Post Punk Kitchen Forum

My copy should arrive in the morning so I thought I would start a thread. I'm convinced this book will change my life...or at least stop me from eating jarred spaghetti sauce and store bought bread every single day I have school.

So, what's been good?

Sounds like a potentially good cookbook. Let me know how you like it!

I have a lonely slow cooker that gets used for lentil chili and spiced cider..and that's it!

I haven't bought my copy yet, but I met Kathy and she's awesome and everyone should buy her book.

Oh, good! I've been waiting for this one to come out. Will probably order it today.

It looks like Carla Kelly also has a vegan slow cooker cookbook coming out - "Quick and Easy Vegan Slow Cooking."

I saw that! I love my slow cooker, but the only book I have right now is Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, so the more the better!

Yep, its in editing at the moment!

Ooh - any previews of what we can expect in January?

Once we've done the final cuts I will post recipes to my blog of items which didn;t make it. The focus of the book is main meals and savoury dishes, with minimal preparation/ pre-cooking before adding to the slow cooker time, so it looks like the ones which get the cut will be the more involved dishes, leaving recipes which are as streamlined (and therefore quick and easy) as possible but still really yummy. There's dishes using tofu, tempeh, seitan, and of course beans, pasta dishes, and a section of conventionally made side dishes/ accompaniments that are easily made to complete the meal.

Some people on here were testers so maybe they would like to give their impressions?

ETA - sorry for the thread hijack, how about any new discussion on this gets a new thread?

Yay!

Indeed! I'm always annoyed when I really want to make something but it involves a lot of prep work.

I'm also excited about the other vegan slow cooker book, too and plan on ordering it as soon as I can...I have 2 more years in grad school (which is about a 45+ minute commute, and I have a kid) so I plan on some slow cooker lovin' for that entire time...but you're right, a new thread would be good for the the Quick and Easy.

Right now I have the Chick'n Mushroom Noodle Casserole in (the name may be wrong). The base tastes great but it's past the 1.5 hour mark and my rotini isn't done yet...I think I may need to be more selective with the slow cooker recipes because it seems the whole wheat grittiness of my pasta got magnified.

Overall, I'm really pleased with the Kathy Hester book. The quality of the books itself is great, there are lots of pictures, and I really love the way the recipes are written. I feel fully confident leaving it with my NOT good in the kitchen husband to get a meal together. And there is so much variety in the recipes that it shouldn't get boring.

I really like her blog, so I was waiting for this one, and ordered it as soon as I learned it came out early (that seems to be happening a lot lately!). I really like the look of it and there are lots of recipes I want to try! Making my first one now, the Southern-Style Green Beans.

If you guys have any questions about the recipes in The Vegan Slow Cooker please let me know. I hope you get as much use out of the recipes as I have!

I'm making the Chana Saag right now so that I can have it for dinner. I'm very excited.

I need these books. All I have made in my slow cooker is beans.

I just got this book the other day, and I can't wait to start cooking from it! Flipping through the pages, I was so excited about all of the recipes...Chicken and mushroom casserole, faux steak and gravy, braised tempeh with figs and port wine...YUM! I plan to cook from this a lot this fall and winter.

The last thing I need is another cookbook but I totally want this!

I'll be following this thread closely. I have a 4 qt slow cooker that is severely neglected and I would love to use it to free up more time on the weekends. I did have Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker and I tried about 15 recipes out of it, but honestly they just always seemed so bland to me that I gave the book away.

I find this book a bit underwhelming as well, but I have doctored quite a few of the recipes and made them work. My book is a crazy mess of notations...

I am really excited to get my hands on a new slow cooker book! Our schedules are CRAZY and thus the slow cooker has become a necessity. I must admit slow cooker recipes are never my fave, so I'm hoping this book changes my mind. Plus, we are in a rut--we have eaten slow cooked sweet potatoes several times this week:) I will post my reviews as soon as I get my hands on this book!

Man, I gave my slow cooker to my uncle when I became vegan thinking there was nothing I could use it for. Think he'll notice if it comes up missing?

If not, I've seen them running for about $15-$20 on Amazon, I think, if you're cool with having the dial be manual with no timer.

So far I've made the chana saag, the Valentine's dark chocolate oatmeal (not the exact title), and the pumpkin white bean lasagna.

Opinions:
Chana saag - Really wish I would have made this with spinach instead of with collard greens. I shoulda known that the bitterness from the collards would be unwelcome in a dish like this, especially paired with lime zest. It gave it a bitter/sour flavor that I'm not really a fan of. I'm not blaming the recipe at all, though, since I'm pretty sure it would have been delicious if I had used a less bitter green.

Chocolate oatmeal - Really good. I liked that the liquid ratio was appropriate so it didn't turn into a pseudo-cake in the crock pot like other oatmeal recipes I've tried have. I used sugar instead of stevia, though, since I don't have stevia and generally don't use sugar substitutes in anything but my beverages. It'd be really great with some peanut butter stirred in, but I'm trying to cut back on calories.

Pumpkin white bean lasagna - I liked the flavor of this well enough, but I think the lasagna noodles came out a little gummy. Not sure if I should have cooked it for less time or maybe used more water, but in any case, it wasn't a huge deal. I think this would have been good with some tempeh sausage crumbles or something added in for extra flavor. I think it'd also be better if you hand crumbled the tofu (don't use silken) instead of adding it to the food processor, to give it more of a ricotta texture. I used silken and added it to the food processor, which made it really creamy, which is good in a non-ricotta way.

I'm definitely going to keep cooking from this book, but I'll need to be good about using my best judgment where freedom of ingredient type is allowed.

I was a tester - I loved the curries (Thai and Indian), the pasta dishes and being able to cook with dried beans.
That's something that has never worked for me before. Worth the price of the book right there.
Her portion sizes are very generous too.

I always see these at good will for > $5, sometimes I think about getting a second one but where the fork would I put it!