The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet: 250 Simple Recipes and Dozens of Healthy Menus for Eating Well Every Day : A Cookbook

my current favorite
I love this book! I have had it for a couple of months now and use it 3-4 times a week, no repeats yet, and I have liked everything I made! My meat-loving husband has liked everything too and that’s saying something. True, everything is very simple and you are not going to get complex, truly “gourmet” flavors from these recipes. But if you are like me (someone who loves to eat, but finds cooking boring unless I am in the mood) this book is perfect–everything is really easy, quick, cheap (only 5 ingredients!) and also very colorful and so very visually appealing– for simple, healthy everyday food I don’t think you can really ask for more. You could also easily add in ingredients to make the recipes more interesting– I have done this successfully several times. I also really like the menu suggestions since I don’t always like thinking of what foods go with what.

“Gourmet” should have been left out of the title
These recipes may be simple to make and pretty cheap as well, but many of them are mediocre or downright bland. You can tell just by looking at some of the recipes that there’s not much flavor. There are a few keepers, such as the Marinated Beans (canned beans, parsley, scallions, vinaigrette, pepper), Black Bean Salad with Feta and Peppers (black beans, red bell peppers, vinaigrette, parsley, feta or goat cheese), Baked Barbecue Tofu and Peppers (tofu, bell peppers, onion, barbecue sauce), and Black Bean Burritos (tortillas, onion, black beans, green chiles, olive oil). Most of the other recipes I’ve tried are things I would not make again, and many of the recipes I would never make because they just don’t appeal to me. The recipes are pretty healthy for the most part, though some of them call for the processed vegetarian “fake meat” products that I try to stay away from. This cookbook might be handy for those without cooking skills, those with very small kitchens, or those on a tight budget. I wouldn’t recommend it to others. There are many other vegetarian cookbooks out there that are much better than this one. If you’re looking for quick and simple recipes, I’d recommend Donna Klein’s “The PDQ (Pretty Darn Quick) Vegetarian Cookbook” or Joanne Stepaniak’s “Vegan Deli” over this one.

First off let me just say, I don’t like cooking. I hate it. I am trying to eat more healthy though, and I want to move to more of plant based diet. This is the perfect book to do that. It isn’t fancy (hard to do fancy with five or less ingredients) but it is healthy and tasty. Other books have 50 ways of tossing a green salad but this doesn’t do that. It has simple ways of preparing foods such as beans, lentils, and tofu in an easy and non-intimidating way. All of the recipes that I have tried so far have turned out well and that encourages me to keep on trying new stuff.I never intended to become a vegetarian, but going through this book I can plan meals (that I look forward to!) for weeks at a time without meat!I don’t think a book on vegetarian cooking can get a higher compliment 🙂

Makes cooking easy and fast. I found out I couldn’t eat meat because of a allergies. I knew nothing about being vegetarian and needed help with cooking.

I haven’t cooked anything from this book yet, but when you look at it’s name – it tells it all. I love the fact, that you can cook a real nice meal by using only 5 ingridients