Nourishing Meals

For anyone looking to really change the foods they eat, with the intention of healing and repairing the body through superior guidance, I highly suggest this book!

Now here is where I begin my blog.

As a child I was so picky about food that I simply chose not to eat most of the time, and I DID survive. In fact, I’m still alive! Seriously, I was raised on whatever the mass society was eating-who knew if I even had a food allergy at the time? We just didn’t recognize stuff like that in our home-it wasn’t in our consciousness. I come from a lineage of MANY different cultures and habits, and I was eventually formed as is. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I really started to branch out and try different kinds of food. I simply let my body and taste buds guide me, still having no idea if I might be allergic to anything!

It now has me wondering if healthy parents that raise their kids within healthy eating simply have that similar DNA already in them. Habits (and allergies) are pretty much already passed on in many ways. Maybe cookbooks like these are also offering information and recipes to the rest of us (even those of us without allergies), to help us create healthy habits we can pass on and to avoid ever potentially forming any allergies at all.

Still, for me and reading this book, I feel all the fun and joy’s of food are pretty much missing (meaning, if I have any allergies to any foods, I’ll adjust and just live with them!)

HEALTHY MINDFUL EATING AS A FAMILY

Currently, I’ve been enthusiastically working on ways to show my kids a world of more exciting, mindful and healthy eating habits through fun recipes and themed family nights, and I was hoping that this book would add to the mix-I guess I misunderstood what the book was really aiming at.

Also, while reading through Nourishing Meals, I was fearful that it may already be too late for this kind lifestyle of eating with my kids-I should have been eating like this while my kids were still in the womb and now they are already past the ages of six and still picky eaters. Note: I know that we all know it’s never too late, but it probably gets a lot harder until you are FULLY ready to make a change, and on a permanent basis.

As a person who received this book with the previous intention explained,  I did feel that this book brought a LOT of fantastic, simple and insightful information about what certain foods can do to our bodies, and what to do to repair and heal, allergies or not.

My Month Long Experience with Detox and Clean Eating

Once upon a time, I did a detox of clean eating for a full one month (it felt like three!). This book would have really come in handy, during that time! Still, through that experience, I grew extremely heavy, emotionally. I felt it was way too much work and effort, especially without understanding enough what it was all for, but I DID have a great takeaway…

READ ABOUT MY Month-Long DETOX HERE: 

***I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.***

Find Nourishing Meals and so much more at their beautiful website http://www.nourishingmeals.com/

Available NOW on Amazon.com: Nourishing Meals

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a modern way to cook (Anna Jones) – Review

My taste testing video: Youtube 

*a modern way to cook, 150+ vegetarian recipes for quick, flavor-packed meals.*

Quick, being that if you have the mindset of the author’s prepping and cooking “practice” in place along with the proper equipment, yes-you CAN make quick flavor-packed meals!

I come from a traditional upbringing of cooking-meaning brought up in the seventies but raised from the influence of the sixties. The new “modern” ways of cooking is something I’m still catching up with.

I love the idea of cooking using fresh and healthy ingredients, I just don’t like having to go to the store all the time for them.

So, coming from a person like me, here goes my review.

The book itself is lovely in a farm-fresh/french countryside way.

I loved sitting down with this book The author writes and explains how this book will work for the reader. How the ingredients of her recipes will affect us and our lives.

A couple things I really loved about this book:

The author includes a nice paragraph before each recipe – like the history of where each recipe came from and how she has changed it in to something new, healthy and modern.

My other favorite highlights throughout this book are her pairings-like her 10 pairings of omelet fillings. She puts each pairing in six categories: Main Vegetable, Backup Vegetable, Accent Flavor, Backup Flavor, and Richness.

I also appreciate that even though the author uses a lot of healthy and fresh ingredients, you WILL still find some “fun” ingredients like sourdough bread and actual ….cheese! (NOTE: There are a few ingredients the author will suggest substitutions for, like for dairy, grains, etc.).

For me, I personally probably will not be using this book to cook from much. I like it more for reading and educating myself with. (Again, I’m still coming from traditional habits that I actually like.)

I did attempt a recipe from this book, for blogging purposes.

SMOKY PEPPER AND WHITE BEAN QUESADILLAS

I chose this recipe because I personally love ALL quesadillas, and this one would only take 10 minutes! Well, prep alone (for me) took about 20 minutes and then cooking it and dishing it took a few more-but then I probably move slower than most.

As far as the ingredients went, the green onions, smoked paprika, roasted red peppers, lemon, parsley, and cherry tomatoes were no problem to obtain from my local store. What I DID end up having to substitute were the cooked white beans (SUBSTITUTED for red kidney beans), whole wheat or seeded tortillas (SUBSTITUTED Ezekial sprouted grain tortillas), and Manchego cheese (SUBSTITUTED sharp white cheddar cheese with hints of Parmesan).

The parsley that I bought at the store were truly a huge bunch but the packaging DID say that it was “technically” a bunch at 3oz. and so I used half of that bunch. It still seemed like an awful lot, but I trusted and proceeded anyway.

NOTE: the only parsley I could find for this recipe was the rougher “curly leaf” kind and not the Italian “flat leaf” kind. The recipe only called for …parsley.

So my taste tester and I found the recipe to be pretty good-he rated it at a 6, and I agreed. I LOVED the cheese I used and the beans seemed to make it a “meatier” kind of experience. The parsley was a bit rough, though.

This recipe was probably more trouble for me for the end result I got. Even if I had used a different or “softer” tortilla and less -or a different kind- of parsley, I’d still probably simplify this recipe, while in the back of my mind always remembering the initial recipe that inspired me! 😉

So to sum up my review of A Modern Way to Cook: the book is a beautiful read. It’s beautiful to look through and a GREAT cookbook to learn from-this coming from someone who is still used to cooking and eating the “old” way!

Thank you so much for reading my review of A Modern Way To Cook.

Available at Amazon.com

Authors Website: http://annajones.co.uk/

***I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.***

The Naked Cookbook (Tess Ward) – Review

I feel that themed cookbooks really have a knack for taking the reader away, regardless if they bother trying to create one or more recipes from it.

Low in carbs, free from processed anything, and no refined sugars. It’s not vegetarian, it’s not gluten-free, dairy-free or vegan. It’s about stripped down and naked ingredients.

This book as a whole didn’t really inspire me to want to re-create anything from it. For my lifestyle I’m looking for something I’m more aligned with that doesn’t involve tea soaked raisins (although it sounds great), and I suppose it’s slightly more challenging level makes sense because in the back of the book it’s noted that this author is a blogger herself and a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef who has spent time in kitchens of River Cottage and The Ritz.

To me, these recipes seem better fit for special occasions like trying to impress my best girlfriends with, as opposed to every day cooking for me or my family. Also, it seemed like every recipe I considered making would be something I’d need to buy more than a few ingredients at a time for.

As a whole, and for the love and interest of cookbooks, I praise this book for it’s elegance, freshness, funky-feel of ingredients that bare all within pages of very beautiful photos. I also really like the “card-boardy” cover and simple design of this book-I think it would look great on a coffee table!

It’s my own opinion here, but if you love the art of slower cooking (not “slow cooking with a slow cooker”!) and eating clean, this could be a perfect book to add to your collection or to gift to a good friend.

Available now on Amazon/TheNakedCookbook

To see more of what Tess Ward writes and cooks about, here is her beautiful website:
http://www.tessward.net/

***I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.***