As a vegetarian cooking for my dairy allergic son, I found myself lost in the sea of "meat" substitutes. Enter VEGANMONICON. Every recipe I've tried has been fantastic, fairly easy to prepare, and did I mention, fantastic! I have always been curious about vegan cooking and now I have tried and true recipes to satisfy my curiosity and appetite- yum.

I could not find a single recipe that includes cheap, eco-friendly, uber-healthful cabbage. Not a one! There isn't even a single entry for cabbage in the index! To put this into perspective, there are 19 index entires for potatoes, 9 for pumpkin, 4 for yuca, 3 for dill, 2 for lemongrass, 2 for dates, and 2 for agave nectar. But not a single entry for the veggie many cost-conscious vegan northerners use more frequently than many other, much more expensive options. Crazy!

I am a new vegan I ordered this and anxiously waited for it , I find it creative and informative ( lots of info about new foods ) but It is not really practical. The recipes look like they will take all day . I find some of the recipes so exotic I am scared to try them like. Adzuki acorn squash ane pears in soup, It could be amazing but I don't want to spend that much money and time if it isn't , I'll be keeping it, there are some great explanations of tecniques , The authors are funny and smart , But over all it is kind of dissapointing .

I like the book and I have found some great recipes in it, but also some that are not. One of the recipes in the books is heralded as one of their favs... I made it and it was not at all good... not even a little. I agree with one of the previous reviewers that sometimes the flavor combinations are weird. BUT, it has a phenomenal banana bread recipe in it, so it's not all bad. I have noticed that in the case of many of the recipes, that the editing doesn't seem to be that great. In the case of the banana bread, for example: at the end of the recipe, it says to add the chocolate chips, if using them... well, this is the first mention of chocolate chips. In most recipes I have seen, if there is an optional ingredient, it is usually included in the ingredients list as such, with a quantity / amount to use. I have found similar examples to this throughout the book. Maybe a more experienced chef wouldn't need these little details and I have certainly figured it out, but this detail would have been helpful all the same. I would rec it, but you just need to be aware. Happy cooking!

This is a truly amazing book! It covers everything you could want, and everything is great! I have never had a book I could count on so heavily to wow me each and every time, until this one. I can't wait to try them all!

I LOVE that most things in here are things I can make out of what is already in my house. I rarely have to buy anything different to make what sounds good. The pantry stocking list is really helpful for this stuff, when you are first starting out, by the way! (I took the book to the store with me!)

Overall, I just love everything about it. And I love that the authors have a website where I can ask questions if I have them, and get answers from others who have tried them too! www.theppk.com :)

This book was bought as a gift, therefore I cannot review it for content. However, it was received within a short time and looks to be in great condition.

After a petty lacto-ovo veg existence, I finally mustered the courage to go vegan. It was one of my better decisions--unlike my idea to crochet frogs for everyone on my xmas list. This book facilitated my happy transition, diversified my pantry and greatly improved my cooking's street cred. It even convinced my meat and potatoes, republican co-worker to change up his "butter makes it better" mantra!

Fantastic collection of recipes! The only reason that I didn't give it five stars is that I haven't made enough of the recipes to determine how frequently I will be using it. However, the majority of what I have made has been excellent. My husband raves about the black bean burgers and the banana bread recipe is the best!

I have been vegetarian my whole life, but have always wanted to take the final step and "go vegan". I finally did and rushed out to buy a bunch of vegan cookbooks, Veganomicon being one of them. All of the other vegan cookbooks have been put on a shelf, but Veganomicon stays handy on the countertop. I often just pick it up and drool over the recipes even if I'm not going to cook anything! Everything I've made has been really, really good. I've read the reviews on Amazon and people are correct that if you are a new vegan you will probably not open your pantry and already have the ingredients to start cooking these recipes. But once you've stocked the pantry with a couple essentials the recipes are easy to make. Veganomicon has made my transition to eating vegan a breeze and I'm not looking back! I fully recommend this cookbook!

This is an excellent book. I have owned this for several months now and it's the only one I reach for. It's great because the ingredients used are normal items that are found in your kitchen, since many vegan recipes can sometimes get crazy with exotic health-food ingredients. Someone said in an earlier review that they use an odd combination of flavors, but I do not agree with this. I've tried about 20 recipes from here (some with flavor combinations I had never tried before, and was curious about the outcome) and they have all come out delicious and are quite genius actually. These girls know what they are talking about! They also have a nice variety of recipes with no soy, which is nice. Lastly, it is a beautiful hardcover book and really is worth much more than what it is selling for.

I adore this book. First, I love Isa's writing syle. Its like having a really funny friend explaining the recipes and procedures. I think it makes the book really approachable, not only to new vegans but to anyone who is new to cooking in general.

Everything that I have tried has been delicious. Some favorites are:
Coconut Lemon Bundt Cake, Pumpkin Baked Ziti, Chickpea Cutlets, Chili Cornmeal Crusted Tofu, Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe with Rotelle, Pasta Della California, Vietnamese Seitan Baguette with Savory Dipping Sauce, Snobby Joes, and Baked Potato and Greens Soup with Potato-Wedge Croutons.

As an experienced cook, I don't take any recipe or cookbook at face value. Everyone has their own preferences and tastes. Because of this, I judge a cookbook based on whether each recipe as a whole works, with minor adjustments for personal taste. If too many recipes need too much overhaul, I deem the book rather useless. This is not the case with Veganomicon. Sure, I have tweaked all of the recipes above to suit my own preferences. I think you have to do that. My preferences are not always going to match the author's or yours.

So, there hasn't been a single recipe that I felt I couldn't use. Some of the flavor combinations are refreshing and unexpected. I like that. Its not the "same old same old". I've got alot of cookbooks with typical vegan recipes in it. I wasn't looking for another.

I was also looking for something innovative and traditional (with a twist) that would age into a classic. Something that my family would use for years. This book is it.

This cookbook is a major disappointment. I have been vegetarian or should say 97% vegan for over 28 years and this is one of the worst cookbooks I've come across yet. Recipes are time comsuming and flavors off. Sorry I wasted my money on this one and will probably end up reselling it for 1/2 of what I paid for it.
Want a good easy cookbook get they old tried and true
Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas or one of the cookbooks Nava Atlas put out there. Moosewood collection is also good.

My wife and I were expecting a cookbook that was full of recipes you could easily try. Not the case in this cookbook.
I should just stick to the vegetarian cookbooks we normally use.
Complicated recipes and no one asked for a second helping, matter of fact we ended up tossing what we did take after a few bites. We tried 9 recipes and all 9 failed the taste test.

I'm a long-time lover of gourmet food, and have recently tried to go vegan for moral reasons. I was thinking I would have to give up on anything creamy, but Veganomicon has some amazing recipes with "pine-nut cream," that completely satisfies my need for something cheese-esque. In fact, everything I've tried from the book has been delicious. The pumpkin ziti seems decadent, but is actually virtuous! And I can't say enough good things about the apricot BBQ sauce. But don't take my word for it...use Amazon's "search inside" and check out a few recipes. The Butternut Squash and Pumpkin Seed rice roll is a perfect fall treat to start out with!

I've been using this cookbook at least 2-4x/week to create healthy and flavorful meals for my whole family, my 11-year old loves these recipes, too, without missing the meat. Also, this book has tons of creative side dishes to create from veggies expanding our menu to include old favorites like Deli Mac Salad and Prospect Park Potato Salad to dressing up home fries with "cheezy Sauce". I love the brunch sections, the sauce sections, the salad sections, the dessert sections--well, they're all great. Most are FANTASTIC like the Mole Sauce and the Cashew Cucumber Dip!Yum! Do yourself & your family a favor and get this book today! I recommend it to all my friends.

Veganomicon is my favorite cookbook. I have the doorstop book version and I make something from it more than weekly. Spicy tempeh nori rolls, yuca tortillas, empanadas, seitan, chickpea cutletts and those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Just buy it. You won't regret it.

I once only knew how to fry an egg. Then I went to Andalusia and my Spanish friends taught me all things culinary. Back then, I even ate sparrows and spent my afternoons curing fish and boiling pork bone. Fast forward into mid-life, I've changed my eating habits to be healthier and stay lean. In the years after returning to the US I lost interest in my imported cooking skills due to the lack of familiar Spanish food at the market, but especially because of the lack of tastiness in the typical American 30-minute meals.

Then this book reminded me what a pleasure it is to cook -- and eat. My "warning" to you is that it will take you about an hour at a time to prepare food. Well, what else do you do for an hour every day? Hang around after work for no reason? Sit in traffic? Visit the junk at Bed, Bath, and Beyond your Budget? Watch sitcoms? Make love to your Wii? Zombify on You Tube? Pump cortisol in chat rooms? Crash in a sugar coma? Hug the couch? Eat crap? If you really want to save up time for these things, the introduction shows you how to stock your kitchen with all the "complicated" ingredients criticized by the negative reviewer here. Once you do that, following this book is an easy and life-enriching routine. Fans of the book get that making a meal is an art that should be enjoyed and not minimized, which is precisely the attitude I missed leaving Spain. In the spirit of Mediterranean food, the premise of Veganomicon is that interesting ingredients, presentation, texture, and especially -- flavor -- is what makes vegan food -- and all food -- infinitely more satisfying.

If this had been my first vegan cookbook I would have been very discouraged. I always notate how well I like a recipe after I try it, the first comment I made on a recipe in this book was "gross" the second was "unpalatable". I have found a couple of great recipes but not without eating many things that were just awful. I try to eat things anyway so as not to waste food but too many recipes were just unpalatable. I recommend Vegan Planet.
Marianne

From the moment I saw this book at the Borders where I work I was intrigued...a huge compendium of completely vegan recipes?? I had to investigate further. After borrowing the book from my store about 8 times (yes you can do that if you actually work there...rent brand new books out! WOOOT!) I decided that yeah...it was worth the price tag. I couldn't get enough of it.

Everything I have made has been satisfying and delicious. Everything you ever needed is in here! Need a lasagna recipe...yup..it's here, along with a heavenly tofu-ricotta that is amazing in other things too... Need something extra special for a holiday dinner? Don't want your vegan friends to be left out of a delicious meal? The "quiche" in here is so decadent, it'll be the people eating the turkey who'll be jealous!

Seriously though, for a person just starting out on the vegan diet, not knowing how on earth to turn her faves into animal-friendly dishes, this is for you! Been a vegan for years and want to add some new recipes to the table? This is the book for you. Next to Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World...buying this book was the best decision I ever made. It's like the Vegan bible! Delish! Get it, cook stuff, enjoy....and share! Seriously, your non-veg friends/family will dig things in here too (PS Don't tell them it's vegan til' they've cleaned their plates....it's more fun that way!"

Too many very weird ingredients and strange unappetizing recipes. I am a long time experienced, good cook and have dozens of cook books, but I regret buying this book. I will likely not make a single dish from this book. The authors writing style is trying hard to be cutesy and ends up just being annoying.

I have made a recent change to living meatless and this book is an amazing companion on the journey! Every recipe I have tried is easy to follow, simple ingredients, and tastes excellent.

For anyone who says you can't have a hearty, "comfort food" meal without meat... this book will prove them wrong!

for non vegans, my mom and I are having a blast with the book. it's easy to use, simple. totally user friendly.

I am venturing into vegetarian cooking in a serious way only recently. This cookbook gives me many new ideas as well as the basics to get going. The author has a lot of experience; this is one of many cookbooks she has authored. Because it is "vegan" it does not rely on dairy as many vegetarian receipes do. The range of receipes is comprehensive. My friend who has been vegetarian for 20 years got excited when she read it and is ordering one for herself. I can recommend it to both novice and experienced vegetarians.

I'm not a vegan or vegetarian (but I don't each much meat or dairy,) but I love this cookbook!

The book is wonderful--entertaining, educational and, most importantly, it is filled with glorious and interesting recipes with flavors from around the world.

This book is great for beginning and advanced vegan cooks. For beginners, the book includes basics for what food to stock in your pantry, kitchen equipment, cooking and prepping terminology. The book also includes a helpful section on how to prepare vegetables, grains and beans by grilling, roasting and steaming.

The recipes are the crux of the book and they are great! Full of flavor dishes like portobella salad with spicy mustard dressing, tomato rice soup with roasted garlic and navy beans, marzana chili verde, spinach linguine with basil and cilantro pesto and artichokes and spicy tempeh and broccoli rabe with rotelle are just a few of the recipes I've tried and love.

Veganomicon also contains many terrific tips and great comments by the authors.

Highly recommend for all cooks!

When we purchased this cookbook, my wife was a vegetarian, and I was your standard omnivore. I do all the cooking in the house, and thought I would purchase this book to expand our horizons. Wow, great recipes, very detailed instructions and some valuable basic cooking information that has been helpful in developing my skills in the kitchen. Since buying the book, I am now a devoted vegetarian and have not looked back. We use the book for basic recipe structure, and then either leave the recipe as vegan or add some extra items that render it vegetarian. Either way, amazing! Give the book a shot, you won't regret it.

I was disappointed, primarily because I'm a new Vegan, and a busy mom. If I was young, single and hip (and living in New York City) I would probably have loved this book. I did get some great information from the first few chapters about Vegan staples and how to prepare vegetables, etc. The book also provides some good background information about "alternative" grains like millet and quinoa. Other than that I've made 1 recipe. This is gourmet cooking for the long time Vegan who's looking to add some variety or wants to cook for other people and impress them with amazing dishes. In fairness, it looks like many of the dishes would be fantastic is that's what you're looking for. Be prepared to visit several specialty stores (again, fine if you're in NYC, impossible if you're in rural America) and spend a lot of time. "Quick recipes" are marked with a special symbol when they take less than 45 minutes. As a mother of a young child I don't spend that much time cooking dinner unless it's Thanksgiving. In addition, much of the humor is aimed at people who live in NYC (which I have visited many times. It's the best city in the world, and in my opinon has the friendliest people - if that's a shocker you haven't spent enough time there. Go Yankees!) or people who read the first book and care about what Isa's grandmother thinks. It's a lovely book, but only for a limited audience.

I've had this book for a couple of weeks, and I kept flipping through it, unsure of what to make. I'm a vegetarian, but not a vegan, and this is my first vegan cookbook. Perhaps subsequently, it was the first time I realized that you can actually *make* seitan, as opposed to buying it. Once I saw that, I ordered the few ingredients necessary to make it, and then purchased the other ingredients needed to complete the seitan picatta recipe. I spent three hours last night making first the seitan, and then the seitan picatta. Some might say that's too time consuming, but I enjoyed the process. Also, it wouldn't have taken nearly as long if I'd made the seitan ahead of time.

Anyway, I don't know what made me pick picatta as the first recipe to try, seeing as how I'm not a huge fan of shallots or capers, and I hate olives. But...it was OUT OF THIS WORLD! The combination of homemade seitan, breaded and panfried, and then this sauce...this amazing sauce! Put a bunch of things together that I don't like, and they somehow make something I fell in love with -- that's a magical book. :) I would completely and unreservedly make this recipe for a meat-eater, fully expecting them to love it, too.

I can't wait to try other recipes. Don't be intimidated by the recipes that seem a little complicated or foreign, just give them a try. Also, if you're someone who actually enjoys the process of cooking (or wants to) as opposed to someone who tries to slam out meals quickly in order to be done with it, that's a further recommendation for Veganomicon. I really can't say enough wonderful things about this amazing book.

this cookbook is comprehensive, full of wonderful vegan recipes and is well written (and funny). I am so glad i bought it!!

This is not just a cookbook, it is a fun-to-read, text-book-sized instruction manual on how to use your vegan kitchen and almost everything in it. Not only are these recipes tasty (the ones I've had time to try, listed below), they are thoroughly explained, step-by-step, in a delightfully humorous fashion. My boyfriend was teasing me for "reading" a cookbook, but I just couldn't put it down! I have read it cover to cover since last Friday when I received it, and I am thoroughly impressed.

As a relatively new vegan, I'd been suffering through trying to "veganize" standard recipes with fake meats and fake cheeses with marginal success. This book moves beyond using store-bought fake ground beef, etc and gives you home-made, unique, and delicious alternatives. So far I have made the Almesan (vegan parmesan topping - YUM!), marinara sauce (so delicious and easy that I will never buy sauce in a jar again!), tofu ricotta (wow, it even looks like ricotta!), spinach lasagna (my omni boyfriend LOVED it), and jelly donut cupcakes (big hit at work).

The book starts out with an introduction on the terminology and a description of some of the "unusual" ingredients with which a new-ish vegan may not be familiar. Then there are 3 sections on basic things you need to know to be successful in the kitchen before you try a recipe - "How to cook a bean," "How to cook a grain," and "How to cook a vegetable." If you don't learn something from these sections, then you probably don't need to buy a cookbook to begin with and should just open your own restaurant immediately!

While some of the recipes are decidedly "gourmet," this manual is filled with so many great tips that go along with the plethora of recipes, and tips for vegan kitchen use in general that you should be successful even if you've never boiled water before. However, the style of the writing makes the in-depth descriptions interesting even if you are an advanced cook who doesn't need all the details provided.

My recommendation: Buy it. Read it. Laugh. Cook. Eat. Smile!

I bought this book as my fourth vegetarian cook book based on the good reviews and for some more variety. So far I've tried about six recipes. I'm not a picky eater and have actually had to throw out two because they were so bad! One was good and the rest ok. Some of the ingredient proportions also seem off. I like how the book is organized and the ingredients are not too exotic, but think there are better out there.

this is the cookbook of my dreams. so well written, well researched, and fun to read. it will certainly replace Joy of Cooking for me because of all the super general info about ingredients. and the recipes are DELICIOUS. this is a must have cook book for all, herbivores AND omnivores alike. a bargain at twice the price!

Love, love, love it. Easy to follow recipes that are SUPER-impressive. So entertaining at the same time! I'm addicted to the "Baja-Style Grilled Tempeh Tacos", I've made it at least 4 times already! Also has great chapters on the BASICS, like how to cook a vegetable and how to get ready for a dinner party. I've already purchased a copy for a friend, can't say enough good things about this book!

If your Vegan cookbook collection needs a benchmark book, this is it. If you're new to being a Vegan, this book will save you months of salad boredom. If you're an old timer and you don't have this book, you must live under a tempeh rock somewhere.

Buy this book. Do it now!

I am a vegetarian who found this book in the store and ended up sitting there for an hour going over all of the great information and recipes! The price in the store was a bit more so I came home and ordered it from Amazon. There are many options for making vegan food. And not just mediocre but just plain delicious! I have even made vegan patties that are great with rice and fresh veggies. It has opened up my kitchen to a new chapter in cooking.

Words cannot express how much I love this cookbook. Everything I have made from it has been fantastic. I was an ovo-lacto vegetarian, but this book has inspired me to become a vegan. The food in this book is so great. Even my meat eating husband and my two children love the meals I have made from it. The pasta dishes are our divine! Try the Penne Vodka and the Basil Cilantro Pesto!!

This book is a must for every kitchen!

This is a great cookbook! Every recipe I've tried has been great...well, except for the chick peas with BBQ sauce wrapped in kale leaves, which is was not so hot - but I had kale and there's only so much to be done with it - and they get an A + for originality on that front! The way the book is written if hip and clever. Just a warning that grandma might be a wee confused by it! I have made the coffee-chocolate bundt cake - which is so moist and several other desserts which were all well received. I only have a few tiny complaints - one being that the spice amounts are too low - I have doubled the spices in all the recipes I've made and I think the results have been perfect and would have been pretty bland if I'd stuck to the book - but that's nothing unique to just this cookbook. The only other issue is that sometimes the amount of food made is too much and it's hard to anticipate. For instance, I made a lentil stew recipe that made so much that I was eating it every day for a week. Granted it was good, but now I know for sure to cut it in half.

I do a lot of vegan cooking, and am often bored by how unimaginative many vegan recipes are. With this book, however, boredom is far, far away! The variety and attention to detail, mixed with the authors' humor, makes this book unbeatable. My favorite cookbook of all time!

I love to cook and, after becoming vegan, I really needed something basic and practical as well as user-friendly for my non-vegan family. So many of the recipes consist of foods I already serve, such as the sweet potato and pear casserole. Everybody loved it! Most helpful within this book is the section on what to keep in the cupboards. With the exception of two items (agar and nutritional yeast), I have found all I need in my regular grocery store. It's a great recipe book!

My sister was raving about this book, so I decided to get it, even though I'm vegetarian but not vegan.

Wow. I haven't been so excited about a cookbook in a long time. Looking through the book, the recipes really pique my interest with their interesting flavor combinations. Quinoa salad with Mango and Cilantro (this has scallions, vinegar...surprising, and YUMMY). Edamame and Corn salad with Sesame (soy sauce and toasted sesame oil really make this one). I also really enjoyed the scone that has currants (I used raisins) and caraway seeds. My husband looked at it and expected a boring raisin scone. The caraway seeds make it a whole new experience. What a thrill.

Nothing bland or boring in these recipes, they're all exciting and absolutely delicious. I must have cooked 5 or 6 recipes from this book in the first week, and everything I've tried has been a success and well received by guests and husband. Highly recommended!

I made an extremely vegan recipe from this book for a friend who's a rabid carnivore, and i didn't get a luke-warm "umm, that's tasty", I got an "OH my GODDD, that's FANTASTIC!" So, newbee vegans, fear not. You can not only please yourself with this innovative, fun and complete book, you can dazzle your carnivorous friends, too. And old-bee vegans, i trust there are some oh-so-fab recipes here that you haven't run into anywhere else. If you're new, there are also tons of tips so you'll have more than the first clue of what you're doing. Finally, if you're all tactile and designy like i am, you'll find this book a pleasant size, feel, and easy on the eyes for just pleasure reading, or posted on a stand while actively tackling a recipe. My favorite vegan book so far!

I purchased this book as a gift for my sister and mother in Texas. They expressed great delight with it, saying they will incorporate many new ideas from the book into their daily meals as Vegetarians. Even though they are not Vegans, there are many ideas from the recipes they can use as they do adhere to certain Vegan leanings. The pictures are plentiful and appreciated. I am pleased I bought it as a gift for them.

My experience with vegan cookbooks has been that there's a great variability in the recipe results. However, everything I have made from this cookbook has come out beautifully; even terrified-of-vegan-food carnivores have loved them. Who knew parsnip chips could be so tasty!

Thank you Fatfree Vegan Kitchen for highly recommending this cookbook. For our family this is fairly new adventure and this book will be part of us for our lifetime. We have enjoyed each and every recipe we've tried to date. It is our goal to win over the younger members of our families to a healthier stronger lifestyle. Thanks for being a part of this endeavor.

I buy cookbooks for the reading as much as for the cooking. This cookbook is great on both fronts. It's really fun to read and I was so compelled by the recipes that I got to cooking right away. The food is interesting and flavorful and really creative. I was hesitant to get a cookbook with only a few photos (though the full-color centerfold photo section is beautiful), but now this is one of my favorite cookbooks.

I love this cookbook. The recipes are fun, easy and best of all almost all of the ingrediants can be found in your local supermarket. So far I have loved everything that I have made from this book. My favorite is the chick pea cutlets..

OH MY GOD! This is the best cookbook I have ever used in my life!
You've got to buy it right now, if no for other reason than to make the Chocolate Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies! They will forever change your life!
You also have to try the Creamy Tomato Soup, the Baja Tacos, the Chickpea Cutlets, and the Chile-Chocolate Mole! .....Hell, you just gotta try all the recipes! I've made most of them by now, and they are all just perfect!
BUY THIS BOOK!!

As an experienced cook, but a new vegan (I had never even been a vegetarian before), this cookbook is just what I needed, and I'm so grateful that I found it!

True to its name, this is a behemoth of a cookbook that covers a huge amount of ground. It gives respectful attention to all types of meals, from mains to soups, salads to casseroles, sandwiches to cookies. My favourite is the "Mix & Match" section, which has many recipes for what would usually be called 'sides' - small dishes of vegetables, grains, tofu/tempeh/seitan or legumes - that you can combine however you like to form a solid and diverse meal. There's also a very useful 'basics' section where all sorts of things are explained, from knife techniques to how to cook most major grains and legumes.

The recipes have a diverse range of regional influences, from Mexican to Northern Slavic, from Southeast Asian to French. The authors don't timidly follow the traditions of all the cuisines they borrow from, but neither do they clumsily make one big homogenised mess of them. Instead, they confidently, but respectfully, borrow from all sorts of cuisines to make a diverse range of dishes that, even if they are unorthodox, still make sense.

I've heard complaints from vegans that many vegan cookbooks are too health-food'y, to the point of being boring or unappealing. Not this one. Don't get me wrong, the overwhelming majority of recipes in this book are most definitely very healthy: fresh vegetables, legumes, and various other wholefoods feature prominently and abundantly. But as you peruse the recipes, you get the distinct feeling that this is a book that, more than anything else, celebrates food. When I first decided to go vegan, I was apprehensive about how limited my diet would become - this book, however, has put my mind forever at ease in that regard.

A good tendency of this cookbook is that the dishes all seem to be very 'do-able'. Although the recipes rarely call for processed ingredients or lazy shortcuts that would compromise quality and flavour, neither are they overly laborious. So far, I haven't found a recipe that looked too hard to bother with, and most of them I could happily make on a weeknight.

I really like the way the recipes are presented. Each of them gives an estimate of the preparation time, has directions that are clear and concise but not clinical, and provides a short 'prologue' from the authors (a feature that's sorely lacking from many cookbooks). These prologues often give you a good idea of the character of the dish, what it goes well with, and some potential pitfalls to look out for while making it. And the girls write with such a pleasant style and great sense of humour that they're worth reading just for that.

Of course, no cookbook is perfect, and neither is this one. Firstly, for a non-American, the ye olde measuring system they use - with ounces, 1/4 inches, Fahrenheits and all the rest of it - is distracting. Secondly, and more importantly, the recipes - in my experience - have been a bit hit and miss. But when I say "miss", I don't mean that they didn't work, or that they were dreadful, but simply that they weren't as terrific as I'd hoped. However, I've never met a cookbook that didn't have some misses, and the Veganomicon hit-miss ratio has so far been pretty good. Furthermore, when the dishes have been good, they've often been fabulous.

Since the cookbook has its imperfections, I was going to give it 4 stars. But then I thought about what it is that I ultimately look for in a cookbook. I concluded that I want a cookbook that will make reliably good dishes, several of which will become lasting favourites, forever enriching my repertoire. If the cookbook is really good, then it will also excite me about food; it'll be a book I can depend on to inspire me when I'm feeling low on ideas and motivation to cook. The Veganomicon has not only been a reliable source of good dishes, but it is flooding my repertoire with new favourites, so far rivalling any cookbook before it in this department. I have also found its pages to be full of inspiration. Before I bought it, I was excited about becoming a vegan for ethical reasons. Now I'm also excited about it for culinary reasons. 5 stars.

Veganomicon, along with Isa's previous Vegan With a Vengeance, are the go-to cookbooks in my kitchen. I use other cookbooks, sure, but these are the ones that are spattered with sauce, splashed with water, and generally look like they've survived a culinary war.

There's a little bit of everything in this cookbook; quick recipes that I can whip together without too much planning or special ingredient shopping as well as more complex dishes that I can use for fancier gatherings.

I just bought this book a few weeks ago and have already made quite a few recipes out of it, and everything has come out wonderful!

I tend to have bad luck when cooking from vegetarian/raw/vegan cook books but the authors were spot on with this collection.

I use this book to plan 75% of my meals and have not been let down yet.

It also lists soy free, gluten free, sugar free, recipes and
has a section on how to correctly cook vegetables
and includes a party menu guide

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

This cookbook has really helped my partner and me with our transition to a vegan diet. I really thought it would be harder for us, but with this very comprehensive cookbook it has almost been a breeze. I make a batch of the Cesar salad dressing almost every week! I have also made the BBQ Tofu, the plantain and pinto stew, and the cornbread. All fantastic! I can't wait to try the brownies, the homemade seitan, and the mac daddy mac and 'cheese'. I recommend this book to anyone, and most of the items can be made to satisfy non-vegans too.