Ray, thanks for the link on the Ornish book. I just ordered it. I stay away from "weight loss" books, and I hadn't realized that this one was more about vegetarian lifestyle.
I noticed that one of the criticisms of the book on Amazon was about his use of dairy. I try to avoid dairy because of the allergy concerns (at health food supermarkets such as Whole Foods/Bread & Circus their dairy products have no hormones, so that's not a concern), but have found that soy milk is a perfect substitute for milk and cream.
I absolutely cannot live without Parmesan cheese, however. I put it on everything that I cook with rice, grains, everything! The soy and rice substitutes for cheese are lousy, IMO. So I buy the real imported stuff and trust that the old Italians know how to age all the bad stuff out of it.....
Another criticism of the Ornish book is that the recipes are time-consuming. Well, I've found that cooking anything vegetarian from scratch is more time-consuming than cooking with meat, in general. It takes hours to make a fabulous winter vegetable stew on a cold Sunday afternoon, whereas you can just throw a roast in the oven or some meat on the grill and it's much easier.
So when I cook, I try to cook for the freezer, not for our stomachs. In other words, on weekends I cook veggie meals in huge quantities that will freeze and microwave well for later quick lunches and dinners during the week. Polenta is the only veggie staple that doesn't seem to freeze and nuke well.
I buy organic vegetables, so it's not necessarily less expensive to eat veggie than to cook meat, but it is a lot easier to cook in large quantities for later use than is true with most meat dishes.
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