Forest Joseph - Cooking vegetarian: healthy, delicious and easy vegetarian cuisine

The book you hold in your hands is a work of love from two friends who greatly appreciate food and its ability to impact health and well-being. I am delighted to work with my dear colleague and mentor Vesanto Melina in bringing to you this well-researched and tested guide to adopting more plant-based foods into your daily food regime. This book contains cutting-edge scientific information on vegetarian nutrition, along with over 150 recipes that are nutritious, tasty, and easy to prepare. The full spectrum of recipes will take you through the day, from breakfast to desserts, with choices that you can revisit time and time again as you discover how truly good these recipes are. But before you make your shopping list and fill your fridge and pantry with wholesome foods, let me tell you a bit about myself.

My career as a professional chef began 27 years ago, and by todays standard, that is a long time to stay in a single occupation. The more I deepen my knowledge of food, the further I experience its ability to nourish and heal the body, mind, and spirit, and the more I appreciate my vocation. Having found my right livelihood is a blessing, and this particular path bestows gifts that go far beyond the health that I experience along the way.

As a young adult I embarked upon formal chef training that opened doors into the world of fine-dining restaurants, where the focus was serving individual plates to appreciative audiences. Later I worked in the banquet kitchens of prestigious hotels such as the Four Seasons, where I learned to transfer the high standards of quality that I had learned in smaller settings to volume cooking. These skills were eventually transferred to the world of film catering, where I worked as a team member feeding movie crews.

Highlights of my livelihood include developing a whole food catering company, working as a consultant to several natural food manufacturers, assisting in the production and revision of two corporate cookbooks, and acting as a consulting chef for the opening of two natural food restaurants. Along the way I have had the honour of feeding international rock-and-roll personalities, political leaders, dignitaries, and numerous Hollywood celebrities.

However, my favourite achievement has been co-writing the Canadian bestselling cookbook, Cooking Vegetarian, with Vesanto Melina, Registered Dietitian. The book was launched in 1996 and subsequently released in the United States in 1998, where it also enjoyed widespread popularity. I met Vesanto in 1991 and over the last 20 years we have collaborated on numerous projects. The nutritional knowledge I gained from working with Vesanto has been invaluable, and I consider my working relationship with her to be one of the most rewarding associations of my professional life.

The roots of my love for food go back to my youthto when I lived in Edmonton with my parents and five siblings. Mine was a large family, and my mother spent a good amount of time making sure we were well fed. My mom and dad came from big Prairie families; they were raised on farms, so they knew the value of planting vegetable seeds in the spring to reap a harvest that would feed active, growing family members.

Soon after my mom and dad were married, they bought their first home from a gardener. That property had a large garden plot in the backyard, along with fruit trees and plenty of flowering plants. Every spring I helped plant a vegetable garden that would yield produce well into the autumn. Two crab apple trees not only offered twisting branches for good climbing but also a secret hiding place at the height of summer. Come fall, the abundant fruit from those trees was turned into jams and jellies. They took their place in the basement pantry alongside canned peaches, pears, beets, tomatoes, and Saskatoon berry jamwhat seemed at the time to be countless jars of bright, multicoloured, mouth-watering food. I never went hungry.