Book Review: The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook

Title: The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook

Author: Jillian Michaels

Author’s web page: www.jillianmichaels.com

Date: 2010

Publisher: Crown / Random House

ISBN: 978-0-307-71822-8

Length: 276 pages

Illustrations: one-color drawings, not credited; black-and-white photo page at the back

Quote: “While [medication] may be an effective short-term aid to bring things under control, it fails to address the need to reverse and eliminate the most frequent under­lying cause of chronically high insulin: poor diet.”

First, for the guys: More photos of the body underneath that too-big T-shirt in the back of the book, along with information about how to buy full-color videos showing the body in action.

Now let’s dispel any illusions: The thing to remember about all those cookbooks and exercise programs featuring sleek, beautiful young people is that, if you’re not between the ages of 18 and 25, you’re not going to look like that. If you want your mature body to look like Jane Fonda’s or Jack LaLanne’s, or even like your own body before you settled down in a desk job, however, this new book just might help you.

Maybe. The trouble with all discussions of "healthy food" today is that people keep on repeating what they learned about the nutrients found in food, and ignore the fact that those nutrients are altogether irrelevant if the food contains glyphosate, since the body will reject the food violently in any case. If it looks like it just came from Old MacDonald's farm, bursting with natural wholesome goodness, and it's found in a supermarket and it doesn't have a hard shell you throw away, it is probably a glyphosate bomb and you'd probably be healthier not even walking through the "produce" section and breathing the fumes off it. Unless you know for sure that they were not exposed to "pesticide" vapor drift, don't even touch blueberries, raspberries, green leafy vegetables, apples, carrots, grapes, tomatoes, or any of your old childhood favorites. Also avoid anything that is sold or used in a hard, dry, seedlike condition--nuts, wheat or other grains, seeds, flour--unless you know for sure. Rice and wild rice are usually safe, but not guaranteed. The allium family (onions, garlic, etc.) are usually safe.

To test foods like hard-shelled tree nuts sold in their shells, oranges, melons, beans, coconuts, etc., eat one teaspoonful and wait for the early symptoms of your typical glyphosate and/or other "pesticide" reactions. If they appear, take a charcoal capsule and throw away the rest of the food. 

The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook is loaded with fun facts about recent discoveries about the effects different foods typically have on our metabolism, plus trendy recipes that...well...some of them are on the granola side, but most of them will disappear fast if you take them to a potluck dinner. A short summary of what Michaels learned about foods that affect metabolism appears on pages 3-41, with key facts repeated as sidebars next to recipes that use the recommended foods. Most of them are not on the safe list. Briefly, metabolism-boosting foods include fish, Brazil nuts, whole grains, pumpkin seed, sesame seed, almonds, spinach and other greens, whole grains, olive oil, hazelnuts, barley, beans, oats, brown rice, onions, apples, pomegranates, cooked broccoli, carrots, molasses, apples, raspberries, blueberries, grapes, rosemary, cooked tomatoes,  sweet potatoes, oranges, turkey, walnuts, and yogurt. Meats can have mixed effects on metabolism and are used sparingly in this cookbook. 

People on restricted diets can use this book if and when we get the bans we need; plenty of recipes are “free” from whatever natural food you’re trying to avoid, and when farmers stop spraying poison on food you may find that you can enjoy that natural food again anyway. If you’re serving these dishes to people outside the family, it’s a good idea to list the ingredients, since many of them do contain stealth allergy triggers like coconut oil and orange juice in unexpected places. There’s a good-sized section of vegan entrees. Several sauces are thickened with fruit or vegetable purees rather than simple starches. A majority of recipes are lactose-free, gluten-free, and/or casein-free, or can be made whichever of those things you require. When Michaels does use a dairy product, it’s usually yogurt, usually offered as a topping.

Vintage granola-period recipes substituted honey for sugar. In the 1980s efforts were made to debunk the myth that honey had any special nutritional benefits over sugar; both are basically sucrose, only honey has more calories, is much messier, and usually costs more. “Loaded with vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants”? Not exactly; it contains traces of nutrients—enough to make a difference to an insect, but probably not to a human. Bees store honey made from different kinds of flowers separately and even humans can see and taste differences. Unfortunately, today nearly all honey is loaded with glyphosate and should not even be handled. 

The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook suggests agave syrup as an alternative to honey or maple syrup. Agave syrup is fairly new even to the health food market; I personally don’t live where it’s made, so I’ve never tasted it. 

More can be said for real maple syrup. It does not have to be made in Vermont. Sugar maples will grow in most of the United States (and in Canada); you just tap them at a different time of year. Maple trees that are native to areas other than Vermont  also produce syrup. “Invasive” Norway maples are excellent sources of syrup—we used to construct a little “syrup camp” and boil down sap from the Norway maple in the yard, and other maples in the woodlot, right in the shade of the tree, and it would become sweet and maple-y enough that a spoonful turned pancakes into dessert before it even became syrupy. As Noel PERRIN observed, federal standards for grading maple syrup were created at a time when the blandest, sweetest, most sugar-like syrup was considered the finest. If you’re after the more distinctive flavor and trace nutrients that help preserve male reproductive health—oh, what the heck, let’s stuff in a few keywords, real maple syrup may help prevent prostate enlargement and thus extend men’s sex lives and fertility—local maple syrup may actually be better than Vermont’s Finest. So if you like and can afford to pour maple syrup over your organic corn or buckwheat pancakes, enjoy it. (Women can safely enjoy real maple syrup too—if living with men under the influence of Jillian Michaels we may need it.) If you’re cooking or baking, however, read on.

If you’re trying to reduce the amount of sugar children eat, however, forget about the “honey is better because you use less of it in cooking” argument. What grainy, bready desserts partly sweetened with honey do for children is to activate sugar cravings without satisfying them. Mothers who cook with honey raise sugar junkies who beg, borrow, smuggle, and steal candy and sugar-saturated junkfood. I was one of the lucky little sugar junkies who found that, as an adult, exercising my legal right to eat sugary junk in front of Mother brought my sugar craving under control. I’ve known other sugar junkies who managed to ingest enough of Mom’s “healthy treats” and smuggle enough sugar to be hypoglycemic, diabetic, and/or depressed before age twenty-five.

What I’d recommend for kids is letting them fill up on plenty of raw organic vegetables before exposing them to sugar—natural or unnatural. Kids hate vegetables the way adults in our culture are typically taught to serve them—cooked limp and/or smothered in oil and vinegar. Kids love vegetables fresh from the garden and will happily snack on raw carrots, asparagus, peas, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, and almost anything else in the organic garden. The natural sugars in raw veg satisfy children’s sugar cravings, provide plenty of fibre, and are easier for children to digest than some adults would have believed. I would let a child snack on anything I tolerated in the garden, and insist on cooking a vegetable only if the child became flatulent or complained of tummy-aches after eating it raw. If this plan didn’t keep the child from gobbling up candy and commercial desserts when those were available, I’d calm myself with the knowledge that the child was well exercised and supplied with fibre anyway.

Personally, I think vinegar works best as a cleaning product because it motivates me to keep rinsing and scrubbing away all traces of that disgusting odor, so I think there’s far too much vinegar in these recipes, but the idea of serving fruit with lemon juice instead of sugar or honey, as a salad dressing, is definitely an improvement over serving mayonnaise with added sugar.

I’d heard about the mixed benefits of raw broccoli for people with thyroid problems, and about the mixed benefits of eating phytoestrogen-rich soy products, but that millet, peaches, strawberries, pine nuts, bamboo, and peanuts “have been shown to create thyroid problems” was news to me. How does that work? Well, one thing those foods have in common is that in 2010 all of them were likely to have been "ripened" with glyphosate, which does seem to cause thyroid problems, up to and including thyroid cancer. If you have a serious thyroid or ovarian disorder, you’ll want to read the recent findings Michaels reports in this book, but bear in mind that the research was done by a process of wilfully ignoring the elephant in the room. Foods that have not caused diseases for thousands of years have started to cause diseases only when and as they've been sprayed with chemicals that have been intentionally not tested, despise evidence that their use is correlated with those diseases.

Book Review: Cooking with Friends

Title: Cooking with Friends

Author: Amy Lyles Wilson

Date: 1995

Publisher: Rutledge Hill

ISBN: 1-55853-383-4

Length: 134 pages

Illustrations: color photos

Quote: “If your guests ask what’s that curry flavor, tell themto shut up and eat or go to their rooms.”

These were, according to food writer Jack Bishop, the recipes the cast cooked and ate on the “Friends” TV show. Bishop supplied the recipes; Amy Lyles Wilson supplied the summaries of the scenes in which each recipe was prepared, consumed, or reminisced about; the Warner Brothers corporation supplied the lines and full-color photos from the TV show.

This cookbook is recommended to fans of the “Friends” show for nostalgia value. Unfortunately, I can’t find much to recommend the recipes, unless you’re trying to help someone gain weight. The arrangement of recipes is clever—instead of the routine sequence of appetizers, soups, meat, fish, veg, bread, desserts, and drinks, these recipes are classified as appetizers, coffee and accompaniments, comfort foods, holiday foods, New York food, vegetarian entrees, and desserts—but the recipes themselves are basic foods with lots of added fat. One dozen muffins would normally be made with two tablespoons of butter or oil; Jack Bishop’s recipe for a dozen corn muffins calls for ten tablespoons of melted butter.

If you buy the book and want actually to eat any of the food, I'd ignore the amounts of fat Bishop recommends dumping into everything. Start with one tablespoon of butter or oil per two servings of anything made with vegetables, fruits, or grain, and just enough to coat the pan for anything made with milk, meat, or egg since these foods already contain more fat than most bodies really need. 

Another way to cut cost and improve quality, if you insist on trying to eat any of these recipes, is to realize that you don’t have to use a food processor to make everything. Actually, if you don’t enjoy wasting electricity while subjecting your friends and relatives to unpleasant noise, you could forget about the food processor altogether. The only foods discussed in this book for which a food processor really saves time and trouble are the “creamy” whipped-oil salad dressings. You could just pass oil and lemon juice on the side and forget about the mayonnaise-y stuff. Picky eaters would thank you.

Otherwise, eggs fluff up about as fast when beaten with an eggbeater, a small hand tool that’s ecologically sound and easy to clean. Vegetables can be chopped more evenly and efficiently with a good sharp knife, also ecologically sound and easy to clean. Mixing dough and batter with a big wooden spoon is one of the main reasons why people bake in the first place; if tennis elbow has put you out of touch with the primal pleasure of beating up food, let a child do it—children instinctively know that beating batter is a treat in its own right. You can save those kilowatts for the actual cooking and find something more enjoyable to do with the money.

 

Book Review: Country Friends Good Times

Title: Country Friends (TM) Good Times

Author: Gooseberry Patch Co.

Date: 1998

Publisher: Gooseberry Patch Co. 

ISBN: 1-888052-27-9

Length: 216 pages

Quote: "Treat yourself to a good friend."

In Ohio there is a town called Delaware. In that town two women, "Jo Ann" and "Vickie," and a few more of their friends off and on, set up a mail-order business called the Gooseberry Patch Company. They sold cute, whimsical, handwritten-looking books like this one, which is primarily a book of suggestions about cheap ways to have fun. Not necessarily the healthiest ways--they trust the reader's judgment about how many sugary or cheesy food treats will really be fun--but generally cheap ways. 

"Gooseberry Patch Co." sold out to a larger publisher but still exists as an imprint; they still have a few hundred cute little cookbooks in print. Well, if you count books like this as a cookbook. The majority of instructions and suggestions in these 216 pages are not for cooking but a recipe index does count 49 recipes for things some people will eat.

Maybe the best way to describe this book is to flip through the pages and give the suggestion at the top of five or six pages:

* Decorate a plain flowerpot with a cute little gift label (you could photocopy theirs from the book), put in some potting soil and a flower bud or seedling, and give it to a friend.

* Darn a sock by saying "Oh, darn!" and throwing it away. (Well, that's a joke. This web site knows several things to do with a worn-out sock that are more fun.)

* Start a good friends' gathering club. 

* Host an "ice cream social" party. For invitations, stick a little card giving the time and place information in green paper or plastic "glass" in an actual ice cream cone and hand one to each person invited.

* Exercise like a kid...jump rope!

* Make a gift basket for a tea loving friend: paper doilies, a tin of very special tea, a loaf of homemade bread, a jar of preserves, a lacy napkin, a beautiful antique china teacup, and a pretty jar of lemon sugar. 

Feel-good reading, for sure. The emphasis on friends, kids, and going out means that these suggestions can help cure "depression." One of the leading causes of "depression" is lack of physical activity, and these antidepressant activities will inspire almost anybody to turn off the TV, get off the couch, and do something that is fun that involves a nice low-stress level of physical activity. If these things don't help, there may be an underlying physical cause. At least it helps to rule out lack of exercise before testing for more complicated conditions.

Book Review: 2024 Plant Based Diet Cookbook for Beginners

Title: 2024 Plant Based Diet Cookbook for Beginners

Author: Sarah Roslin

Date: 2024

Quote: "In your plant-based culinary journey, accuracy is essential."

And that's why this is not an ideal cookbook for beginners. It has pretty computer-generated pictures in the PDF version only, not in the printed version. Recipes are not well edited and in many cases will not yield results that resemble the computer-generated pictures. 

You don't want to do a "plant-based diet" unless you have access to 100% unsprayed plants...and that means free from drifting residues of poison sprays. That's why reading and reviewing this e-book has not been a high priority for me. I didn't want let the file sit until it was totally out of date (calling for products, like specific size packages of tofu, that may have gone off the market) but it's still not ready for the general public to use. 

Because you can't really go wrong with clean fruit and vegetables, as long as you have good-quality ingredients, what these recipes produce will be edible and may even taste good, but it may be very strange. Sometimes you can see how the computer-generated picture presupposes chunks of a vegetable where the recipe tells you to shred it. Sometimes you can't see how the picture shows a different size dish than the recipe will make. One recipe makes about a cup of a grain-legume mix, a good snack for the single cook, but the picture shows about a quart-sized pan full. 

Additionally, several recipes' lists of ingredients don't match the instructions given. Ingredients are not listed in the order they need to be used, so you'll be reading and rereading, going "Lime juice? It says nothing about lime juice...she must have meant the lemon juice in the ingredients list." 

Amounts of ingredients seem to have been copied verbatim from some other source. European cooks typically use postal-size scales and weigh out ingredients American cooks typically measure by volume. There are arguments in favor of either method. You get more precise equivalents of the original cook's recipe by weighing, but atmospheric conditions have a lot to do with the success of some recipes and you may have to spend less time tweaking proportions if you measure by volume. The only trouble is that beginner cooks in the US usually don't have scales. Knowing that a pound equals approximately 455 grams is only a little bit of help in measuring flour out of a 5-pound sack. 

For experienced cooks who have access to wide varieties of clean fruits and vegetables, however, here are some classic and some innovative combinations of produce from gardens around the world that are likely to delight the palate...because very few combinations of fruits and vegetables, in reasonable amounts, ever fail to taste good. 

"Plant-based" is explained at length in comparison with other trendy names for diet plans in the text. It means cooks use plant products when they can--in some recipes corn oil margarine or soybean sausages, assuming clean corn or soybeans, works just fine--but may use milk or egg products when they feel that they must. No recipe in this book calls for meat but some do call for butter, cheese, or honey. 

Most, not all, of these recipes are gluten-free. Most, not all, are sugar-free. All can be made completely nondairy, though some apparently disappointed the original cook when they were. The wide variety of plant products used means it's easy to avoid any specific allergy triggers you may still have even when plant products aren't poisoned with chemicals. (Most people, however, can tolerate clean fruits and vegetables. Most food allergies are sensitivities to chemicals rather than actual food.) 

Is it worth keeping a cookbook like this in the house? Meh. If you're going to find it terribly annoying or frustrating, don't buy a plant-based cookbook yet, but I personally like to keep them around as reminders of hope.

Book Review: A Rage to Nosh

Book Review: A Rage to Nosh

Author: Ruth & Bob Grossman

Date: 1966

Publisher: Paul S. Eriksson, Inc. (Galahad Books)

ISBN: 0-88365-083-5

Length: 78 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white drawings

Quote: “We have become a nation of nibblers.”

“Nosh” is one of those Yiddish words that have become standard American English by now. It means nibbling, grazing, snacking, and as an everyday practice (as the authors remind readers) it’s not healthy: “Everyone who has ever been read to as a child knows the story of Little Miss Muffet. However, it isn’t too commonly known that she remained a ‘Miss’ and had only spiders for friends because she was terribly overweight...She would sit by herself on her tuffet all day eating the curds and whey.”

Noshes have their uses, however, and the Grossmans classify their 60 recipes according to the purpose of the snack: “Noshes for the party, so they should do something besides drink. Spreads...for pieces of bread that are too good to throw away. Noshes to break the diet. Noshes to pack for the train.”

An additional purpose of this book seems to be celebrating Yiddishkeit, as it existed only in the early to mid-twentieth century. There’s a consistent Yiddish sentence structure (“Butter first on both sides the slices bread”). There’s self-deprecation, aimed not only at noshing but at the individual recipes: “[S]erve to fancy company, like the rich cousins from Philadelphia—even if they didn’t feed you so hot last time you were there.” The drawings are also cartoonlike, and each recipe is introduced with a one-line joke identifying the recipe with a famous or infamous historical character.

And what about the recipes? Most of them are too rich for current standards. You could drastically reduce the amount of butter, cheese, and oil in each snack, and any noshers you might want to enable would probably be pleased. But then, you don’t have to think of them as snacks. Most of them are savory, substantial sources of protein. If you eat a reasonable portion, then fill up on unoiled salad, you’ll have a reasonably balanced meal.  

Book Review: The Southern Heritage Company's Coming Cookbook

Title: The Southern Heritage Company's Coming Cookbook

Author: staff of Southern Living magazine

Date: 1983

Publisher: Oxmoor House

ISBN: 0-8487-0603-X

Length: 143 pages including index

Illustrations: many photos

Quote: "[C]ompany's on the way! Let's give them a real Southern welcome."

If you need something fancy to put on the table at this critical time of the holiday season, this book is for you. Here are fine and fanciful--and not cheap--recipes that are easy to prepare.

This book represents a transition point in its publisher's history.

Real "heritage" menus and recipes tend not to be very popular these days. One reason may be that the relative prices of different food items have changed. Plain corn meal used to be cheap home-grown fare, served with resignation or defiant pride by poor people; now it's a specialty item. Oranges used to be special treats, available north of Florida only during the Christmas holidays; now they're available, if not always very good, all year. People whose grandparents used to "have to" eat "weeds" such as burdock now think of gobo as a new, special Japanese thing, and may not recognize that it's basically the same plant they try to kill when it appears in their gardens.

Another reason is that even the Atkins Diet recommends less fat and fewer calories than Grandma might have served in good conscience. Today's Southern Living magazine now emphasizes Cooking Light. Less butter in the biscuits, less grease in the gravy, and less sugar in the coffee, are important new rules. A hundred years ago most Southerners spent enough time working on the farm to burn off all the extra calories they could get, nobody expected retirees to live very long, and Southern cooking was rich, sweet, and buttery. Now that more of us commute to office jobs, the demand is for low-calorie cuisine.

The recipes in the Company's Coming Cookbook can't be called "light" but they're not as heavy as some of Grandma's recipes. Very few call for a cup of butter, or insist that lean meat be completely covered in bacon while it's being roasted in lard.

Some of them also call for what used to be specifically Southern ingredients like rice, pecans, and oranges...on the other hand, these items are now sold in supermarkets almost everywhere. This is not the book to consult for specific regional treats like sorghum gingerbread, pawpaw pudding, ground-cherry pie, fried morels, or field cress.

Vegetarianism is not a Southern tradition. "Seasoning" cooked vegetables with a chunk of fat meat is a Southern tradition, although it's not mandatory. Because corn and rice grew in the South better than wheat did, because sugar was often rare, and because cheesemaking was traditional in only a few Southern families, this book does offer a good number of wheat-free, sugar-free, and cheese-free dishes. Several are dairy-free, too. There are also lots of substantial vegetable dishes that can be served as vegetarian entrees, but there aren't any completely vegan menus. As usual, people on special diets need to select and adapt recipes, but they'll be able to use this book.

Book Review for 11.26.25: 2 Quart Small Air Fryer Cookbook for Men

Title: 2 Quart Small Air Fryer Cookbook for Men 

Author: Olivia Graham

Quote: "Smash 2 garlic cloves and scatter them over the meat. Let them mingle like teammates sharing high-fives."

One thing some readers will love and some will hate about this book is the author's determination to appeal to young men. Most of the recipes can be eaten with fingers or from toothpicks, and some are recommended for serving on a plank--minimal dishes to wash. Most call for just five or even four ingredients; some suggest optional additions, and not all count salt, pepper, and oil in the maximum-of-five-ingredients list. Several recipes recommend serving the dish with cold beer. Most assume that you're willing to use "convenience" ingredients, things some people consider extravagant and/or unhealthy, from an upscale supermarket--premixed sauces and spices and frozen dough are considered as single ingredients. If you do use that kind of ingredients, nearly all the recipes will be ready to eat in half an hour or less. All recipes are consistently written with sports or engineering references in every paragraph.

A more serious concern is how many of the recipes an individual (or family) can use. Most of these recipes feature animal protein, though there are a few recipes for vegetables, one for tofu, and one for fried apple rings. Some also call for cheese or other dairy products. Very few call for wheat flour or for any grains at all. There's an assumption that guys who buy the Air Fryer have both regular stoves and microwaves, and bought the fryer because they're just into gadgets. 

If you're cooking for a traditional sit-down dinner, the two-quart air fryer is not the ideal gadget. It cooks enough of anything for one large serving or for a platter (or plank) of snacks to pass around. If you're cooking for yourself in a dorm room where you can expect a dorm mate or two to pop in when the smell of fried apple rings, fried chicken, or pizza roll-ups wafts through the hall, a two-quart air fryer might be just right for giving everyone "a bite." Several of these recipes are, in fact, intended to be served in bite-sized pieces. 

If you collect cookbooks, this is an amusing one. Some people may actually use it. These recipes are certainly easy to use, once you have a two-quart air fryer, but they're not frugal and won't fit into the meal as family gathering ritual...even though, addressed to fathers, this book does end with a recipe for air-fried chocolate chip cookies.

Book Review: Menu Cookbook

Another old book? I know...I read a new book today. So new that it won't be in the stores until next week. I'm trying to get back to a new book everyday but I did want to pop these older reviews, which have been sitting on the computer for years, out of their can. 

Book Review: Menu Cookbook

Author: Better Homes & Gardens magazine staff

Date: 1972, 1973

Publisher: Meredith Corporation

ISBN: none

Length: 96 pages

Illustrations: many color photos

Quote: “Each menu...consists of favorite foods, interestingly combined...All use the Basic Four Food Groups as a nutritional yardstick.”

Which is not as encouraging as the writers must have thought. The Basic Four Food Groups was a dietetic concept worked out on the assumption that, since rats and humans need pretty much the same nutrients, they need to balance these nutrients in pretty much the same proportions. Dietitians don't use it any more.

Basically humans seem to need more greens, more grains, and less protein, in proportion to our body size, than rats need. Humans who are not consuming huge amounts of fat and protein from other sources don’t seem to need to choke down a quart of cow’s milk every day. There seem to be different diet plans that can work for different humans, and some even think that humans may inherit different nutritional needs...anyway, a majority of humankind do not need dairy products at every meal. The authors of Menu Cookbook assume that we do, which is my main objection to this book.

If you are, or you want to eat with a friend who is, in the majority of adults who lose lactose tolerance over the years, you’ll need to adapt most of these menus. In some cases it’s simple: moisten dough with water, not milk; add cheese only to individual plates at the table. Given that lactase persistence is such a minority trait and that those who have it can always drink a glass of milk, common courtesy would suggest that most of the meals we serve to groups of people should be basically dairy-free, with dairy products offered on the side for those who want them. But in the long run it’s not quite that simple. Carnivores use most of the excess calcium found in cow’s milk to digest excess fat and protein; vegans don’t necessarily need all that milk, but they do need to watch fat levels in the diet to prevent imbalances.

If you are, or cook for, people with other food intolerances, this cookbook may be frustrating. As a gluten-intolerant adult who’s done most of my cooking for a lactose-intolerant, low-sodium-intake husband and various patients on low-fat, low-sodium, and sometimes diabetic diets, I look at these menus and think “No way.” I can adapt one recipe at a time from this book, but I can’t use the menus. Menu items too simple to be written out as full-length recipes, like “tomato juice” and “carrot sticks,” are acceptable. Of the recipes written out in this book I could use, without adaptation, 23...most of which are salads.

On the other hand the changes required for each recipe are slight. People who cook by the “humans are giant rats” theory will make a perfectly acceptable pot of chili and then dump a load of cheese into it. All I have to do is save time, money, and mess by leaving out the cheese.

There’s enough variety in Menu Cookbook that everyone can use or adapt some of the recipes. As a new book, this one might have been overpriced, but if you buy it secondhand, it may be a good deal. 

Book Review: Great Meals in Minutes

Title: Great Meals in Minutes

Author: Time-Life Books staff

Date: 1985

Publisher: Time-Life Books

ISBN: 0-316-58065-9

Length: 279 pages, with index

Illustrations: many full-color, full-page photographs

Quote: “For the busy person—novice cook and gourmet alike—who enjoys serving meals that are different, tasty, and nutritious, but do not take long hours to prepare.”

Unless we’re using “great” in the obsolete sense of “large,” I doubt that it’s possible to identify recipes for “great meals.” (These meals aren’t especially large; each is planned to serve four.) If a meal is going to be memorable or exceptional, the recipe is only a small part of its quality...

What readers can be told is what’s in the meals. Each contains proteins, carbs, and veg for four, although menu planners aren’t too frugal to offer two or three protein options on the same menu. Photos emphasize the luxurious sensuality of fresh, crisp, colorful vegetables, softened or even splashed with oil but not cooked limp or “smothered” in anything—vegetables children would want to taste.

Menus are organized according to the kind of meat featured in the meatiest dish, with vegetable and fruit recipes mixed in. The beef section, which sprawls from pages 27 to 65, includes a quite appealing tofu recipe. Vivid salads and savory pilafs are scattered throughout. Several meals are dairy-free, several are wheat-free, and there are short sections of vegetarian and vegan meals. There are also menus with vegetables as the main dish and meat as a side dish, a nice idea for those who aren’t ready to go vegetarian but would like to reduce animal fat in their diets.

This is a book for people who need a little encouragement to start cooking meals that are cheaper, healthier, at last as attractive, and not much more time-consuming than what they’ve been going to restaurants for. Anyone who can assemble peanut butter sandwiches, trim a carrot, and peel an orange can convince kids that “even my useless teenaged sister cooks better than those cafeteria people,” but those who can find good-quality vegetables and cook them as suggested by this book may live to hear, “My Dad cooks better dinners than Les Posh’s.”

Book Review; Hershey's Cocoa Cookbook

(Will readers forgive me for posting about another old book, when it's CHOCOLATE?)

Book Review: Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook

Author: Hershey Chocolate company employees

Date: 1979

Publisher: Hershey Chocolate Company

ISBN: none

Length: 96 pages

Quote: “Hershey’s Cocoa is pure chocolate with about three-quarters of the cocoa butter removed.”

The good news about this little recipe book is also the bad news. Hershey’s Cocoa isn’t sweet at all. It’s bitter, in a way that can be pleasant in savory dishes. In some ethnic cooking traditions small amounts of cocoa and chocolate are used as bitter spices. 

There is not one recipe like that in this book. It’s just one sweet dish after another, and let’s just say that, if you save the sugary chocolate desserts for birthday parties, the Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook will allow most people to try a different recipe for every party to which they bring a dish in their lifetimes. 

Book Review: Better Homes & Gardens Calorie Counter's Cookbook

Title: Better Homes & Gardens Calorie Counter’s Cookbook

Author: Better Homes & Gardens magazine staff

Date: 1970

Publisher: Meredith Corporation

ISBN: none

Length: 96 pages

Illustrations: photos, some in color

Quote: “Good food, attractively prepared, is a boon to the calorie-conscious dieter.”

Some of the recipes in this book are good food. Still, this is a slick magazine’s production, designed to please corporate sponsors, so a lot of recipes call for pre-packaged foods. This is not the place to look for tips on reducing calories by learning to appreciate salads or sandwiches without the oil-and-vinegar glop.

Unlike some other Better Homes & Gardens collections, this one offers almost two whole pages of vegetarian “main dishes,” and lots of vegetable dishes, salads, and sandwiches that could be served as “main dishes” and aren’t made with meat. There’s also a dessert section, which consists mainly of ways to dress up poor-quality fruit if you don’t have any fruit that is sweet, juicy, and beautiful all by itself.

It’s also easy, in this collection, to find recipes that don’t use the common allergy-trigger foods (milk, egg, yeast, corn, wheat, soy, nuts).

This is a nice companion to the Family Circle cookbook reviewed here yesterday.  Same historical era, same simplistic belief that reducing the calorie content of food would make everyone slim, fit, and full of energy. It won't, but reducing fat in the diet is a step in the right direction toward having the thyroid metabolic rate of a slim, fit, energetic person.

Book Review: Family Circle's Creative Low-Calorie Cooking

Apologies are in order, Gentle Readers. I apologize. I've been too busy in real life to keep up with reading a book a day; that's no reason to deny representation to the writers and publishers of books I have for sale. Here, fresh from the can, is a lovely period piece for the cookbook collectors:

Title: Family Circle’s Creative Low-Calorie Cooking

Author: Barbara Gibbons

Date: 1971, 1976

Publisher: Family Circle / New York Times

ISBN: 0-405-06684-8

Length: 159 pages including index

Illustrations: many color photos

Quote: “It was really a matter of learning how to duplicate the taste and texture of my favorite foods, without the unneeded extra calories.”

Some of the ideas discussed in this book have stood the test of time; they actually modernize these recipes. The oil in baked goods can usually be minimized—you can safely substitute teaspoons for tablespoons in most recipes from before 1970. Fresh fruit can replace syrup on pancakes or replace any butter-and-sugar confection as “dessert.” When meat is cooked on a rack in a pan, most fat will drip into the pan; it can be burned (not poured down the drain) or buried (not composted), or used to make pet treats. When meat is cut fine and heated in water, most fat, blood, and other impurities will rise to the top, where they can be skimmed off and disposed of. Pork-free processed meats are less oily than pork-based processed meat; soy-based processed “meats” are the lowest in fat of all. Cornstarch and arrowroot starch thicken gravies more efficiently, and add fewer calories, than white wheat flour. Chicken skin is best discarded with the wrapping.

Gibbons does not challenge all the myths of cookery that thin people have successfully debunked. She never disputes the claim that sandwiches have to be slathered with butter or mayonnaise. (They don’t; bread and lean meat might be dry, but fresh, juicy vegetables add lubrication, flavor, nutrition, fibre, and virtually no calories.) She clings to the delusion that salads need “dressings.” She has also formed the bad habit of always frying onions in butter, or even in “diet margarine.”

I can think of no reason why any onion would deserve to be smothered in “diet margarine.” If you live in an area where naturally sweet and mellow onions, such as Vidalia, Walla Walla, or Maui onions, are available, you may find that your favorite way to ingest allicin doesn’t require cooking the onions at all, which saves some energy and cooking time. If you have to use a painfully pungent onion, try baking it (dry) or boiling it to mellow the flavor.

Then there are a few ideas that have not stood the test of time. “Low-calorie sweeteners” are seldom worth the bother. Some “reduced-calorie” or “low-fat” pre­packaged foods are so called because less fat was added to the recipe, which is great; others are made with bizarre chemicals that may trigger allergies or build up toxicity. And the body does need some oil, especially the “essential” omega-3 found in fish and omega-5 found in grains...but why waste time with expensive creamy or mayonnaise-y “dips” when yogurt and salsa have already been discovered.

Some ideas Gibbons accepts are controversial. Cooking food in wine, rather than oil or water, is traditional in some countries—usually countries, like France and Italy , where most of the water is unfit to drink—and can add an authentic flavor to recipes that came from those countries. On the other hand, many people hate that flavor, and many are sensitive to chemicals found in wine even after the alcohol cooks out. Why not just use broth?

Then there’s the old granola-era trick of trying to make sweet desserts without using sugar. Some people actually enjoy these bogus desserts. I have fond memories of making all kinds of granola-era cookies: “Take two tablespoons of oil, two tablespoons of honey, one egg, two cups of oatmeal, two cups of flour...” Making these “cookies” was fun. Children enjoy stirring and shaping mud “pies” too. As an adult, I’m not inclined to bother with many desserts, but when I do make or eat a dessert I don’t try to reduce the sugar. To those who think every meal needs a dessert, but who want to lose weight, I recommend after-dinner mints.

Low-calorie recipes won’t make every family thin, all by themselves, but learning to enjoy low-calorie options that work for us is part of what helps some people stay slim throughout life. This is a good cookbook for anyone who is still new to the idea of low-calorie cooking. It's also a classic cookbook from the early 1970s, when people believed that just eliminating surplus calories in food would make everyone slim and fit. (It won't, because most people who need to watch their weight need to rev up their metabolism, but it can't hurt. In fact reducing calories from fat is one of the steps hypothyroid patients use to normalize their metabolism.) 

Book Review: 2 Qt Small Air Fryer Cookbook for One

Title: 2 Qt Small Air Fryer Cookbook for One

Author: no information is given, but it reads like Olivia Graham

Quote: "This book is all about air frying for one."

And so it is. I don't have the new contraption for which this book was written, and can't test the recipes, but they'll fit into a bowl that fits loosely into the two-quart fryer, anyway. 

The recipes are a selection of the snacky kind of thing bachelors and students tend to eat, including egg things for breakfast, fried vegetable snacks, meats, a few trendy alternatives to meat (a cauliflower "steak" cut, mushrooms, tofu), and several desserts. One shortcut to the "lava cake" effect is explained: air-fry a marshmallow and other things in puff pastry. 

This book seems more carefully edited than some others from the same source. Recipes that specify cut carrots or three of something are still accompanied with photos that show whole carrots or six of whatever, but each recipe does seem to be at least adapted from the one photographed. Instructions spell out how to make sure things are done inside--stab a pick or a fork into veg or desserts, a thermometer into meats.

If your approach to cooking for one involves a special device that cooks single servings, this book is for you. Mine tends to involve making full-sized batches of things and eating the leftovers or sharing them with others, including the cats. Cooking single servings is fun and cute but it does involve things like using one slice of the tomato or even half or a quarter of one egg, so you still need a refrigerator, if not a freezer, to use this book. If you have an air fryer and also have friends, you've got it made with this book--just make one of every dish for every person, and you should be able to use up the tomato and the egg while they're still fit to eat. 

If your school allows air fryers to be used in dorm rooms, using this book should guarantee instant friends. Of course most of them are merely hungry, not really compatible, but it's worth doing a little extra work for extra cash to give growing students an alternative to chips and candy anyway.

Book Review: Recipes for the Heart

Title: Recipes for the Heart

Author: Lucy M. Williams

Date: 1992

Publisher: Sandridge

ISBN: 0-945080-42-5

Length: 206 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white graphics by Tom Williams

Quote: “Hypertension is not a disease; rather, it is a symptom. Therefore it cannot be cured, but it can be controlled.”

This introduction to cardio-fitness cooking reminds me a bit of Grandma Bonnie Peters’ Test Kitchen, with the informational charts and graphics on the wall. It’s not meant to be a treat; it’s meant to tell you what’s (likely to be) “good for you.” The Test Kitchen didn’t attract much traffic and this book didn’t become a bestseller.

That’s a pity, because if you can overcome the natural distaste we should feel when other people presume to tell us what they think will be “good for us,” some of it is not only healthy but tasty food.

Nevertheless, the recipes here are classified according to the aspect of the cardiovascular diet Williams is presenting—not breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks, nor yet meats, veg, fruit, and grains, but sodium, potassium, calcium, fats, carbs, microwave cooking, and lower-calorie. In each category the recipes are mixed somewhat haphazardly; the chapter on sodium contains recipes for prepared mustard, catsup, barbecue sauce, biscuits, corn muffins, banana bread, corn pudding, mixed veg, mushroom soup, turkey potpie, chili bean, spaghetti sauce, lasagna, meatballs, and vanilla pudding.

Beyond that...I’m underwhelmed by the amount of dairy products in this book. Cardiovascular patients don’t need to add saturated fat to their lean, healthy oatmeal by cooking it in milk! By the time we become hypertensive nearly all of us are losing the ability to digest cow’s milk, so much of the calcium in it is lost to us. (I, over fifty, still tolerate ice cream if it’s not contaminated by glyphosate, but it no longer relieves calcium cravings for as long as it did ten years ago. I’m physically feeling the truth that the body uses most of the calcium it does get from cow’s milk to digest the fat.) Almond milk might be more beneficial to more cardiovascular patients.

Cheese, which is mostly saturated fat and casein with most of the other proteins and nutrients in milk drained off, has no rightful place in a health diet; few if any bodies are getting any calcium benefit out of cheese, and an increasing number of bodies for every year of age just absolutely refuse to try to digest cheese (mine rejected cheese from infancy). I’d never try to tell people who like cheese that they can’t enjoy it in moderation, but I think we need to stop allowing people to tell us cheese is good for any body. Even if it doesn’t make us sick, cheese is an empty-calorie taste treat that most people do not actually enjoy as much as the National Dairy Council wants us to believe. TV tells us that everybody else wants cheese and more cheese, four or five kinds of cheese, leave out even the burger or the pasta and just give them the cheese. Just for fun, you might want to survey your friends. Do you know even one person who really prefers a cheeseburger to a hamburger, apart from the vague (mis)belief that cheese adds nutrients and the Dairy-Council-subsidized way McDonalds now offers cheeseburgers for half the price of hamburgers? I don’t; I know people who liked cheese when they were kids, but I have no same-age friends who really like cheese.

I hope Williams at least collected her commission from the dairy industry for telling cardiovascular patients to add cheese to their vegetables, and not discuss adding slivered almonds (which have a sweet, milky flavor, and more calcium, and less fat) or lubricating breads and cereals with almond milk rather than the fatty, paradoxically laxative-or-binding cow product. Most young humans’ metabolisms are similar enough to calves’ that we can get some nutritional value from dairy products as long as we are children. Most adult humans’ metabolisms gradually become less similar to calves’ as we grow older; the majority of adult humans don’t digest cow’s milk at all, and the minority of us who can digest it need to educate ourselves about the alternative sources of calcium that may meet even our calcium cravings more efficiently while allowing us to share meals with our friends.

That said...here is a nice first cookbook for those whose introduction to cooking at home was made by a cardiovascular concern. You’ll learn to cook simple (non-yeast) breads like muffins and biscuits, granola, oatmeal, rice, custard, cake caramel corn, cookies, puddings, gelatin (not Jello) molds, beef, chicken, fish, quiche, meatloaf, pizza, lasagna, crepes, stirfries, potpies, savory and sweet sauces, oups, beans, vegetable sides, and potatoes. This book’s real appeal is the way it introduces fast-food-grabbers to cooking. Williams offers tips on getting relatively less toxic meals from popular fast food chains, and tips on cheaper, lower-hassle, quick-and-easy alternatives you can whip up at home, even if you rely on a microwave rather than baking things in a proper stove.

Try, just try, to eat “healthier” fast food...I’ve tried going online from McDonald’s, a place I would not otherwise have entered, where you’d expect to find very mixed feelings about trying to serve McMeals to a wheat-and-cheese-free customer. Well, I tolerate fries and Coca-Cola, although neither is my favorite food. Beyond that...the chain used to be infamous for offering only pre-packaged main dishes, but now does custom plates, like the chicken with lettuce, tomato, and onion I ordered recently. Well...I do appreciate their efforts to improve. But at the locally owned diner “grilled chicken with lettuce, tomato, and onion only, no bun, no cheese, no ‘sauce’” always yields so much more veg, even if the lettuce is iceberg. And whatever was that coating on the chicken, if it wasn’t some sort of inedible “breading”? I prodded it warily with a plastic knife and finally determined—who but a grease-intensive fast food chain ever thought of grilling chicken breast with the skin on? And this was the breast of a flabby, anemic bird, most of whose weight came from fat, which drained down into the plate; the locally owned diner supplied a lot more protein, too. And the staff at this kind of place aren’t used to doing custom orders, so whether you want wheat-free, cheese-free, sugar-free, nondairy, lower fat, whatever, you always have to get into a long intense explanation that (for me at least) drains all the pleasure out of eating the meal, with clueless kids hovering around asking “Is this okay enough?” And even at Subway restaurants, which are highly touted as “healthier” fast food places, you are never going to get a salad-like-Mother-used-to-make, a full bowl of fresh-cut, juicy lettuce, tomato, cucumber, bell peppers, Vidalia onions, and maybe parsley, “dressed” with a cut of meat or a handful of roasted nuts and the vegetables’ own lovely juices. Staff are trained to dole out tiny portions of dried-out veg and try to “fill” the dish with yucky “fillers” like cheese, croutons, chips, or oil-and-vinegar “dressings.”

Williams is on the right track here. If you’ve developed a cardiovascular disease by driving through fast food restaurants and unthinkingly “grabbing a hamburger” every day, you might need a transitional cookbook to reeducate your palate about how yummy less greasy, starchy, chemical-contaminated food can be. This is that transitional book. These recipes won’t thrill anybody who’s been feasting on McDougall or Sinatra menus, but they’re less off-putting, for someone who has, than Pritikin transitional menus.

But she could have said more...If you’re used to the richly salty and fatty flavors of fast food sandwiches, a fast food salad is an uninspiring thing, with the one or two thin slices of drained, pulpy tomatoes sitting on the one or two leaves of wilting iceberg lettuce, with or without a few slices of pickled cucumbers or crumbs of washed-out onion. If you want to eat “healthier” meals and like them, you have to get into building your own low-sodium salads. Pull whole leaves off a leaf lettuce. Tear them up. Because this salad is low in sodium and calories, go ahead and chop in a whole organically grown vine-ripened tomato with the juices flowing down everywhere, a whole small Vidalia onion, a whole peeled cucumber (or half a Kirby cucumber), maybe a carrot and/or a celery stick, as much parsley as you want, maybe some other veg, raw or lightly cooked, depending on what’s in the garden. Add nuts and seeds for oil and crunch, or if you want to eat meat or fish add your meat or fish to this salad.

Or go yuppie: lettuce, red onion, half a Kirby cucumber, strawberries, blueberries, maybe a tangerine or half a mango to add Vitamin C when using frozen berries, maybe a peach in summer, and slivered almonds.

Or go Olympian and eat “ambrosia”—traditionally a fruit cup involving whatever’s ripe in the orchard, whatever’s on sale at the supermarket, a can of pineapple, and coconut. If you want to splurge, pile it into cantaloupe halves.

Cardiovascular patients so do not have to settle for a lifetime of eating dreary “lower-fat” versions of the fat-salt-and-MSG diet that made them cardiovascular patients in the first place. Once you learn how to cook at home, which this book will teach you, you’ll be ready to eat real salads, stirfries, stews, and fruit dishes, such as farm people eat, without fear of Vitamin C shock.

Book Review: 2 Qt Mini Crock Pot Cookbook Easy Meals for Beginners 2025

Title: 2 Qt Mini Crock Pot Cookbook Easy Meals for Beginners 2025 

Author Olivia Graham

Date: 2025

Quote: "Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours in the 2-quart crockpot."

Here are recipes in their simplest form, no preambles, just good clear instructions, designed to allow people whose only cooking tool is a Crock-Pot (or similar slow cooker) to prepare almost everything in the Crock-Pot. Some recipes presuppose a stove or microwave in the vicinity. Most don't. And there are recipes for eggs, French toast, every kind of meat and vegetable dish, several side dishes and desserts. If you are a student living in a chilly little apartment and need just a little extra heat while you're at work or school, this is the cookbook for you.

This author has published a lot of recipe collections in a short time, and it shows. Most of the recipes are basically solid. They direct readers to cook meat long enough to kill the pathogens and heat food at temperatures at which it's likely to cook without scorching and so on. They combine foods many people like. So, even if they don't turn out exactly as advertised, or aren't your very favorite thing, they'll still be food. You can't go too far wrong. 

That said, once again, these cookbooks have not been carefully re-tested and edited as Graham's general ideas are adapted to each new technique. That general tendency pervades the whole collection and is especially obvious in this book, where each recipe is prevented for use with either the 2-quart or the 0.65-quart slow cooker. Proportions of ingredients are worked out mathematically and can add up to a lot of spices in some dishes. Some ethnic dishes are traditionally made with large amounts of spices, apparently chosen for their antibiotic value more than for taste, but generally the pinch of spices in a combination that works for a small dish will satisfy many people if you use it in a large dish. Or, when reading recipes that call for a full teaspoon of one spice and a tablespoon of another spice, a prudent approach is to mix the whole quarter-cup or half-cup full, store it in a small jar, and sprinkle the mixture into food you actually plan to eat. Taste as you go--you can always add more. Spices can be pricey for the kind of cook looking for a large collection of easy recipes to use with a Crock-Pot.

Photos are often clearly not taken of the recipe as it's given in this book. Sliced zucchini is shown where the recipe calls for diced zucchini. Pineapple slices appear on the sides of the pineapple upside-down cake, which can be achieved in a Crock-Pot, but the recipe says nothing about how they got there and merely advises the beginner to lay the slices on the bottom of the pot as if baking the upside-down cake in a standard cake pan. 

However, as Graham observed in a different e-book reviewed here last week, cooking should be fun. You can usually omit the cheese. You can reduce, substitute, or omit spices. Can you substitute nondairy milk (actually some recipes recommend nondairy milks), gluten-free flour, vegetarian meat analogs...? You can try. Sometimes the results of tweaking recipes will be...innovative. Cakes and breads may come out like puddings; sauces may set up like doughs. They will be safe to eat, anyway, and may supply funny stories you might even sell to a magazine some day.

(A tip for those who want to substitute vegetarian meat analogs. There's a vegetarian analog for almost every kind of meat, but most of them have to be cooked differently from meat. Typically the soy-and-wheat-based kind will either become rubbery or dissolve if cooked long enough to tenderize beef or kill the worms in pork. Typically you stew the slow-cooking vegetables by themselves, then add the vegetarian meat analog during the last half-hour or quarter-hour of cooking time.)

Book Review: 5 Ingredient 1 Pan Cookbook for Men

Title: 5 Ingredient 1 Pan Cookbook for Men

Author: Olivia Graham

Quote: "This is all about bold, satisfying meals that take minimal effort but deliver big-time flavor."

On the whole that's what this cookbook delivers. Meals with meat, vegetables, and mostly optional bread or rice, mostly cooked in one skillet. There are also some recipes for snacks and desserts. Each recipe calls for five essential ingredients, with "tips" that suggest extra ingredients for variations, not necessarily counting oil, water, salt, or pepper as ingredients. Most can be whipped up in half an hour. 

Graham imitates the tone of young male chefs like Emeril, with phrases like "Boom!" and "like a boss," addressing her audience as "guys" or "champs." This is probably a mistake for an author who doesn't have a TV show, but some readers may find it amusing. The recipes are worth trying, anyway.

There's more than a slight hint of trendy granola cuisine about these recipes, one of which is actually for granola, but they deliver plenty of protein and fibre with the option of adding more salt or other condiments if anyone really wants them. Generally the quality of these meals will depend on the quality of your vegetables. If you have garden-fresh asparagus the steak and asparagus dish will be excellent; if you try to rescue decomposing asparagus from the supermarket the steak won't save the poor wilted things. 

Olivia Graham has done a lot of e-cookbooks and, although they're all generally acceptable in the sense of telling readers how long different types of meat have to be cooked to be edible, the editing is on the sketchy side. In this one, not only are there disparities between the photos of some dishes and the recipes that cannot possibly make dishes that look like the photos, but there are disparities between the ingredient lists and the recipes. 

The lava cake recipe is especially disappointing, with a photo of a mug cake, an ingredient list that sounds unlikely to become any kind of cake (though it might taste good), and instructions that assume an ingredient list that would become a cake, including sugar and flour, which don't appear on the ingredient list, but it's baked in a pan in the oven, not microwaved in a mug. You knew lava cake had to have different proportions of sugar, flour, and chocolate than a normal chocolate cake. This recipe promises to tell you what those proportions are, and then it doesn't. 

But you might not mind, because chocolate cake is more of a children's thing and the no-flour, no-bake protein-bars-or-cookies are more of a men's thing, anyway. And the sweet and spicy sweetpotato fries and toasted garbanzo recipes will work; getting glyphosate-free sweetpotatoes and garbanzos is the only difficulty. 

As Graham repeatedly mentions in the instructions, cooking should be fun. These are not Grandma's recipes and they offer lots of kitchen fun for men, women, and children who want to experiment with a minimalist approach to food. If you decide you prefer Grandma's recipes, at least you've lost any fears that cooking is difficult, confusing, or stressful (apart from the literal heat--well you don't have to bake anything on a blazing-hot day). 

Book Review: Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook

Title: Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook 2023

Author: Olivia Graham

Date: 2023

Quote: "Baby-Led Weaning...[is] about letting babies...[decide] what they eat, how they eat it, and even how they play with it."

Or, cook a baby-sized portion of a gourmet dish for the adults, and allow the mostly breast-fed baby to eat as much as Baby will. The thinking is that Baby will be motivated by flavor and variety to get more calories from "healthy" semi-solid food than from milk as Baby acquires teeth. 

How well can this be expected to work? Babies have been making the transition to more solid food as they have acquired teeth for a long time. The only real change facing today's babies is the difficulty of obtaining clean, healthy solid food. Chemical spray residues and GMO are hard to avoid. 

Meanwhile, here is a terribly cute and cheerful little recipe book written in terms that invite preschool-aged siblings to participate in integrating cooking time into nursery tale time. Things might be cooked over low heat, or "a gentle dragon's flame." A medium ("cute") sweetpotato is steamed or baked until the cubes are "soft and ready for a cuddle." 

If adults who are not full of prolactin can endure this kind of thing, their reward will be some simply delicious food. The adults' sweetpotatoes don't have to be pureed; their chicken, carrot, and potato can be seasoned with salt and pepper. Tacos, kabobs, and even a simple currylike dish await. 

Book Review: 2 Qt Small Crock Pot Cookbook

Title: 2 Qt Small Crock Pot Cookbook

Author: Olivia Graham

Quote: "[T]his book highlights the best of regional cuisine."

Most regional culinary traditions in the United States did not focus on the Crock-Pot. (Actually some indigenous Americans did stew whatever meat, fish, and veg they had over an open fire, and then there were various traditional slow-stewing techniques from Europe...the Crock-Pot was inspired by traditional cuisine, new though it is.) Cooks who own Crock-Pots can, however, have lots of fun stewing local foods together to make slow-cooked meals that will be the best of regional cuisine, or regional Crock-Pot cuisine, as that tradition develops.

This is one of a series of e-cookbooks published on Amazon by...I'm not sure whether it's one editor and a small group of her cooking friends, or one self-published cook. The series is marketed by someone using the screen name "Claire Cook." Good choice of screen name. You may or may not like her taste but she does develop recipes for every new technique and every special diet.

There are flaws in this book. Dishes photographed are not necessarily the recipes they accompany, and in the M's the list of States and list of recipes lost connection--the Minnesota recipe calls for Mississippi catfish and Cajun seasoning. However, for those who enjoy slow-cooker cuisine, here's a rich variety of recipes that could even be used to teach children geography. 

I'm inclined to give this whole series three stars, just because some books have to be average in order for others to be above average, and these are average books. They will be some people's favorite recipes. 

Book Review: American Instant Pot Great Recipes

Title: American Instant Pot Great Recipes Cookbook with Pictures 2024

Author: Olivia Graham

Quote: "Each chapter showcases iconic dishes from different states and cities."

How "iconic" these recipes are, the US reader may decide. They're not traditional. They are variations on traditional recipes, often lighter on fats and heavier on spices than most traditional US food was, all designed for use in the Instant Pot freestanding computer-enhanced pressure-cooker. Fair disclosure: I don't have such a thing, nor do I plan to get one, so I have no idea how these recipes will turn out. But they'd probably taste good if you start with good clean vegetables.

They are mostly meat dishes enhanced with a few vegetables. Actually the proportion of veg to meat runs higher than was traditional. Again, healthy if you can get clean veg. There are a few desserts and a few of the kind of main dishes that are designed to save washing dishes by tasting just like dessert so people don't want dessert afterward, though they might want something savory. There's a fair bit of what I'd call extravagance, like using maple syrup in baked beans, The amounts of spices used might be considered overbearing--taste and tell. I like spices, but if using more than one I'd use a sprinkle, not even a quarter-teaspoon, where some of these recipes use a half-teaspoon. Taste and decide for yourself. When used by the half-teaspoon spices have medicinal properties.

There are lots of possibilities for cooking "free" for just about anything you want to avoid--not so many if you want to avoid meat, but lots of dairy-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, corn-free, garlic-free and just about everything else. Nothing is salt-free, but it's easy to cook just about anything and ignore the salt. I don't like to buy "low-sodium" canned or preserved foods because they're either preserved with sugar, preserved with gruesome chemicals, or not preserved with anything at all and therefore likely to have deteriorated even before they were shelved in the store, but I do like to serve (and eat) fresh food prepared without salt; people really can add salt if they want it, and everyone can be happy, when the meal is freshly cooked.

One thing not to like is that this book promises beginning cooks that they will "find full-color pictures...so you can easily follow along and see exactly how your dish should look." The pictures all look very nice but some of them are obviously NOT even close to the recipes they accompany. There's a two-layer jello mold illustrated with a photo of a three-layer one, a pulled pork sandwich illustrated with a photo of baked breaded chicken. A good idea for beginning cooks is not to worry too much about plating anyway. If it tastes and smells good, whatever way you serve it will become the way your family think it's supposed to look. 

If you have an Instant Pot, please use the comment section to tell everyone how these recipes turned out. If you don't...most things that can be pressure-cooked can be cooked on the stove top, for two to four times the amount of time, but why? 

In any case, here is a recipe for each State and for several major cities in the United States, and if they're not what you remember a city or State by, they are at least pressure-cooked variations on things that have been served in the place indicated. Each recipe is designed to serve two people, minimizing leftovers. This cookbook is designed just for students or newlyweds who you know have already bought, or been given, Instant Pots.

Book Review for 9.30.24: Ten-Minute Super-Quick Mediterranean Diet for Beginners

Title: Ten-Minute Super-Quick Mediterranean Diet for Beginners

Authoir: Oliver Sanders

Quote: "The Mediterranean diet shines in its approahc to snackng."

"Mediterranean" has been used recently to describe a diet based on fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and ocean fish, as found in countries around the Mediterranean or in places like California that enjoy a similar climate. At least close biological relatives of favorite Mediterranean foods will grow in California and in many of our southern and central States. Gardeners and locavores were therefore delighted when doctors started studying what allows so many people in the Mediterranean to eat so well and live so long. 

Is it only the diet? Probably not. Certainly most of us seem to be better off without the wine people in the Mediterranean countries drink daily. Traditionally people in the Mediterranean countries got a fair amount of healthy natural exercise, walking to most of the places they go, rowing, swimming, gardening, dancing. They get a good deal of sunshine and spend a good deal of time out in it. Traditionally they raised their own locally grown, unsprayed food. The Mediterranean countries are home to Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim communities in which most people traditionally lived by the rules of one faith or another, which involved regular prayer and meditation and a mandate that, as much as in them lies, they live at peace with all. These cultures are sociologically notable for having a strong sense of family, a sense that life is good and happiness is found in family love and work. Economic inequities, though extreme, were palliated by a belief that God put people in different economic brackets for a reason--people whose family businesses were not well paid weren't expected to be rich, so much as to live frugally and work, eat, love, and worship well  Before antibiotics were invented, diseases sometimes reached plague proportions in these countries, but food-borne pathogens were at least reduced by heavy use of alcohol, garlic, and rosemary in food preparation and preservation. 

Rules for a "Mediterranean"-influenced diet are not strict, but emphasize lots of plant-derived foods and ffrugal amounts of vegetable oils in cookign. Basically, have a big vegetable garden and use it as a primary food source. If you don't have a garden, be very nice to someone who does. And don't live near a public road or railroad, because the health benefits of all those plant-based foods depend on their not being sprayed with chemicals used in place of mowing and trimming verges.

The most popular "Mediterranean" recipes came from Italy but French, Spanish, Portuguese, Moroccan, and Middle Eastern recipes use many of the same ingredients:

* Lots of grains--a good variety--wheat, rice, barley, and today often corn (maize), buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth

* Lots of leafy green vegetables, raw or cooked, often topped with oil, nuts, or fish. Arugula, basil, celery, chicory, dill, endive, escarole, fennel, lettuces, mache, mustad, oregano, parsley, radicchio, rosemary, sage, sorrel, spinach, thyme, watercress, and more.

* Asparagus

* Artichokes

* Beans and all the "pulses"--peas, lentils, garbanzos, fava beans. 

* Cabbage and all the cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, rabe, Brussels sprouts

* Celery

* Cucumbers

* Carrots

* Capers

* Eggplant (melanzane, aubergine)

* Garlic, leeks, onions

* Lotus root

* Mallows (the vegetable, not the candy inspired by its texture)

* Mushrooms

* Olives and their oil

* Pickles of all kinds. These cultures invented vinegar.

* Potatoes were introduced fairly recently, but are sometimes raised and eaten in Mediterranean countries. 

* Radishes'

* Sesame seed

* /Squashes

* Tomatoes aren't native to the Mediterranean region but, when introduced a few centuries ago, they were a huge success. Today it's hard to think of Italian food without thinking of tomato sauce. 

* Turnips

* Tree nuts, especially almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, walnuts

* Peanuts grow further south, but people in the Mediterranean countries sometimes buy and use them.

* Avocado--not native, but sometimes used

*  All citrus fruits

* Carob

* Dates

* Figs

* Grapes

* Melons

* Pears thrive in the Mediterranean climate. Apples usually do better in colder climates but people in Mediterranean countries eat them when they can. Authentic Mediterranean recipes feature pears.

* Peaches, apricots, plums

* Pineapple usually grows further south, but seems to be welcome wherever it's been shipped

* Pomegranates

* Raspberries and other bramble berry species

* Strawberries aren't native to the Mediterranean countries. Nor are blueberries. They are sometimes available in Mediterranean countries and eaten raw or in mixed-berry recipes.

* Sumac (the dried berries, usually ground up, used as a sweet-sour seasoning)

* Tamarind fruit

* Fish and shellfish

* Milk and milk products from cows, goats, and sometimes sheep 

* Eggs and poultry

* Meat, but it's used sparingly; small farms didn't kill even a rooster every day

* Coffee

Recipe books, or even heating up the kitchen to cook, are optional for much of this food. Washed, and arranged attractively on the table, it's feast.

This short book does not have room for a complete collection of what even one person can do with the classic Mediterranean foods when a special occasion, and/or the need to use up less than perfect vegetables, does inspire a Mediterranean cook to invent a fancy elaborate recipe. And it does include some recipes that call for American ingredients not normally found in Mediterranean gardens or recipe books, though bananas, tortillas, and watermelon fit into the general idea of a "Mwditrranean diet" of home-grown or locally grown produce as a primary food source.And, while presenting Americanized recipes, the author uses tediously European measurements and what may be Chinese Pidgin wording. "KCal/serve"? When Americans use "serve" as a noun we are talking about tennis; food comes in servings.

However, if you're new to this way of eating and don't want to recreate authentic ethnic cuisine or adapt its flavors for restrticted diets, but just to learn a few efficient ways of using garden-type food, this small, cheap e-book may be your idea of a real bargain. This is a first book of plant-based, not vegan but fibre-rich, nutritious cooking. If you have a reliable source of unpoisoned plant-based foods and minimal time to cook, buy this book.