I don’t usually review cookbooks, as you’ve probably noticed, but I was provided a free pdf of this one in return for an honest review.
I found this to be an excellent cookbook loaded with interesting and healthy recipes as well as basic nutritional information. My favorite is the avocado chicken salad. To save time, I sometimes use canned chicken. I’m looking forward to trying several more, but will have to stock up on some things that I don’t normally have on hand in the pantry.
If you’re used to the usual ingredients in most recipes, you’re likely to encounter a few things you’ve never heard of in this book. This is a good thing, since the entire point of the book is to eat healthy. When I first reviewed this book it didn’t include any introductions to these less-common ingredients, but since I pointed out the need for them Annie has added a section to do just that! This will be helpful to anyone who has no clue what some of them are or has not used them before.
For example, you may not have ever heard of or used quinoa (pronounced keen-wah). I loved the use of maple syrup as a sweetener in many of the recipes. Make sure that it’s authentic maple syrup, and not the artificially flavored version typically found in grocery stores. That would be entirely counter-productive as far as health is concerned.
If your grocery store doesn’t carry some of these more unusual items, check online. And it goes without saying that organic is best. It probably would have been helpful to include a list of unhealthy things lurking in your pantry that you should throw away, too. The typical American diet is horribly unhealthy between processed food and all the chemical additives, which is why there are so many chronic diseases these days. Changing your eating habits isn’t easy, but this book can be a tremendous help for finding healthy alternatives.
If you’re already familiar with this type of healthy cooking-from-scratch then you’ll love these creative, delicious, recipes and the wonderful variety along with several mouth-watering illustrations. We can all get stuck in what we eat and you never know if your favorite recipe may be right there, just waiting for you to give it a try. Just be sure to plan ahead and make sure you have everything you need on-hand to avoid last-minute trips to the grocery store in the height of commuter traffic.
You can pick up a copy in ebook, paperback, or hardback formats on Amazon and various other online vendors such as Barnes and Noble, Kobo, BookBub, Google Play, and Apple.
Annie Douglass Lima considers herself fortunate to have traveled in twenty different countries and lived in four of them. A fifth-grade teacher in her “other” life, she loves reading to her students and sparking their imaginations. Her books include science fiction, fantasy, YA action and adventure novels, a puppet script, anthologies of her students’ poetry, Bible verse coloring and activity books, and now a cookbook. When she isn’t teaching, writing, or experimenting with new flavors of oatmeal, Annie can often be found sipping spiced chai or pomegranate green tea in exotic locations, some of which exist in this world.
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