Do you use cookbooks? I sometimes find it challenging to incorporate recipes from books into our kitchen because of unusual ingredients, specialty kitchen gadgets, or inconvenient prep times. I may have been more adventurous before the baby, but these days I’m trying to make sure I can stay at least one step ahead of SJ to have his meal rest before he bites off my finger.
Feeding the Whole Family is a great guide for my kitchen life right now. It’s written by Cynthia Lair who taught in the whole foods cooking program at Bastyr University.
What I love about this book is that it’s based on eating good quality, nourishing foods without focusing on a particular diet. I may not eat meat or dairy, but I don’t think that a vegetarian diet is automatically ideal for everyone. However, you can’t really go wrong with prioritizing natural, whole foods – which is what Lair advocates.
Common challenges I hear from people about this kind of eating are:
- they don’t really know what whole foods are or why they’re important
- they’re not sure how to prepare or cook whole foods
- it sounds bland
For starters, “a whole food has only one ingredient-itself. No label of ingredients is necessary on simple foods like apples, salmon, and wild rice…When you eat a lot of partial foods, your body in its natural wisdom will crave the parts it didn’t get.” Think about craving fibrous foods after having juice.
To the last point, no matter what you cook, it’s pretty much always about the seasoning. Who really likes the taste of chicken flesh? The way to deal with blandness is to learn about spices and get creative.
The really cool and family friendly features of the book are that it’s both vegetarian- and omnivore-friendly – and virtually every recipe includes a tip on how to modify it for babies so that you’re not making completely different meals. I love the concept of teaching children to eat whole foods from their first bites and finding convenient ways to make nutritious baby foods. Plus, very few cookbooks deal with food combining, nutrition, sea vegetables, and ‘digestives’ (fermented foods). So, if any of those last few things rock your world like they do mine, you’ll probably find a friend in this little gem of a book, too.
Are there any cookbooks you use often? Do share!
Sounds like an interesting book!
Kristi {at} Live and Love Out Loud recently posted..Crazy Days of Summer Photo Challenge Week Twelve: Blue Skies
haha.awesome. Love it ….I love about this book is that it’s based on eating good, nourishing foods without focusing on a particular diet…:D
Sarah recently posted..Grand Bornand
Thanks Kristi and Sarah. It’s a great book for fundamentals on wholesome eating, no matter what your diet lifedtstyle. I like that about it, too.
Do you use cookbooks? If so, what are your fundamentals?
I actually bought this book a while back and havent used it in a while…I think I might dust it off.
Thanks for stopping by Darnetta. Would love to hear if you try any recipes from it.