I had to take 500 Vegan Recipes: An Amazing Variety of Delicious Recipes, from Chilis and Casseroles to Crumbles, Crisps, and Cookies by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman back to the library yesterday. There are 3 reservable copies in the Hennepin county library system and one request besides the 3 that are checked out. Not bad for a vegan cookbook with no photos published in 2009.

The Asian-Inspired Seitan Crumbles and Basic Seitan Crumbles on page 210 are both yummy. They offer a technique that I was unfamiliar with before. Because they have you cook the seitan quickly in a pan with oil instead of steaming or boiling, this is a good recipe for when you’re in the middle of cooking dinner and you realize you haven’t incorporated a protein source yet and there’s no other protein source that will be ready to go within 20 minutes or so.

That being said, I’m pretty sure that’s the only recipe I’ve tried from this cookbook and I think I’ve checked it out from the library twice. I get inspired by photos of food and since this book has none, I haven’t gotten around to looking through it. In fact, my sweetie pie was the discoverer of those seitan recipes in this tome—I’m pretty sure I would have missed them if left to my own devices. I bet I would be likely to find many good recipes in this cookbook, but it’s been hard to stick with it due to the lack of pictures.

I’ll check it out from the library again pretty soon and give it another go. Who knows, 500 Vegan Recipes may eventually end up on my shelf permanently as a reference.