Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I'm looking for a good holiday cookbook and would love opinions on the following:

Vegan for the Holidays by Zel Allen

Vegan Holiday Kitchen by Nava Atlas

And any others you may have experience with. Thanks!

I've looked at those two on Amazon, also there's one that's Gluten-Free and Vegan Holidays that looks interesting.

The only ones I can say anything about is Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations and Celebrate Vegan, although I've only cooked random things from them both of these books. What I've made has been good.

I say this with much reluctance because I am definitely a fan of Nava, but I checked out Vegan Holiday out of the library and wasn't too impressed :( However, that is just my opinion, others may have adored that particular book.

I do know that VegNews had a couple of holiday e-books. I posted a new discussion topic on it here but no one has it so no one was able to offer any opinion......
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=22963

I have "Party Vegan" by Robin Robertson and love that. I have made many things and they have all been fantastic.
http://www.amazon.com/Party-Vegan-Fabul ... B007SRW9EI

darksideknitter, can you tell me which Holidays are covered in Quick and Easy Vegetarian Celebrations and Celebrate Vegan? Are Jewish holidays included or only Christian and non-denominational ones?

I have Nava's Vegetarian Celebrations, a 20+ year old cookbook that is now falling apart. It's vegetarian but not vegan, though there are some vegan celebrations. I love that cookbook, but I haven't had as much luck with Nava's more recent cookbooks, which is one of the reasons I didn't want to get Vegan Holiday Kitchen without hearing other opinions.



I have looked at that and I am interested, but since there aren't many recipes in it, I'm waiting to hear more opinions.



Does Party Vegan have recipes and menus for specific holidays?

hiya, I have my 'party vegan' book in my hands now. besides the intro and party how-to/organization stuff, here is the list of the table of contents, the book i suppose is divided into 2 parts, anytime gatherings and holiday gatherings. this is actually the first vegan cookbook i ever bought as i bought it on a whim as a bargain book. i adore it, it literally has changed my life :) i have 2 of robin's other cookbook's and love them as well. everything i have made out of here has come out fantastic. if you want to know what specifically i've made i can let you know, and if you want to know some of the specific menus/recipes for some of the "gatherings" just let me know.

ANYTIME GATHERINGS
a dinner party
crowd control
a picnic lunch
effortless potluck
just desserts
a child's birthday party
a teen party
a tapas table
chinese new year
curry for company

HOLIDAY GATHERINGS
a super bowl party
be my valentine dinner for two
st patrick's day menu
phat tuesday party
passover
cinco de mayo celebration
mother's day brunch
father's day cookout
a fourth of july celebration
halloween
simply stuffed thanksgiving dinner
christmas
hanukkah
new year's eve a-list

each chapter has a title page with a list of all the recipes for that holiday. so for example, the hanukkah menu includes baby greens with lemony vinaigrette, quinoa-stuffed portabella mushrooms with wine-braised shallots, potato latkes with cranberry-apple relish, tarragon green beans with toasted pine nuts, and chocolate-raspberry rugalach. the thanksgiving menu includes chesnut bisque, buttercup squash stuffed with wild rice, shiitakes, and carmalized leeks, pan gravy, roasted autumn vegetables, cranberry-apple relish, and pecan-pumkin pie

also, in the last pages of the book, she does have a recipe by category section, hors d'oeuvres, soups, salads, main dishes, side dishes, sauces & condiments, breads & muffins, and desserts. so all the recipes are organized that way too, sorta like a normal cookbook.

Celebrate Vegan:
New Years Celebrations: includes menus for New Year's Day, Chinese New Year, Nowruz (Persian New Year), and Rosh Hashanah
American Celebrations:includes menus for MLK,jr. day, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Father's Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Columbus (aka indigenous people's) Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Kwanzaa, Fetivus
International Celebrations: menus for Vesak, Timkat, Cinco de Mayo, Bastille Day, World Vegetarian Day, Diwali, Guy Fawkes Day, Barbados Independence Day
Religion Based: menus for Candlemas/La Chandaleur, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Mardi Gras, Purim, Easter, Passover, Hanukkah, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Eid al-Fitr
Milestone Celebrations: menus for Child's Birthday, Grown up's Birthday, Wedding, Anniversary, Funeral
Everyday Celebrations:menus for Girl's Night In, Tailgate Party, Tea Time, Slumber Party, Endurance Event, Sick Day, Snow Day, Raw (food) Celebration

Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations: Menus for New Years Day, Game Day Spread, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Cinco de Mayo, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Birthday Sweets, Basics

I also have Party Vegan and with these 2 feel I have enough holdiday/special occasion type cookbooks. It is nice to have a variety of menus to choose from for certain holidays by owning more than one but that might be the cookbook hoarder coming out in me! PV and QEVC have more traditional items whereas CV is more expansive probably due to the high number of non-traditional holiday menus provided.

wow, CV does have a ton of menus. I have yet to use Party Vegan (PV) for an official party ;) I actually use it as an everyday cookbook and have loved everything I've made from it. I'm sure once the traditional holiday season rolls around, I will definitely be actively looking through it to see what dishes I can make for our holidays.

I have Rose Elliott's Vegetarian Christmas. It's really super British, so it's more one of those things I picked up for $3 on clearance at Powell's and flip through occasionally just for the novelty and inspiration. Rose Elliott wrote the first vegetarian cookbook I had, back when I was a wee tween, so I have a special fondness for her books. Haven't actually made anything out of it though!! It has a bunch of suggested menus with nice countdowns for everything (the British seem to take their Christmases as culinarily seriously as Thanksgiving, so be prepared for the shock of the cooking prep starting MONTHS ahead of time. Like: bake your cake. Douse it in a bottle of rum. Wrap and bury underground. Each week for 3 months, douse it in another bottle of rum and rewrap). There are a lot of vegan recipes in here if you include ones that are trivially veganizable (like butter->EB, or omitting an eggwhite glaze on pastry, but I think the menus would be hard to use as is for a vegan because they seem to have at least one recipe in each that isn't veganizable (mostly the desserts, though, so swapping it out wouldn't be so bad).

I've made a few appetizers out of Party Vegan, but I can't say that I've made much else. The antipasto skewers were nice, the chickpea baked frittery things whose name escapes me were aiight although definitely need to be served hot.. But there was an aioli with it or something that was super simple and that was a huge hit. It's all fuzzy now. I'm useless. It's not my favorite Robin cookbook.

Also have Paula Deen's celebrations!! Uhh.. not too vegan, that one. But fun for inspiration, and a fun challenge to veganize.

It's another British one, but Celia Brooks Brown's "Vegetarian Party Food" has some great stuff in it. It takes a little bit of creative veganizing (like in one soup recipe I use soygurt in place of creme fraiche), but it has some creative things I might never have thought up myself.

Voluptuous Vegan and Vegetarian Entertaining with Friends are another couple that put emphases on special occasion menus.

Celebrate Vegan has some great recipes in it, but I wouldn't buy it for a Thanksgiving/Christmas menu.

Wow, Bookworm Bethie and Lindsey T, thanks so much for typing out all those menus!

I'm impressed that Party Vegan and Celebrate Vegan both have Passover menus. That's an extra hard to cook for holiday because oft he prohibition against anything that contains leavening. In some traditions, legumes are also excluded.

Bethie, thanks so much for offering to give more info. I would love to know the Passover menu in Party Vegan actually and the Christmas menu as well (both Christian and Jewish holidays are celebrated in our household).

Anna K, I got that Rose Elliott book from the library once so I know what you're talking about when you say it's super British! So true. I don't think I've ever actually made anything out of it though. Can you say more about why Party Vegan isn't your favorite Robin cookbook?
Also, which of all the holiday cookbooks you mentioned is your favorite?

Creep -- Thanks so much for letting me know that.

You could also take a look at all the Vegetarian Times back issues from November/December. http://books.google.com.au/books/serial ... 97?rview=1

will do this for you when i get home from work ;)
I'd also like to add that I really do love the party vegan cookbook, i tend to use it more as an 'everyday' cookbook as it's in rotation with my other not-holiday vegan cookbooks :)

here's my review of it on my blog
http://bookwormbethie.wordpress.com/201 ... -review-7/

holy cow! thanks for sharing that link. it seems the entire issue is viewable?!!?!?

The Seder Menu for Passover
Cousin Jenny's Matzo Ball Soup
Roasted Eggplant and Potato Torta
Lemon-Scented Asparagus Bundles
Apple-Pecan Haroset
Fruit Crisp with Matzo Crumb Topping

She also offers the following "recipe swaps"
Main Dish: Buttercup Squash Stuffed with Wild Rice, Shiitake Mushrooms, and Caramelized Leeks (page 231)
Side Dish: Tarragon Green Beans with Toasted Pine Nuts (page 253)
Dessert: Fresh Fruit Picks with Two Dips (page 99), Strawberries Dipped in Chocolate (page 71), or Pistachio-Dusted Chocolate-Raspberry Truffles (page 96)

Christmas Dinner
Mixed Greens with Caramelized Walnuts and Balsamic Pear Vinaigrette
Porcini-Stuffed Seitan with Wild Mushroom Sauce
Herb-Mashed Potatoes
Wilted Baby Spinach with Dried Cranberries
Spiced Two-Apple Tart with Cider Creme

As for "recipe swaps" Robin suggests anything from the Thanksgiving menu which I think I already typed up ;)

LMK if you need any more specific details about anything else ;)

Karena-- Thanks, I already have a lot of those VT issues, but I'll take a look.

Bookworm Bethie - Thanks so much for typing all that up! I'm not sure about substituting wild rice stuffed squash into a Passover meal. Is wild rice kosher for Passover? I think maybe only in the Sephardi tradition?

Party Vegan sounds very good nonetheless.

yes party vegan rocks, if you follow the blog link to my bookreview above, you'll see that i actually bought PV from an overstock bookseller (always all new books) called edward hamilton. hubby & I have been mail ordering from that company from many years. of course we still buy plenty of new books online since we both ♥ to read.


not sure if wild rice is kosher or not. i have this book, it's pretty serious, but it's quite good, 'how to keep kosher' by lise stern.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Keep-Kosher-C ... 69-8179903

pages 173-178 seem to address your question. in general, the author says that the rabbis state that "...there are five grains that when combined with water can yield chametz, that is, the chemical reaction we call the leavening process: wheat, barley, rye, oats, and spelt." on the following page, the author does talk a bit about "kitniyot" which are legumes and the differences in the Ashkenazic and Sephardim traditions, mainly that Sephardim will eat "'legumes" such as "rice and corn" but that "...according to Ashkenazic tradition, they are considered forbidden for consumption on Pesach." There is a long explanation a couple of pages long that I am not qualified to summarize ;) Toward the end of the explanation the author says "In all, the following have been included in list sof kitniyot; as always, check with your rabbi for your local custom."

Maybe you can see if you can borrow this book from your library, or if maybe your library participates in a program where you can borrow the book from any other library in the state?

**p.s. my sincere apologies if religious information like I what I quoted above is not permitted on the boards. I'm still a bit new around here.**

Yes they are - & we don't have VT here, so that archive of back issues was quite a find!

Thanks for all that, Bethie. Yes, I was pretty sure that legumes are forbidden in the Ashkenazic Passover tradition. I lived in Israel as a child. My family is Ashkenazy and we had no legumes at Passover, even though we celebrated it more out of tradition than for religious reasons. Of course, now that I'm vegan, Passover gets tough. No chametz grains and no legumes leaves us with a lot of matza based recipes. I'd love to know how to make matza ball soup without eggs or legumes, and have those matza balls hold together...

A free vegan holiday e-cookbook: Tasty Vegan Holiday Recipes. I haven't cooked anything from it yet.

I have Bryanna Clark Grogan's The (Almost) No Fat Holiday Cookbook. It's conditionally vegan, a few recipes call for sugar or honey. The Passover menu doesn't contain any grains or legumes. So far I had made only Texas caviar from the cookbook.

I also have Linda Majzlik's Vegan Dinner Parties cookbook. It doesn't have a Passover menu, the menus are for months, and holidays happening in those months are just listed. I had tried several recipes from it, but mostly for side dishes, and the dishes turned out very tasty: Crunchy Sesame Potato Bake; Cauliflower in Almond Sauce; Potato, Leek and Spinach Casserole; Avocado and Potato Purée; Orange-glazed Swede (rutabaga) Julienne - this is the one I prepare the most; Onion and Sage Sauce; Fresh Tomato and Gherkin Relish; Jacket Potatoes; Red Onion and Wine Soup. I wasn't impressed by Sweet Potato with Coconut, too little coconut, can't be tasted. Linda Majzlik doesn't list salt in her recipes, so salt to taste. Her cookbooks are British, so the ingredients are in metric and imperial units (both) instead of cups. The ingredients used in small amounts are listed in tablespoons or teaspoons.

I have the Rose Elliot cookbook, but I've only made two things from it: the chestnut and red wine pate en croute, and the cashew nut roast with herb stuffing (both vegan if you sub the butter). The chestnut thing was lovely, but the cashew nut roast was bland beyond belief (which I find fairly common with Rose Elliot). It emerged as a solid lump of pale stodge (maybe it was just me, although I did follow the recipe exactly).

have you tried this one?
http://www.theppk.com/2005/04/matzoh-ball-soup-recipe/

also, did you end up ordering a vegan holiday cookbook? if so, which one?

I haven't tried that recipe. Is it the one in VWAV? If so I remember something about them being crumbly, but I could be misremembering.

I am still mulling over the cookbook options, but leaning toward Party Vegan, since I've had good experiences with Robin Robertson's cookbooks.

yes I think that is also in VWAV too.

I swoon for a good bowl of matzo ball soup so I really gotta start trying some vegan matzo ball recipes. As much as I love to cook from scratch as much as I can, for experimentation's sake, I think I'm going to pick up a box up Streit's matzo ball + soup mix and just fiddle around with that. I've been thinking of maybe using silken tofu and a wee bit of ground flax seed to mix up with the matzo meal........

Well whatever holiday vegan cookbook you end up buying, I hope it makes your friend's and family's tummies happy :)

I have Party Vegan waiting for pick up at the library. Will let you guys know what I think...