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I highly recomend this book to anyone! I love the vegie burger recipe! This book has many good recipes from all different cultures and a helpful source of mail order tvp. Great buy!

When I tried following a vegan diet in the summer of 2000 I made extensive use of TVP (texturized vegetable protein). I found TVP to be ideal for making imitation meat products, and this cookbook was an excellent resource for finding ways to use TVP. And some of the TVP foods I found to be better tasting than their meat counter-parts!

Probably the best tasting recipe I made from this book was the "Herbed Loaf." Also excellent was the recipe for "Sloppy Joes." And I made up a large bath of the "Veggie Burgers" and froze most of them for quick sandwiches later.

However, after a few months I found that I wasn't "thriving" on the vegan diet. And one reason I didn't was I would later learn that I was allergic to TVP! Since I was eating TVP almost every day, this had significant health implications.

But it should be noted that I am not allergic to soy in general. And I have since found out that many people have a problem with TVP who don't have a problem with soy otherwise. So there is "something" about the processing method that turns soybeans into soy flour and then into TVP that makes it even more of a potential allergen.

As a result of this problem, I eventually stopped the vegan diet and went back to eating a still a mostly plant-based diet, but with some animal foods. Maybe if I hadn't been eating all of the TVP I would not have had problems with the vegan diet as I do believe that a vegan diet can be healthy. I even have a chapter on "The Benefits of a Vegan Diet" in my book "Creationist Diet."

But all of that said, if you don't have a problem with TVP, then this cookbook would be of great benefit. But I would be careful about eating too much TVP until you're sure it's not a problem for you.

This book is really a wonderful beginners cookbook for TVP. I've made many of the recipes in it and they all turn out great. My husband, a dedicated meat eater, LOVES the TVP Sloppy Joeys! He loves sloppy joes with meat, but he likes these even better. There isn't much vegetarian food that anyone will enjoy, whether vegetatarian or not. I can't imagine being a vegetarian without TVP. If you like TVP, you need this book.