Moosewood has been a quintessential vegetarian cookbook for as long as I can remember. Having started as the restaurant in Ithaca, NY, a homespun sort of farm and college town. Every time I go to Ithaca, I find myself fantasizing giving up my New York wardrobe and wearing hand-died organic peasant clothes, the kind that cost so much more than what I’m willing to pay for clothes.

But most of us, not living close enough to Ithaca to dine regularly at the restaurant, know Moosewood through the cookbooks: Moosewood Cookbook; The Enchanted Broccoli Forest; The Heart of the Plate. By the time I started buying cookbooks, Katzen had stepped back and the Moosewood Collective had stepped forward, giving us cookbooks like Moosewood Collective Cooks at Home, Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites, Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts, Moosewood Restaurant Daily Specials – and this one, Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant.

I’ve tried making things from the other books I own – although it looks like a well-meaning relative gave me The Heart of the Plate and I haven’t tried any recipes from that one – but this is the one that I’ve gotten recipes from that I really enjoyed and made repeatedly. For some reason, the recipes that I tried from other books just came together in a way that didn’t make me want to make them again.

Sundays is a collection of recipes from “a new ethnic or regional cuisine,” including recipes from Africa, Eastern Europe, South America or Provence – but also from the British Isles, China, Turkey, “Jewish,” and the Southern US.

Some of my favorite recipes from this book include West African Peanut Soup (super easy and tempting for children because it’s made with creamy peanut butter), Imam Bayildi (which I love for the translation: “The Imam Fainted” – presumably when he tasted it because it was so delicious – but I’ve never been able to recreate it at that level), Garlic Soup, Morcov mode Taranese (Romanian carrots with sour cream), Crema de Elote (creamy corn soup), Sorrel Soup, Potato Cake, Cheese Grits, Pimento Cheese Bisque, and the one I made every Thanksgiving for years, Auntie Wades Sweet Potato Soufflé.

Oh, now I am hungry.

When we give my sister-in-law, bless her heart, cookbooks for Christmas, she is so disciplined about starting at one of end the table of contents and making recipes until the book is dog-eared and bookmarked, stained and broken-backed, and she has a delicious new repertoire to share with guests. I am not that disciplined. I generally thumb through a new cookbook, tasting aloud and flagging them with sticky notes – and then never cooking them, or maybe trying one or two and then going back to my old standards.

Except for these recipes. I’ve literally cooked the spine out of this one.

I’ve eaten at Moosewood twice. Once, maybe about 15 years ago, and I remember being disappointed: it wasn’t bad but it didn’t live up to my expectations. We ate there again a few weeks ago, and it was okay but, again, didn’t live up to expectations.

And the thing I ordered was hard to eat without making a mess. I hate food that’s messy to eat.

And I really hate it when I pay money for food and it’s messy to eat. A few years ago, I went out to dinner at a very high-end NYC restaurant where I had enjoyed meals before (when you sat down, they placed a vase of warm, bite-sized, cheese puffs on the table) who was going through that horrible phase that Dirt Candy seems stuck in, where they give in to the idea that a meal should be “experiential” – which meant, for several courses, this restaurant expected diners to assemble their food, put a sandwich together or spice a carrot that had been boiled flavorless and then mushed through a meat-grinder. I shudder to remember.

When I go out to dinner, I like to sit in a beautiful space and have servers bring me delicious food on beautiful plates that a professional who has skills and experience that I lack has prepared for me. That is what I’m paying for, not a meal where I have to figure out how to spice a mushy carrot.

Gone off topic again.

Let me end by saying, if you want a cookbook with some easy and delicious recipes, most of them vegetarian, give this cookbook a try.

And try the Sweet Potato Soufflé for Thanksgiving. It’s easy – not strictly a soufflé at all – and absolutely delicious.