[.ca] Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker: 200 Recipes for ... (ISBN 1558322558)

great for vegans!:
I was searching for a while for a slow cooker cookbook for vegans and finally found this one. The recipes are really good. There is a lot of seitan recipes, which is one of my favorite proteins. If you are in a hurry many could be cooked in a covered pot but the long times in the slow cooker means you could put them on in the morning and they will be ready at night. In some of the recipes I did find it a bit annoying that she wanted you to do so many things before adding the food ( grilling or browning or marinading etc) but I cant argue that the food tastes great. A word of caution. Many of the recipes call for a trivet for your slow cooker to sort of steam the food. Mine did not come with this and I have no idea where to get it!

My New Favorite!:
I absolutely love this cookbook. I've always liked to cook, but, as a college student, I have struggled to find the time. This cookbook is wonderful because it allows you to cook dinner when you have the time, whether that's between morning classes or the night before. You just sautee a few vegetables, throw them in the slow cooker with canned beans and tomatoes, and when you get home at the end of the day, you have a hearty meal waiting for you. The best part is that by the time you eat dinner, the dishes have been done for hours. I disagree with the earlier reviewer who complained about the "heat" of the recipes. I made the Spicy Black Bean Chili recipe yesterday, and I thought the four-ounce can of green chiles was perfect. Often, I find that I actually need to make the recipes a bit hotter---but that't just a personal preference. So far, I've made Spicy Black Bean Chili, Three-Bean Chili, Indian Cauliflower and Kidney Bean Stew with Coconut Milk, Moroccan-Inspired Vegetable and Chickpea Stew, Vindaloo Vegetables, Orange and Bourbon Baked Beans, Spanish Beans and Rice, Spicy Black Beans and Rice with Mangoes, Vegetable Curry, and Bell Peppers Stuffed with Salsa Rice and Beans. I loved many of the recipes, and liked all but the Baked Beans, which were interesting, rather than bad. I would recommend this cookbook to anyone who finds they are already hungry by the time they can start dinner. You'll eat better and feel better.

Easy vegetarian recipes:
I've made about a half a dozen of the recipes from this book now and I have to say they are quite yummy. I'm very fond of her other book "The Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook", so was happy to see a new book out. I've also been a vegetarian for nearly 20 years and it's about time someone came out with a good veg slow cooker book! It's seems like (until now) all I ever made with my slow cooker was nothing but beans. It's nice to finally use it for other things. My only real complaint with the recipes so far is that I keep finding that they are done sooner than anticipated even when left on the low setting. I'm starting to suspect that there must be some variation among heat settings with crock pots though. I noticed another reviewer mentioned that their slow cooker took longer (for lentils, which cook quite fast in my experience.) I've also noticed I usually have to stir things a few times, even though the author says it's not a good idea. I made the french onion soup recently and if I hadn't of stirred it would have burned. So maybe my cooker's low setting runs kind of hot or something. I just mark in my book that I need to stir, so I know in the future not to make that recipe when I'm gone all day, but at home puttering about. Other than that, I've been quite pleased with the ease and tastiness of the recipes. It's true some of the recipes ask that you sauté onions, etc., but I don't find that's a big deal. It doesn't take very long and it dramatically improves the flavor of a dish. Also I like that she uses normal ingrediants that are easy to find. Some of the recipes call for different size slow cookers, which could be fun if I ever decide to invest in a larger or smaller one. I think it would be usefull around the holidays, since it opens up oven space. Overall, I'm happy with this book.

maybe 4 1/2 stars - nice vegie recipes:
I was excited to find a vegetarian slow-cooker cookbook. I read all the reviews and was a little concerned about "weird stuff" when I read about the vegetarian haggis but I figure there's at least one recipe in every cookbook I own that makes me think "eewwww!" so I bought it. I've made 4 or 5 things so far and my husband and I have enjoyed all of the dishes. We both agreed that most of them could use a little more flavor so I plan on just adding a little more of everything when it comes to the herbs and spices, but the flavor that was there was good. The other thing I've done is reduce the oil in all of the recipes by at least half! The amount of oil or fat she uses plus the fact that there's no nutrition information for the recipes are the reasons I can't give this 5 stars. (And, as another reviewer mentioned: most of the recipes, as directed, are NOT One-Pot since she calls for sauteeing things like onions before adding to the cooker. She does list alternatives for this step but I agree with her that it's usually worth the time and dirty skillet.)

Tasty Recipes That Need Adjusting:
I've made three of the chili recipes from this book and, while all were tasty, two had too large a measure of hot pepper ingedients and the third came out too "raw" without much longer cooking. A four-ounce canned of diced hot chiles tastes mild out of the can, but turns combustible after 8 hours in a slow cooker ("Spicy Black Bean Chili"). In the "Chipotle-Kissed Red Bean and Sweet Potato Chili," the canned chipotles in adobo sauce were way too intense unless you used a fraction of what the reciped called for. I'm not talking just chili-lovin' hot here, I'm talking noxiously hot. The "Sweet and Spicy Lentil Chili" recipe specified unsoaked lentils, but the lentils wouldn't soften adequately until the dish was cooked 16 hours or more (the recipe called for eight hours). Also, the Vegetarian Society not only recommends that dried beans and lentils be soaked, but that they be pre-boiled for 10 minutes before adding to the slow cooker, which was not mentioned in the recipes I used. Based on my experience with this book, I wonder if the recipes, many of them close variations of each other, were all adequately tested. I still liked the dishes, however, after adjusting for the problems I mentioned. Keep in mind that taste is subjective and what I think is too hot or too hard may not agree with your assessment. But I've never had this happen three out of three times with any other cookbook that I can remember.