Megan and Jill Carle started learning to cook before they learned how to spell. Twenty years and four ASU degrees later, the Carle sisters have written and published their fourth cookbook, “College Vegetarian Cooking.”

Megan, a linguistics graduate and Fulbright scholar who is currently in Austria, and Jill Carle, who will return to ASU in the spring for her doctorate degree in political science, launched the cookbook in July.

They decided to focus their latest cookbook on vegetarian meals since Megan Carle and many of their friends are vegetarians.

“I’m not so much interested in that kind of stuff,” Jill Carle said. “But what’s funny is that almost all of the stuff in here I really like, which I feel like is saying a lot.”

The Carle sisters, who both received their master’s degrees in May, learned to cook when they were small children by helping their mom around the kitchen.

“That doesn’t mean that we actually knew how to cook,” Jill Carle said. “It just means we were making a mess in the kitchen when we were about 3 years old, doing things like getting super excited about cracking eggs and maybe being allowed to mix things.”

As the sisters grew, they began preparing more complicated dishes. However, it wasn’t until Megan Carle tried to teach their younger cousin to cook that they became authors.

“She wanted to get him a cookbook for his birthday,” Jill Carle said. “We went out, were looking for them and couldn’t find any.”

The Carle sisters then considered writing their own cookbook but didn’t proceed with the idea until their mom, an accountant for a gourmet chef in Chicago who had written cookbooks before, called the chef’s publishing company to see if they knew of any good cookbooks for children.

“A few weeks later the editor called back and was like, ‘Hey, we really liked that idea that you have about writing a cookbook for teenagers,’” Jill Carle said. “Because they were already interested ahead of time, we didn’t have to convince them a whole lot.”

Megan and Jill Carle published their first cookbook, “Teens Cook,” in 2004. As ASU students, they followed with “Teens Cook Dessert” in 2006 and published their third cookbook, “College Cooking,” in 2007. Each books contains 90 recipes.

“College Vegetarian Cooking” is meant to serve as an introduction to vegetarian cooking but has recipes for cooks of any skill level, Jill Carle said.

“If you have no cooking ability whatsoever, then we’ll help you figure out how to cook, but if you do know how to cook then there are just some good recipes that will add to what you already know how to do,” Jill Carle said. “There’s something for everybody.”

Jill Carle said the book, which has half vegetarian and half vegan recipes, can be enjoyed by vegetarians, vegans and non-vegetarians alike.

“A lot of the time vegetarian or vegan cooking gets a bad reputation, especially from people that aren’t vegetarian, and it doesn’t have to be that way,” Jill Carle said. “So I think [the cookbook] is making vegetarian cooking something that’s appealing to everybody, not just to vegetarians.”

Ryan Huling, spokesman for PETA, said the popularity of vegetarianism has grown in the past few years, so it’s important for vegetarian students to have choices.

“The dorm kitchen is pretty limited, so it’s always helpful to have a cookbook that lays out very simple but delicious and helpful vegetarian recipes,” Huling said.

Natalie Lew, a psychology junior and co-president of VegAware at ASU, said it’s great there’s a cookbook for vegetarian meals for college students.

“People don’t always know the variety of food that’s vegetarian, so a cookbook will show that,” Lew said.

For now the Carle sisters are looking into writing a fifth cookbook, but Jill Carle said she hopes the cookbooks they’ve already written give people confidence in the kitchen.

“It’s all about doing what you want to do,” Jill Carle said. “If there’s something in a recipe that you don’t like, then take it out. A lot of the time people get so concerned about following the recipe exactly as it says to do it, but for the most part you can add whatever you want.

“It’ll make it your own. It’ll make it whatever you want it to be.”

Reach the reporter at snrodri@asu.edu.

Click here for a State Press Television interview with author Jill Carle