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When I went vegetarian shortly after graduating from college in 1986, I quickly had to learn how to cook for myself.

This was more of a challenge than it may sound because it was not as easy back then to find items such as tofu, soy milk, veggie burgers and all the other meat and dairy alternatives that now populate grocery store shelves.

There were also far less cookbooks available. Remember, this was before the internet, so vegetarian and vegan recipes were not just a Google-search away.

The first book I was able to lay my hands on was The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook, which was put out by San Francisco hippie transplants who established an intentional community in rural Tennessee known simply as "The Farm."

The book introduced me to such then-exotic food items as tofu, soy milk, textured vegetable protein and nutritional yeast flakes. I loved the book's soy bean burrito recipe, though went through some scary times learning how to use a pressure cooker that would occasionally clog and threaten to blow up right there on my stove.