General Notes

The best olive oil is "Filippo Berio". It really does taste better than others, at least some people swear to it.

Some of these recipes call for cooking in a crockpot. Some crockpots have an 'autocrock' setting. When the 'autocrock' setting is selected, my crockpot cooks the first two hours on 'high' and then automatically switches to 'low' temp after that.

"Ener-g" egg replacer is powder that can be used in place of eggs. Works great in all the recipes in this cookbook and is very inexpensive. Can be found in health food stores. It is fat-free and it stores indefinitely until used. You can add the powder mixed in with the other dry ingredients and the water when the eggs are called for.

I use "Soy-quik" in place of milk in most recipes. It's very inexpensive and a bit lower in calories than milk. It can be purchased in most health food stores.

Coriander is a herb - a lot like parsley - that's used in Indian dishes. You can usually find it fresh at the grocery store near the parsley. It's also called cilantro or Chinese parsley.

Indian chili powder is NOT the same as regular chili powder. Do not confuse the two or substitute them for each other. Indian chili powder is available at Indian grocery stores. It is much, much more powerful than the regular kind and does not have the "extra" spices that regular chili powder does. You can substitute cayenne pepper for Indian chili powder.

You can use applesauce instead of butter or margarine when baking. If the recipe calls for 1/2 cup of butter just use 1/2 cup of applesauce. I've had really good luck with this in cakes, muffins, etc. It works OK in cake-like cookies but not so well in "crispy" cookies.

The "Fred" referred to in many recipes is Lisa's husband. Most location references are in Columbus, Ohio.