When the crock pot comes out at my house you can bet we’re having vegetable soup for dinner. At least, that used to be the safe bet. Judith Finlayson’s The Vegetarian Slow Cooker has rocked my kitchen! Who knew that a crock pot could be used to make bread, cheesecakes, casseroles, and just about anything else?

Confession time: I tend to take cookbook instructions as mere suggestions, and I toss in ingredients with only a vague measurement. There’s no stress if I don’t have the berries or the cheese that the recipe calls for; I just substitute something similar in shape, size, or color. Despite my cooking quirks, all of the recipes I tested from The Vegetarian Slow Cooker turned out well enough to earn praise from the non-vegetarian family members. Just imagine what a real kitchen-ista could do with Finlayson’s recipes!

The Vegetarian Slow Cooker includes a variety of recipes from the familiar and simple to the more sophisticated (but not difficult), and many of these are vegan friendly or can easily be adapted for vegans. Perhaps the biggest selling point here is the versatility; even a cook with skills as limited as mine can transpose them for use with a stovetop or oven when the crock pots are all in use.

Readers will find the usual cookbook categories represented—breads, breakfasts, appetizers, and so forth—but there’s nothing ordinary about these recipes. Finlayson serves up a feast of full-flavored dishes like gingery chickpeas in tomato gravy, veggie coconut curry, braised tofu, and blueberry oatmeal pudding cake. Vegetarians could live happily for years on The Vegetarian Slow Cooker. On the other hand, if not for the title you’d probably never notice that there’s no meat. In a mixed household like mine, that’s a huge bonus.

Judith Finlayson is the queen of slow cooker books, and her latest production is surely the best of the lot. If you’re in the habit of marking recipes you want to try, you’ll need a lot of flags for The Vegetarian Slow Cooker.