Toasted flatbread provides the base for this Mesclun Salad Pizette with Peaches and Pecans from Jackie Newgent's Big

You don’t have to invest in a Prius or renounce electricity to green up your life. A new breed of “green” cookbooks advocates small but significant changes in your kitchen and your cooking habits that will increase your contribution to the Earth’s salvation.

Recognizing that most people will balk at drastic lifestyle changes, the books offer sober, realistic and unpretentious advice. “The Big Green Cookbook” is perhaps the most user-friendly of the bunch. Author Jackie Newgent urges aspiring greenies to find their “sustainable sweet spot” by adopting only changes they can make comfortably.

With an upbeat tone and can-do spirit, Newgent makes you want to live greener, simply because you can. She’s also peppered the book with factoids — if each American household replaced just one incandescent bulb with an energy saver, it would be like taking 800,000 cars off the road — that drive home the mantra “a little can mean a lot.”

Printed entirely on recycled paper with soy-based inks, the book lays out how to reduce cooking times and modify ingredients for some favorite meals. Instead of traditional chili con carne, make Chili con Turkey (more eco-friendly than beef) and make it in the pressure cooker (saves 42 minutes of cooking time). Instead of turning on the oven, use the microwave to “bake” desserts and brown the top with a pastry torch.

The recipes are well-organized, easy to prepare and generally tasty. Newgent arranges them by season to help cooks buy local, a move that will save food miles — the number of miles your food travels to reach your table (and therefore, the gallons of petroleum it gobbles). Within each season, she offers the traditional appetizer through dessert format. A summer meal of light and fragrant “Honeydew of the Sea” floats grilled mahi-mahi on a honeydew-avocado puree spiked with cayenne, cilantro and lime. A side of Veggie-Studded Sticky Quinoa offers a fresh and richly nutritious take on tabbouleh that requires only minutes of cooking time.

“The Green Kitchen” by Times of London food columnist Richard Ehrlich also offers a trove of easily applied tips. A truly engaging book “about making hundreds of small changes,” it’s full of gee-whiz information. To wit: Dishwashers actually save water. Defrosting in the refrigerator provides free cooling energy, thereby cutting energy consumption. Self-cleaning ovens are more efficient than standard ovens because they are better insulated.

The book, however, is undone by its structure. The recipes appear delicious, but are arranged according to cooking method, rather than some format that might actually be useful. American cooks might also find the abundance of recipes for sausage and potatoes a bit too British.

If you’re looking for a field manual rather than a cookbook, Kate Heyhoe’s “Cooking Green” is for you. Using terms like “cookprint” and “ecovore,” the book is a deluge of eco-tests, facts and advice on everything from what kind of meat to buy to fuel-efficient flatbreads.

Even the recipes contain more text than instruction, including a “Green Meter,” so cooks can quantify their greenness. Basically a textbook with recipes, the tome is likely to overwhelm newcomers to green cooking. But those who seek a complete overhaul in their cooking life and philosophy will benefit from its comprehensive approach.

NUT-CRUSTED GOAT CHEESE SALAD WITH APRICOTS AND APRICOT VINAIGRETTE

3 tablespoons coarsely chopped raw nuts, such as pistachios, hazelnuts, walnuts or almonds

3-ounce log soft fresh goat cheese, at room temperature, cut into 4 equal rounds

3 fresh apricots, pitted

2 teaspoons cider vinegar or white wine vinegar

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon minced shallot

1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, or to taste

1 bunch watercress, thick stems trimmed, coarsely chopped

1 large Belgian endive, cored, leaves thinly sliced lengthwise

Place the chopped nuts in a bowl. Gently press both sides of each cheese round into the nuts to adhere. Set aside.

Finely dice 1 of the apricots. Place the diced apricot in a bowl and use the back of a spoon to mash it. Add the vinegar and mix well. Whisk in the olive oil and shallot, then season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Thinly slice the remaining apricots. In a large serving bowl, toss the sliced apricots, watercress, endive and apricot vinaigrette. Alternatively, arrange the ingredients on a serving platter. Taste and adjust seasoning. Top each serving with a nut-crusted cheese round.

— Recipe from Jackie Newgent’s “Big Green Cookbook,” Wiley, 2009)

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If you choose to add the Monterey Jack cheese to this Green Quiche recipe, make sure it’s organic or locally produced.

Serve with a big green salad.

Green Quiche

1 medium onion

1 pound baby Yukon Gold potatoes

2 medium zucchini

1 large clove garlic

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Leaves from 2 or 3 sprigs tarragon or oregano

2 ounces organic Monterey Jack cheese (optional; 1/4 cup grated or shredded)

6 large organic eggs

Finely chop the onion. Scrub the potatoes and zucchini, then cut them into paper-thin slices (trimming off and discarding the zucchini ends). Mince the garlic.

Use the oil to coat the bottom of a 2-quart, microwave-safe dish (a 9-by-13-inch Pyrex baking dish works well, if your microwave can accommodate it). Add the onion and stir to coat, then cover with parchment paper. Microwave on HIGH for 2 to 3 minutes.

Add the potatoes, zucchini and garlic, stirring to combine; cover and microwave on HIGH for 4 minutes; stir once, then cover and microwave on HIGH for 4 minutes. Let the mixture sit in the microwave for about 5 minutes of “carryover cooking,” after which the vegetables should be tender; if not, cover again and microwave on HIGH for 2 minutes. Add 1/2 teaspoon of the salt and 1/8 teaspoon of the pepper; mix well.

While the vegetables are cooking, finely chop the tarragon or oregano. Grate the cheese, if using.

Whisk together the eggs, the tarragon or oregano and the remaining salt and pepper in a large liquid measuring cup, then stir gently into the microwaved vegetable mixture. Sprinkle with cheese, if using. Cover and microwave on HIGH for about 5 minutes, or until the eggs are just set; rotate the dish once during cooking as needed.

Let the quiche sit for 3 to 5 minutes in the microwave, covered, until completely set. If desired, use a small hand-held kitchen torch (the kind used for creme brulee) to brown the top of the quiche.

Divide into 4 equal portions and serve hot.

— Adapted by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service from “Big Green Cookbook,” by Jackie Newgent.