People often think of Trader Joe's as a place to find well-priced, interesting, specialty items — and it is — but you can also get nearly everything you need to maintain a vegetarian or vegan diet, if you know where to look. We used to live two blocks from a Trader Joe's, and stopped in often for our favorite items. We liked to get their hummus and peanut butter, and I was especially fond of the frozen mangoes, and tomatoes with green chilies. I also used to buy large bags of cashews, bags of avocados, and I admit that we often have a couple packs of frozen, cooked brown rice in the freezer for "emergencies". When I was offered a copy of Kris Holechek Peters' new cookbook, The I Heart Trader Joe's Vegetarian Cookbook, I was really curious to see the range of recipes Kris assembled that could be created with food from Trader Joe's.

The cookbook is vegetarian with a vegan version of every recipe, though a great many of the 150 recipes are already vegan. There are also many clearly marked gluten-free recipes.

We decided to try two recipes for this review. Though there were a lot of appealing possibilities like Thai Lentil Simmer, Tahini Broccolini, and BBQ Bowl, my husband was craving tomato soup, and I was fixated on the polenta fries, so we chose our test recipes accordingly.