Customer Reviews

20 Minutes to Dinner: Quick, Low-Fat, Low-Calorie, Vegetarian Meals

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

 

 

... 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!

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.

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.

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. There is so much information - ways to adapt recipes with other ingredients and to use basic sauces to create a selection of others. The lists of suggestions on the side have a wealth of information; I can't imagine running out of ideas when you have this book. Everything I have tried has turned out well. (I wish there were pictures but you can't have everything.)

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 delicious that even my non-vegan husband didn't pull a face when I presented him with the carrot-oat patties and brown gravy. Recipes for substitutes for egg, meat, fish, cream, and cheese are found throughout the text (the Melty Pizza Cheeze is mild and not disgusting like a lot of the faux vegan subs)as well as quick meal suggestions. I own a few other vegan recipe books and, although they have beautiful recipes, I find that they are not fast or simple enough for the everday- gotta -get- the- meal- on-while-kids-are-screaming- life that I lead. Some say the recipes take 30 minutes-I don't think that matters. If it is under 45 minutes then it is a quick meal. Gourmet vegan menus can take hours sometimes. This book will be the one with gravy splatters and juice stains. I highly reccommend it.

These wonderful authors have come together and written a wonderful book. Bryanna Clark Grodan has written other great books such as, a no fat holiday cookbook for vegetarians and an authentic chinese cuisine cookbook. Otis May is the author of a great book called " Soups on". I have read all their books and I can hardly wait for either of them to write yet another great cookbook. I can not beleive anyone would rate this book low. IT IS FANTASTIC!! and it has great tasting, easy to make fast recipes that are not only delicious but FAT FREE!. I am not a vegetarian but I need to watch my weight because of high colesterol and these recipes are good tasting and help me with my diet. Not only will these meat, egg, and dairy-free recipes be just the thing for putting together a well-balanced dinner (on those nights when you just can't figure out where the time went), but they'll be just the thing for creating a quick snack or appetizer for unexpected company and making that who-has-time-to-cook lunch. Most of the recipes are based on the Mediterranean/Asian model using lots of grains, fruits, and vegetables. Nutritional analyses accompany each recipe. I think this is a great low fat cookbook and I highly recommend it.

I recommend this cookbook in my book "Creationist Diet." I do so as my book includes a chapter on "The Benefits of a Vegan Diet." But since following a vegan diet can be rather "strange" to many people, those desiring to follow such a diet need ideas on just what to eat and how to prepare it. And this cookbook provides both. For instance, I would have never thought of using chickpeas to make "tuna salad" or tofu to make "egg salad."

The idea of "20 minutes to dinner" is appealing to busy people today. However, I have found that some of the recipes take longer than this to make. But some are worth the time. The recipe for "quick pizza dough" does take a little effort, but it is worth it to make a good tasting pizza that is made with whole wheat rather than white flour.

The introductory information in this book is helpful as well. It provides some general tips on vegan cooking and shopping. And I particularly like the recommendation to eat organic as much as possible. A recent study showed that there is a significant amount of pesticides residue on non-organic produce, far more than on organic produce.

As regards texturized vegetable protein (TVP), it is a very useful item for making "imitation" meats. However, it should be noted that one could be allergic to TVP while not being allergic to soy in general. There is "something" about the processing method that turns soybeans into soy flour and then into TVP that makes it even more of a potential allergen.

Overall, I would recommend this cookbook for ideas on how to follow a vegan diet. And for reasons why such a diet is healthy, see my book "Creationist Diet: Nutrition and God-given Foods According to the Bible."

I have been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for many years and own more than a dozen cookbooks in this genre. I bought this book about 5 years ago and I continue to use it weekly. It is the very best one that I have seen. The recipes are delicious and easy to make. I have also found that they leave a lot of room to vary the recipe by suggesting other ingredients. The eggless salad is always a hit at potlucks - my husband didn't know the difference! My very favorite is the 20-minute risotto which you would think would be impossible but it turns out wonderful. The seitan fajitas and shepard's pie are fantastic too - I make them almost every other week.

GREAT recipes and very easy to make. Almost all of the dishes took less than 30 minutes to make and they were ALL delicious. I thought the spinach pizza was the best!. I have cooked most of these dishes for my family and everybody seems very pleased. The book offers many different foods such as, flavorful spanish rice, seafood, soups, appetizers, spagetti, lasagna, many salads and other fresh foods. The fish recipes were all great and I found them easy to make. The book takes you step-by -step into the preparation process. I was very satisfied with all the recipes contained in this book and the price is very reasonable.

I have totally changed the way I cook now. I'm not a vegetarian, but I do want to eat healthy, so this book really came in handy. I have tried several of the recipes already and I'm impressed as to how delicious they are. The book takes you step by step and the instruction is nery easy to follow. What I likes the most is, that the book provides you with many recipes, the hardest part was picking which one I wanted to cook first.