The Moosewood Cookbook is a recipe book written by Mollie Katzen when she was a member of the Moosewood collective in Ithaca, New York. The original First Edition, self-published in 1974 by Moosewood, was a spiral bound paper-covered book, with photographs of the restaurant staff, with illustrations hand-drawn and text hand-written by Molly Katzen. It was printed by the Glad Day Press in Ithaca. The full title of the self-published edition was The Moosewood Cookbook, Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant in the Dewitt Mall, Ithaca, New York. The book was then picked up by the then-fledgling Ten Speed Press in California, which edition was given a different cover and hand-lettered and illustrated by Katzen.
The cookbook featured a number of the recipes favored by the restaurant at the time. Moosewood was listed by The New York Times as one of the top ten bestselling cookbooks of all time, and is likely the most popular vegetarian cookbook in the world.
Katzen later rewrote the book with leaner recipes in a version published in 1992, long after her original association with the Collective had lapsed, though she kept the title and the hand-lettered style; the later Collective went on to publish its own unrelated series of books. Katzen has written two books that might be considered sequels; the first, called The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, expands on topics such as baking that the Moosewood book does not cover in depth, and is done in the same hand-lettered style as the original. The second, The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without, came out in 2007 and returned to Katzen's original hand-written style after years of more conventionally designed books such as Still Life with Menu and Pretend Soup.
Reception
In 2007, the James Beard Foundation named the book to the Cookbook Hall of Fame. The New York Times has listed it as one of the ten best selling cookbooks of all time.
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