Spring into vegetable protein!

Ever get a craving for some nonfat dry milk, carob, or boiled soybeans? No? Me neither. But sometimes I do get a craving to read about those kinds of things. What I'm trying to say is that it's time for more 1970s health food cookery!

The Vegetable Protein and Vegetarian Cookbook (Jeanne Larson and Ruth McLin, 1977) offers up a series of seasonal veggie menus, so let's check out a bountiful spread for a spring day.

Oooh-- are we lucky! Peanut Loaf with Tomato Sauce and a Stuffed Celery Salad! The Peanut Loaf is probably exactly what you are expecting:

A huge wad of stale bread cubes bound with some eggs and peanut butter. Bonus: It's studded with diced celery (because it's everyone's favorite vegetable and the Stuffed Celery Salad just won't satiate people's celery lust!) and ground peanuts (I'm guessing not too finely ground, or they would just be additional peanut butter).

And what will that tomato sauce entail? Is it going to have tomatoes slowly cooked down and spiked with fresh herbs for a pop of fresh flavor...

...or is it just going to be thickened tomato juice? (Hey, at least it's not just a can of condensed tomato soup.)

And you know what? We're blessed with an Alternate Carrot Peanut Loaf, just in case we need extra vitamin A.

Plus, this one has tomato juice right in the recipe, so I guess you don't have to make the tomato sauce? Bonus points for being easier.

I'm skipping the recipes for Serbian Cabbage and New Potatoes and Peas since they're both kind of boring (shredded cabbage sautéed with green pepper and onion; new potatoes and peas in a cream sauce) and checking out the Stuffed Celery Salad since I do so love celery.

The nice thing about this one is that you just have to stuff the individual celery sticks and you're done, rather than having to try to stuff them and then reassemble the whole thing back into its original form. The downside, of course, is that they're stuffed with a prune, cottage cheese, mayonnaise, and onion salt mixture, then sprinkled with paprika. It would be so much easier and better tasting just to go with good old-fashioned peanut butter, but then I guess that would be considered redundant with the peanut loaf main course.

And if you're curious about the Peachy Pudding for dessert, it shows that this natural foods cookbook isn't afraid of mixes.

Dessert stars instant lemon pudding! I kind of wonder if the peach purée would make the pudding loose, but this is low-effort and should at least taste okay. It's not "candy" made out of bran or good old Wheat-Soy Dessert, after all. In fact, the recipes in this aren't nearly as militantly health-foody as they might be... No boiled soybeans, powdered milk, or carob at all!

 I hope you liked the spring recipes, as we should have a summer menu in a couple of months! Get your "healthy" appetite ready.