Vegan Italiano cooking

I am a cookbook addict (self-diagnosed).

I can spend hours in the cookbook section of the book store. I am afriad to actually count how many are on our counter, but it's getting to the point where I need to start thinking about increasing my storage capacity.

The problem is that despite all of these cookbooks in my arsenal I always seem to find a recipe online somewhere that I want to try. This doesn't seem like a problem but when my wife doesn't see a return on our investment she starts to question my purchasing decisions.

This problem was averted this past week and my wife spent the good part of the past week scanning a couple cookbooks. One of them was Donna Klein's Vegan Italiano.

She found 5 great looking recipes and instructed me that "we will be making these". Well it wasn't quite like that but she did offer some encouragement in this direction.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we we only able to make 3 of the dishes. We originally made them Saturday night but they turned out so well that we made them again Sunday night!

The neat thing about this book is that the author states that "...this is an authentic Italian cookbook, no tofu or other food substitutes are required...". I was impressed not because I have an aversion to these substitutes (which I definitely don't) but this means that:

- I most likely have all of the ingredients required by a majority of the recipes
- I won't have to make a special trip in to the city (we live in the "boonies" now) in the event I don't have an ingredient (I can go to the "regular" grocery store)
- my family & friends could easily eat these meals and not be freaked out by "that weird Vegan food"

The biggest thing is...it's Italian food! Pasta, sauces, spices, herbs...how can you go wrong!

I'm glad my wife urged us to break into this treasure trove this weekend and we can't wait to try out more of the recipes.

I took a couple of snap shots of the finished products for your viewing pleasure.

Here is the Marianted Olives and Cherry Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Bruschetta:

Here is the Spinach & Eggplant Lasana: