The Angelica Home Kitchen: Recipes and Rabble Rousings from an Organic Vegan Restaurant

Rating:
Summary: Make yummy Angelica's Kitchen food at home!
Review: I used to eat almost daily at Angelica's Kithen when I lived in NYC. Not living in NYC anymore, this book is a Godsend. I love yummy wholesome good-for-you organic cooking with a macrobiotic twist. Every recipe I followed thus far has turned out just the way it tastes in her restaurant and being a beginner cook, this is profound. The recipes are clear, mindful and easy to follow. It's as if she is standing right by me when I cook and it always turns out great especially the desserts. What's really smart is that once you buy the staples, you can create quite a bit of her meals and desserts without having to run to the grocery stores hunting down rare ingredients, it makes life simple. Thank you Leslie!

Rating:
Summary: Make Yummy Angelica's Kitchen food right at home!
Review: I used to eat almost daily at Angelica's Kithen when I lived in NYC. Not living in NYC anymore, this book is a Godsend. I love yummy wholesome good-for-you organic cooking with a macrobiotic twist. Every recipe I followed thus far has turned out just the way it tastes in her restaurant and being a beginner cook, this is profound. The recipes are clear, mindful and easy to follow. It's as if she is standing right by me when I cook and it always turns out yummy! Thank you Leslie for sharing your yummy food with the world!

Rating:
Summary: for a vegan cookbook, this has a strange vibe
Review: I'd been looking forward to getting this cookbook for months, and finally bought a copy through Amazon. I received it yesterday, and in the evening I settled down to peruse it. The recipes look quite interesting, and I was eager to try them.

But, I was very surprised to see the author references Sally Fallon on the topic of canola oil. Sally Fallon? The zealous anti-vegetarian crusader? The internet guru who claims you'll sicken and die, if not for consuming vast quantities of meat? Why is her name referenced as an expert in a vegetarian cookbook? If Fallon and her research is to be believed about canola oil, isn't Leslie McEachern in a way validating Fallon's entire ideology, which includes devout anti-vegetarianism?

McEachern might have found another authority to back up her ideas about canola, which is a controversial subject in itself.

Elsewhere, McEachern says she has no ethical problems with eating animals. Hmmm.

While I welcome diversity of thought, and deplore rigid mindsets, even within the dear-to-my-heart vegetarian movement, these two things in the Angelica Home Kitchen really gave me pause. It has cooled my enthusiasm for exploring the rest of the book. I'm just puzzled why someone who isn't opposed to eating animals would bother to write a vegan cookbook?

Rating:
Summary: Tasty and Easy
Review: So far, every dish I've made from this cookbook has been delicious. Great basis for a recipe that you can tweak to your liking. I get a fresh box of mixed organic produce weekly (a surprise mix of what is fresh that week! in NY www.urbanorganic.net) and this is a great book to use when I have no idea what do with a certain veggie. Broken down by food (ie. soups, salads, etc) and a great index by specific vegetable/tofu etc as well. I love the way the paperback binding works so that the recipe stays flat and doesn't flip pages. Convenient and helps me stay creative and healthy!

Rating:
Summary: Great cookbook, good primer to natural foods.
Review: This is a wonderful book. It is part cookbook, part food background. Although not all of the recipes are macrobiotic, a good deal of them are, illustrating just how tasty this style of food can be. I've only tried two recipes so far due to the fact that I just bought the book. I made the brown rice gravy, adding mushrooms for Thanksgiving and it was a taste sensation as well as an all around hit. I also made the oden, a five root japanese stew which was hearty and delicious. It was great paired with steamed kale and brown rice. Overall, this is a great book. Another thing that makes it good is that the binding is sturdy enough to stay fully open while cooking, which does not happen too often with soft cover books.

Rating:
Summary: Great cookbook, good primer to natural foods.
Review: This is a wonderful book. It is part cookbook, part food background. Although not all of the recipes are macrobiotic, a good deal of them are, illustrating just how tasty this style of food can be. I've only tried two recipes so far due to the fact that I just bought the book. I made the brown rice gravy, adding mushrooms for Thanksgiving and it was a taste sensation as well as an all around hit. I also made the oden, a five root japanese stew which was hearty and delicious. It was great paired with steamed kale and brown rice. Overall, this is a great book. Another thing that makes it good is that the binding is sturdy enough to stay fully open while cooking, which does not happen too often with soft cover books.