College Vegetarian Cooking »

MEGAN CARLE and JILL CARLE are both graduate students at Arizona State University. They published their first cookbook, TEENS COOK, while Jill was still in high school, and followed up with TEENS COOK DESSERT and COLLEGE COOKING.

Beyond Rice Cakes and Ramen

Quiz time! Vegetarianism is:

A) strictly for humorless health nuts.
B) fine if you actually like brown rice. I guess.
C) what? I wasn' t sleeping, I was resting my eyes. Can you repeat the question?
D) just kind of . . . normal.

You answered D, right? Meatless eating is healthy, inexpensive, ecologically friendly, and even hip. What's not to like?

But it's not always easy being green. The salad bar can get pretty uninspiring after a while, and you don't even want to know how much salt lurks in that can of tomato soup.

Enter the Carle sisters: Megan (the long-time vegetarian) and Jill (the skeptical carnivore) are the dietary divas of yummy, doable dishes for teens and young adults. In this new book (their fourth), they offer the tips, tricks, and tasty recipes they use to feed themselves and their friends in style—veggie style.

The Carles make cooking easy for cash-strapped, kitchen-shy vegetarians, starting with instructions on how to set up a basic veggie kitchen on the cheap. And they keep it simple with 90 recipes organized into student-friendly chapters, from "Cheap Eats" to "Impressing Your Date," "Dinner for One" to "Party Food," plus a desserts chapter packed with vegan options. Every page bursts with color photographs.

Whether you're sharing Pasta Primavera with your roommates, taking a Caramelized Onion Tart to a party, grabbing a Roasted Red Pepper and Avocado Wrap on the run, or buttering up your sweetie with Mushroom Ravioli, College Vegetarian Cooking will break you out of the ramen rut—without breaking your budget.

Publishers Weekly

Grad students, cookbook authors and sisters, the Carles (Teens Cook Dessert, College Cooking) present another approachable but uneven collection aimed at peers who are going vegetarian. Emphasizing familiar favorites like cheese enchiladas bolstered with green chiles and corn, Asian lettuce wraps, falafel and pasta primavera, the dishes come together without fuss or the need for arcane ingredients, ensuring the book gets plenty of use. Time-saving steps, like employing already-made wontons for mushroom ravioli and puff pastry for cherry turnovers or tomato tarts will help budding cooks build confidence quickly. That said, novices may find instructions frustratingly brief-those unfamiliar with caramelizing may well end up with a scorched mess instead of a caramelized onion tart, and there's little help in crafting one's own pizza dough. Greater light is shined, however, on procedures for making potato gnocchi and maki rolls. Pesto pasta may be a little light on the basil, and the reliance on cream of mushroom soup in Tofu Tetrazzini may give one pause, but the sisters' hits outnumber their misses.
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Contents

introduction • 1

kitchen basics • 3

1 survival cooking • 10

2 cheap eats • 24

3 avoiding the freshman fifteen • 42

4 dinner for one • 58

5 just like mom makes • 74

6 food for the masses • 90

7 party food • 104

8 impressing your date • 120

9 desserts • 136

index • 150