20 Minutes to Dinner: Quick, Low-Fat, Low-Calorie, Vegetarian Meals: Amazon.ca: Bryanna Clark Grogan: Books

Product Description

These quick, low-fat vegetarian meals are perfect for those who don't have time to cook dinner but would like to enjoy tempting and nutritious dishes.

From the Author

I would like to clarify a couple of statements made by reviewers. First of all, a reviewer referred to a "fish" recipe, which has caused some concern among vegetarians. THERE IS NO FISH OR SEAFOOD IN ANY OF MY BOOKS! The recipe referred to was a "mock fish" cake made with rice and tofu.

Secondly, in regards to the time it takes to make a recipe, and complaints that I had misled readers, read my section on p. 18 entitled "About the Length of Time Needed to Make These Recipes", which I will quote in it's entirety below. Before I do that, however, I would like to say also that I believe that it's my responsibility, as a cook making someone else's recipe, to read the entire recipe through before embarking on it. If I don't do this, I can hardly blame the writer of the recipe if I don't have the right ingredients! It is also completely unreasonable to add time for shopping into the time it takes to make a recipe! There is a whole chapter in the book on tips for the "time-challenged" cook, covering shoppping, kitchen efficiency, and equipment, in which I urge cooks to make menus ahead of time and keep a running shopping list so they don't run out of things. I do this myself, because I live on a small island. If I had to add shopping time to a recipe, it might! seem that every dish takes me over 4 hours to make!

Also, if these foods are unfamiliar to you, it's going to take you a little longer than it takes me. When you are used to vegan food items and how to cook them, then, of course, it takes less time.

I use this book often myself, and I'd like to thank all the reviewers who wrote in with positive comments.

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

4.0 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is the book I'd wish I'd had 10 years ago ..., Nov 17 2002

By

S�ren Jensen (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 20 Minutes to Dinner: Quick, Low-Fat, Low-Calorie, Vegetarian Meals (Paperback)

... when I became a vegan. Perhaps this book ought to have been entitled "30 minutes to dinner" instead - yet this shouldn't put any people off, and as the previous comment rightly states, the negative critics given by some people is completely unjust! Bryanna is - in my opinion - one of the most innovative vegan cooks, and I can recommend any of her books (I have them all myself). Not only is the book about quick vegan meals, they are also extremely low-fat, yet all are rich-tasting delicious meals - AND as also mentioned below - the ingredients are easily available in health food stores (even in Denmark where I live!) If you do not have a food processor, get one now, as this is one equipment that Bryanna uses very frequently in her books. The opening chapter is about cooking & shopping tips, and this is very useful for planning your meals, as well as making a lot of your basics yourself - it's cheaper and you're sure not to get any weird extra-ingredients! There's a chapter on speedy dips and spreads, lovely soups and chowders (check out the sea vegetable chowder!), inventive salads (the oriental noodle salad is sooo delicious!), pasta dishes, quick pizzas, extensive sandwich and all kinda stuffed breads ideas, grilled alternatives to meat (tofu & seitan), stirfries, ... the book is simply jampacked with ideas and variations so that you can use what you have at hand. It is a superb cookbook, and it's definitely recommended!

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Passes New Orleans food test!, Nov 5 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: 20 Minutes to Dinner: Quick, Low-Fat, Low-Calorie, Vegetarian Meals (Paperback)

I own four cookbooks by Bryanna Clark Grogan, and plan on buying the rest. They are all EXCELLENT. I was born and raised in New Orleans, so I think I can claim to know what good food tastes like. The negative reviews of this book just blow my mind. The only people who might not like Bryanna's recipes are folks who think a McDonald's drive through is gourmet eating. And Bryanna's recipe ingredients are not hard to find at all; I don't know what that reviewer is talking about. I live in the country, two hours drive from a major city, and most of the ingredients can be found in my local, very rural grocery store. For those in an urban environment, ANY health food store will have nutritional yeast flakes and kelp. Hello! Don't you have a Whole Foods or a Trader Joes? Switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet means opening your mind and having some new experiences, food-wise and shopping-wise. That is part of the fun. Grogan's Chinese cookbook exposed me to Chinese mock meats, and now I get to have a lot of fun shopping in Chinese markets when I go to town. Live a little! And the mock feta isn't going to taste *exactly* like feta...do you expect a vegetarian Boca burger to taste *exactly* like a Big Mac? As for the rice issue, I use Quick Brown rice, available in ANY grocery store...cooks in FIVE MINUTES! Some of you really need to expand your shopping and cooking horizons.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not always twenty minutes, but not bad., May 9 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: 20 Minutes to Dinner: Quick, Low-Fat, Low-Calorie, Vegetarian Meals (Paperback)

I have only tried out two recipes from this book 1) Greek style spinach pizza, and 2) Soy "fish cakes". The pizza was quick, easy, and very tasty, although not having a feta flavor,as promised. The fish cakes used exotic ingredients and took me 90 minutes to prepare, not 20 as the title of the book suggests.

One of the reasons for the long preparation time is that the recipe starts out assuming that you have COOKED (and cooled) brown rice on hand. Cooking brown rice by itself takes about 35 minutes,way over the limit already.

The second reason is having to blend NINE ingredients, to add to FIVE other pre-prepared ones. To all the time needed to do this, add the rice cooking and cooling, fifteen minutes for the baking, and you far exceed twenty minutes.

A minor annoyance is the exotic (at least to me) ingredients that are often used, like kelp powder, nutritional yeast flakes, miso, etc. I doubt that these ingredients are readily available everywhere. (The book does give a list of mail order addresses, though)

In spite of my being exhausted by the cooking (I am not a very experienced cook, as you may have guessed,) the fish cakes tasted quite good. So, all in all, if you are prepared to read the recipes very carefully beforehand (so as to avoid the "cooked rice" syndrome,) and plan realistically where to get the exotics, this is a very useful book. Just use it selectively.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensible!
I have shelves of vegetarian cookbooks, but this one I use constantly! I bought it as an impulse to qualify for free shipping, but it has become my most-used book. Read more

Published on Nov 23 2006 by R. Ivic

5.0 out of 5 stars Bryanna Clark Grogan kicks butt in the kitchen!
EXCELLENT! A must have. I have been vegan for a little over 7 months now and this is the first book I've found that is consistently good, fast, healthy,economical,and so... Read more

Published on April 7 2003