My Laurel's Kitchen is the original from 30 years ago. She talks to you through her book and recipes like she's in the kitchen with you, and describes things about each recipe. It's fun to use a book like that. And it's non-meat. Thank you Laurel for cooking with me! ( )

We are not vegeterians (bring on the bacon!!!) but we do know that we need to incorporate more meat-free meals into our lives. This book is one of the few vegeterian resources that pass our test. We haven't cooked from it yet - that will determine if it keeps its spot on our shelf. ( )

This is the best book I own for handy nutritional information.
There's a very extensive table of facts for food in the back. ( )

This was my first vegetarian book more than 20 years ago. I read it cover to cover and it's one of the better cookbooks for doing this since there's so much information and narrative all the way through it.

Having high ideals, lots of time and little money, the authors set very high standards for doing everything that you possibly can from scratch.

Whole grains, unprocessed food and lots of fresh food is clearly the priority in this book. Plus they've backed it up with a ton of detailed nutrional information. All other cookbooks I've read pale in comparison to the depth and breadth of information they've packed into such a tiny volume.

In the last few years I bought the "New" Laurel's. The "New" one updates a lot of the information and has done a lot of work cutting back on fat and some other problems in this first version. In spite of all the improvements, I still can't bring myself to let go of this copy, since I know it so well and think of it so fondly.

The majority of the recipes, though, are low on flavor and high on bland. The whole wheat bread was a miserable failure, probably because of my own lack of skill back then, but has turned me off bread baking ever since.

I still come back to the soup recipes over and over, though. The Vegetable Barley is still one of my favorites.