen shows you just how easy and tasty it is.”
--Dr. Susan Smith Jones, Best-selling author of Recipes for Health Bliss and The Joy Factor

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