Vegetable of the Day (Williams-Sonoma): 365 Recipes for Every Day of the Year

I love the way that it is organized. Beautiful pictures. Lots of recipes and different ways to use things like Swiss chard....which I grow in abundance! I will have more fun with the veggies that I am growing with this book.

I know Williams-Sonoma calls this series something else, but I like to call them one-A-Days--and the more of them I buy for my collection, the better i'm liking them. And it seems the more of them I add to the collection, the more I'm using them.I have them all lined up together on a shelf where they are easy to reach. (It is very nice that they match in size and looks.) I hesitated to pick this one up because I was concerned that this one would contain a lot of duplicates from the other books, but no, that is not an issue.Layout is not bad: You will find (most often) two recipes sis-by-side in two columns on a page, with ingredients on top and instructions below. Type size and color are easy on the eyes. There are not pictures for each recipe. (You may like to see a picture for each recipe, but do you really need one? I don't think so. I think one should lean on their own visual instincts, their own imagination and their own creativity more often than we do these days.)Index in a book like this needs to be extremely detailed--and this one is more than satisfactory. Of course, you will find the recipes indexed by ingredients, but you also get a secondary index that lists recipes by type of dish, flavor "theme", and cooking technique. I am going to list those headings for your because I think it will give great insight into the variety of recipes included:Here are the headings in the "Vegetable Recipes by Type": Asian-Style Dishes, Egg Dishes, Grain-Based, Gratins, Grilled, Main Dishes, Pancakes and Fritters, Pickles, Pies Tarts & Pastries, Salads (the largest group), Soups & Stews, Southwestern-Style Dishes, and Stir-Fries.I am a very experienced home cook and I enjoy cooking, and I even enjoy going through the daily thinking and deciding chore of "What's for dinner tonight?". I have way too many cookbooks on my library shelves, and I'm slowing down on my purchasing. (I like to read cookbooks, but I've finally learned that I do not need to buy them and keep them all.) And, yet, I will continue to buy this series as more are released.Better Homes and Gardens seems to be competing with W-S by producing a line of "Fresh" cookbooks. They are similar in size to these W-S books, recipes are arranged differently, and layout is way more stylish and current. Those books have more pictures, and the books manage to contain the same amount of recipes by including lots of "variations" (which take up less room than separate recipes. I find that the BHG cook books work great for a less experienced or younger cook--they are a little too basic for me and give me too much information on tools, pantry items, how-to basics, sources and such. The series does make a nice gift for someone starting out. The W-S series makes a nice gift for someone "a little further along". Actually, I recommend both series. Email me (my public address is on my Profile Page) or add a comment below, if you want more input on either series.

There is quite the variety here: side dishes, main dishes, quick or time-consuming dishes. Favorites so far: Tomato & Eggplant Tian and Winter Squash & Pecorino Tart. There is also a pretty good pumpkin soup.Each month starts with a full-spread calendar with a dish listed for each day (e.g. January 1st reads, "Spicy sauteed kale & chickpeas, page 12"). The calendar is followed by the full recipes in order by day. The advantage is that the recipes call for ingredients that are in season (love that). The disadvantage is that there is no other rhyme or reason to the order of the recipes. There is a good index in the back called "Vegetable Recipes by Type" that lists the recipes in the following categories for you: Asian-style dishes, egg dishes, grain-based dishes, gratins, grilled dishes, main dishes, pancakes & fritters, pickles, pies/tarts, salads, soups/stews, Southwestern-style dishes, and stir-fries. You can also look dishes up by ingredient. Still, I do a lot of flipping through every page looking for something that strikes my fancy. It's just a different format from what I am used to.

I was looking for inspiration to have more healthy vegetable sides in our tool kit to support our low carb diets. There are still a lot of carb based vegetable side dishes, but I love the seasonal structure to the book (it is literally 365 days of recipes). The recipes are generally easy and without too many esoteric ingredients and the pictures are definitely mouthwatering. A good resource to have.

I'm always on the lookout for books that feature vegetables as the stars. This is a really useful addition to my cookbook shelf. I've given it five stars, largely because of the extensive selection of vegetable recipes, and the simplicity of most of them. There are some amazing recipes in here (sweet potatoes with pecan nuts and maple-lime dressing is sensational) but if you're looking for something with really blow-your-mind flavour combinations I'd recommend Plenty, by Yotam Ottolenghi. However, if you're looking for something for everyday cooking to amp up your veggie intake, then this is a great book. I've had good success serving most of these recipes to my 6- and 4-year olds too. The baked mushrooms with pinenuts converted my fussy 4-year old to a mushroom-eater, and both girls really enjoyed the carrot and cumin tart (which I've since re-made successfully with carrot and thyme). This is a good go-to resource for everyday cooking, if you're not keen on eating plain boiled/roasted/mashed vegetables. I'm not a vegetarian, but I think this book is good for meat eaters and vegetarians alike - because it is really all about bringing out the wonderful flavour of plants and making it easy to put more of them on your dinner plate each night.

I wish I could get my money back. The Kindle version:- has no Table of Contents, so you can't even easily get to a particular month calendar-there are no links to individual recipes from the calendars-there are no links in the index-there is no search function so you cannot search on ingredients-the print is so small (and not black) that you need to magnify every page and then move it right or left so you can see the particular recipe you want to useThe only way you can find a recipe is go to the index, read the whole thing, write down all the pages you want to look at on paper, and then go to each individual page using the Go To function.This is beyond frustrating. If you are going to produce a Kindle book, produce a Kindle book, not a unuseable scan/photocopy. Is this a scam/sales trick to get you to buy the $34.95 hard back?

It's still a great book.As previously mentioned there isn't an index (on my kindle version, anyway) but at the start of each month there is a list of the dishes for that month. So if you have a hankering to cook 'parsnips' it doesn't take too long to go through the months. With the added bonus of finding something else you'll want to cook in the future.Not every recipe has a picture and the ingredient weights and occasionally names are for an American reader but you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out.Cooking is about trial and error and as you get better at it, adapting recipes. I'm still very much in error territory and this book is a better companion than most of the others I own. It would of earned five stars but I just haven't made enough errors yet :)

liked the booked used some of the recipes

Great book

Dieses Buch überrascht den Leser.Das Cover lässt ja nun eher auf langweilige Eintöpfe schleißen, es finden sich aber wirklich tolle, moderne, vielfältige und meist auch mit Zutaten aus dem Supermarkt nachzukochende Rezepte.Also wirklich Rezepte für jeden Tag.Die Rezepte sind grob saisonal sortiert und kommen aus jeder Kategorie:Tarts, Eintöpfe, Salate, Eiergerichte, Nudeln, Pies.Portionen sind sowohl groß und deftig als auch klein und eher als Beilage gedacht (gebratene kleine Tomaten mit Basilikum und Feta bilden eher keine ganze Hauptspeise).Ganz überwiegend sind die Rezepte auch vegetarisch, das eineoder andere enthält dann aber doch Fleisch oder sehr selten (Thun-)Fisch.Darüber kann man aber als Vegetarier oder jemand, der einfach mehr Gemüse essen möchte, hinwegsehen, da es mehr als genug Alternativen gibt.Eine Kennzeichnung für vegane oder vegetarische Rezepte gibt es nicht.Auf jeden Fall eignet sich das Buch auch als Familienkochbuch oder für Einsteiger, die zum ersten Mal alleine kochen müssen.

Compre el de ensaladas también y complemento maravilloso y sanamente mis comidas