Collected Thoughts

A few that I can remember off the top of my head:

The Starving Students Vegetarian Cookbook: It's little, most of the recipes are 5 ingredients or so, and most of the recipes seem to be designed with little kitchens in mind. Not many of the recipes are terribly exciting, but there are a bunch of good basic staples. (There are a few other student vegetarian cookbooks, but this one's the only one I know.)

Vegetarian 5-ingredient Gourmet: exactly what it says. I like this one better than the Starving Students -- the recipes are a bit healthier, more likely to use fresh vegetables, and less likely to depend too much on cheese or peanut butter.

The Voluptuous Vegan: I don't actually own this one, and never cooked anything from it, but I've looked through it a lot and it looks pretty good.

Passionate Vegetarian: I've got mixed feelings about this one. It's mostly vegetarian versions of Southern/Appalacian foods, with a whole lot of other stuff, too. There have been some things I've made from it that were incredibly good (our Thanksgiving vegetarian main dish for the past few years came from this) and others that I really wasn't that happy with (the spices in the chili are all wrong.) Some of the things are pretty interesting, and it taught me how to cook a lot of vegetables (okra, collards, etc.) that I'd been kind of scared to try, but it also relies a bit too much on fake meats, rather than emphasizing vegetables, for my taste.