More Vegetables, Please!

By Elson M. Hass, MD and Patty James, MS
New Harbinger Publications, Inc., $21.95, 264 pages

Eating three to five servings of vegetables a day as the food pyramid recommends isn’t so easy when our busy lives demand fast meals dominated by pasta and bread, meat, and dairy products. More Vegetables, Please! is both a cookbook and vegetable primer that hopes to teach people how to make vegetables a diet staple.

There are over 100 vegetable-focused recipes in the book that cover everything from sauces to entrées. With a holistic nutritionist (Patty James) and a doctor (Elson M. Hass) as authors, the recipes in the book are healthful and include a breakdown of nutritional information. The authors were considerate in designing the recipes with ingredients that can be found at the local grocery store rather than choosing exotic, expensive ingredients.

A unique aspect of this cookbook is that James and Hass, who encourage readers to include children in the preparation of food, have special sidebars next to many of the recipes that detail how children can help. Also valuable are the book’s subsections with great information such as instructions for growing spouts and a glossary that pairs several spice suggestions with each type of vegetable.

Reviewed by Megan Just