MOOSEWOOD RESTAURANT CELEBRATES: Festive Meals for Holidays and Special Occasions

The Moosewood Collective and its Ithaca restaurant celebrate 30 years of good vegetarian cuisine this year. With the increased popularity in vegetarian cooking, Moosewood has grown and developed its style in its roster of popular cookbooks. This new volume covers festive occasions and holidays from weddings to Father's Day, Halloween to Kwanza, which are challenging for everyone and more so for the vegetarian cook or those with vegetarian guests. Divided by season and then by celebration, this volume offers for each occasion a menu with recipes and useful hints for timings and presentation. The dishes have a modern, international feel. From the Southwestern Dinner Party with its refreshing Avocado Citrus Salad that brightens the Winter section, to the luscious Chocolate Soufflé Cake that would happily grace any dessert buffet, most of the recipes are simple to produce. The ingredients are described fully in a very helpful glossary, and the recipes carefully explained and often finished with alternative variations. After three decades, this book shows how vegetarian cuisine has come of age and can be appropriate for any occasion. (Sept.)

Forecast:This well-produced volume, timed with Moosewood's 30th anniversary, should prove successful as more people have switched to or included vegetarian dishes in their diet.