0 Book Review: Brassicas by Laura B. Russell

Recently Random House sent me a reviewer copy of Brassicas: Cooking the World's Healthiest Vegetables: Kale, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts and More: Laura B. Russell. Laura B. Russell is the former associate editor of Food & Wine cookbooks, the “Gluten Freedom” columnist for the Oregonian, and a frequent contributor to Prevention magazine. She has followed a gluten-free diet since 2007. Visit www.theglutenfreeasiankitchen.com.

I love this kind of book, going into one topic deeply yet simply. The topic is the brassica group of veggies, also called cruciferous. You may know this group of vegetables by their most common meal-time companions or side dish varieties: kale, broccoli, bok choy and Brussels spouts. However there are over 300 varieties in this grouping of veggies. I even mention them in my book when I take about expanding your diet safely.

For those of with restricted diets, like those of us with severe life threatening food allergies, it’s crucial to keep expanding our diets safely utilizing the world of things we *can* eat. Broccoli, for example. If you can eat broccoli, most likely you can eat all of the veggies in that vegetable family. Which means over 300 veggies to choose from, and create healthy, food allergy free wishes with.

*As always, please check with your board certified medical provider about your specific needs.*

 What I love love love about Brassicas: Cooking the World's Healthiest Vegetables: Kale, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts and More: Laura B. Russell:
1. Its layout is clean and simple. 
2. The pictures are gorgeous and mouth watering. 
3. The recipes are straightforward.
4. The author provides measurements by cups and weight, fab especially as leafy things are variable and difficult to measure.

Each section of Brassicas: Cooking the World's Healthiest Vegetables: Kale, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts and More: Laura B. Russell starts with a description of the vegetable, how to choose it in your market, how to prep, clean and store it and nutritional values. Then the recipes themselves use an ingredient, a cooking technique and then some easy flavor profile that matches that base notes of the veggies. 

For example, her recipe of cauliflower and salsa verde which is simply: roasted cauliflower in oil and salt then the salsa verde (parsley, chives, capers, mustard, lemon zest, green olives, salt and pepper.) So easy, so good.

Brassicas: Cooking the World's Healthiest Vegetables: Kale, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts and More: Laura B. Russell is not allergen-free exclusively, however the author is conscious that everyone has individual needs and kindly made a chart in the back that tracks the top 8 allergens and where there are in her recipes. Also, she notes that very often the recipe can be made with an easy substitution.

Looking to expand your diet, get more veggies in or figure out what to do with your CSA (find your local CSA here) bounty this summer and fall?

Get Brassicas: Cooking the World's Healthiest Vegetables: Kale, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts and More: Laura B. Russell. With simple, straightforward delicious recipes, you’ll use it again and again.

Detail: Book Review: Brassicas by Laura B. Russell

0 Food Allergy Counseling: Review of Sarah Wilson, I Quit Sugar

Copyright 2014 Clarkson Potter

I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson is not a food allergy related book nor focused on any kind of food allergy issue. 

I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson is about cutting out hidden, and not so hidden, sugars from one’s diet. 

Sarah (who has both Graves & Hashimoto diseases, both autoimmune diseases), found that being low to no sugar helped her body and her overall wellness immensely and almost immediately. If that might be you, too, then read on.  


***

I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson lays out an 8-week process of eliminating fructose and added sugars from one's diet to recalibrate one body. Sarah gives recipes to help one along with a sugar-free lifestyle quest.

Overall, I really like her attitude of approaching any new diet regime: be gentle and kind to yourself. 

The format is done well with many pop-outs of tidbits of info and bottom line dos and don’ts – easier to follow that way especially as the first third of the book is how her plans works; the second two thirds are recipe driven.

The book is informative but not deep research driven; it’s more lifestyle choices and how these choices affected the author personally. I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson is an easy read with some valid points about sugar consumption in America and sugar’s potential affects on the body.

I’m not a huge sugar consumer and not a major processed food consumer. Having said that there are plenty of places that I still cut corners, like buying and using pre-made organic tomato sauce (still filled with fructose) or a cookie every now and then or some food allergy free chocolate. It’s not a perfectly sugar-free diet however, my diet works perfectly for me. And the author also stresses that point (which I like and agree with wholeheartedly): there is no one size fits all diet for health. Do the best that you can with what’s available and what your body needs.

I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson has 108 fun, easy recipe ideas, if you know how to cook. This is not a beginner’s guide to cooking cookbook. However, as an experienced cook, I appreciate her “I use the same few ingredients multiple ways so you don't have to go out and buy fancy ingredients” approach. It’s how I cook as well.

It's worth noting the following: 

The recipes are written in a "throw in and bit of this and that" format. If you need more precise instructions, this book may not be for you. 

This recipes are also heavy on the use of tree nuts (including coconuts), eggs and cheese. Proceed accordingly.

By week 4, Sarah's weekly dietary instructions become more focused on feelings around food and social engagements around food; so, it's not a strict "eat this, not that" 8-week diet book.

Excerpt here via her publisher, Clarkson Potter. 

Having said all of that, if you are looking to cut sugars out of your diet, and already know how to cook and throw together meals, this may be a good resource to start that de-sugaring process.

As in all things, any dietary change should be in conjunction with a board certified medical professional who can address any medical needs that may be driving that dietary change.

Detail: Food Allergy Counseling: Review of Sarah Wilson, I Quit Sugar

0 Food Allergies: A Complete Guide, Dr. Scott H. Sicherer

Food Allergies: A Complete Guide for Eating When Your Life Depends on It by leading allergist, clinician and researcher in the field of food allergies, Dr. Scott H. Sicherer, is a must read and personal library necessity for every family newly diagnosed with food allergies.

Written in a question and answer format, Dr. Sicherer, as Dr Hugh Sampson’s forward states: “…has distilled these experiences here to answer virtually every possible question about food allergies, from questions you may have wondered about to, more important, many questions you should be asking.” It’s the questions that one should be asking (but often doesn't) that I often concentrate on in my food allergy counseling sessions with clients. And the ones that need some special attention. I’m thrilled that Schierer gives so many of these necessary questions a voice, in print.

Sicherer delves deep into many pertinent issues and concerns facing the food allergy community, including: the facts about the definition of a food allergy; demystifying food allergy testing methods and efficacy rates; defining anaphylaxis; chronic health problems related to food allergy like FPIES and EoE; how to successfully avoid food allergy reactions in multiple scenarios; anxiety and food allergies and adequate feeding habits; questions about food allergy resolution and prevention and discussions about cures and treatment and on going research.

One of my favorites parts of the book, and there are many, is that the discussion in Chapter 2: "What Do I Need to Tell the Doctor to Help Get a Food Allergy Diagnosis" includes the steps, tools and strategies I’ve written about in my book, Allergic Girl and that I’ve been teaching my food allergy counseling clients for years.

Mainly:

• Keeping a medical history handy of adverse food reactions and bringing with you to your doctor's appointment
• Preparing a list of questions ahead of time to bring to your appointment
• Preparing a food diary (or as he calls it a diet record) to bring to your appointment

And he adds the suggestion of bringing relevant food labels; a minor or hidden ingredient of a previously trusted food could be the reaction culprit.

No one book about any medical diagnosis can say it all, explain it all, be all about your exact food allerg situation, at all times of your life. It's not possible.  And Food Allergies: A Complete Guide for Eating When Your Life Depends on It is in no way a substitute for a visit to the allergist office. But 9 Food Allergies: A Complete Guide for Eating When Your Life Depends on It by Dr. Scott H. Sicherer is a valuable tool to educate and inform anyone with food allergies about their disease. It would also make an excellent gift for caregivers, school nurses, grandparents, spouses, etc.

Thank you Dr. Scott H. Sicherer

Detail: Food Allergies: A Complete Guide, Dr. Scott H. Sicherer

0 Allergy-Free and Easy Cooking, Review

Food allergy-free taco dinner party

Cybele Pascal's latest book, Allergy-Free and Easy Cooking is an instant classic and must-have for every food allergic family. (It would make an excellent gift, too.) All recipes are free from the top nine most common allergens, and only take 30 minutes to make.

Unlike many other allergen-free cookbooks, Cybele's book Allergy-Free and Easy Cooking not only explores ingredients in detail but gives a list of reliable resources; invaluable to new cooks and even experienced ones. Her writing is easy to read, her instructions clear and her recipes simply brilliant in their re-creations of classics in delicious completely-allergen-free ways.

In my household, the taco recipe, using organic ground dark meat turkey, has already entered into my weekly dinner rotation - in fact, my last dinner party was family style tacos (see the picture above). I substituted organic beef for turkey and it was equally delish. I made an easy cilantro lime rice as a side, served organic shredded Monterey Jack cheese, gluten-free soft corn tortillas as well a gluten-free organic blue corn chips. Everyone loved it!

Allergy-Free and Easy Cooking is a must-have if you are a newly diagnosed person/family with food allergies, or like me, have had food allergies your entire life. The recipes work for a family dinner, dinner solo or for family celebrations. 

Thank you Cybele for this excellent book, Allergy-Free and Easy Cooking!

Detail: Allergy-Free and Easy Cooking, Review

0 Cybele Pascal, Allergy-Free And Easy Cooking, Preview

Cover photograph courtesy of Ten Speed Press

This is just a sneak preview but I’m so excited about this book I have to tell you about it before I cook a recipe from it (which is my standard blog review procedure). I sped through reading this review copy of Allergy-Free And Easy Cooking by Cybele Pascal and, wow, has Cybele done it again!

Like no other allergen-friendly cookbook author I know of, Cybele understands and answers the food allergy community's needs, fears, concerns and questions about allergen-free cooking before we even ask them. She has food allergies as well is the mother of children with food allergies. Questions about substitutions? She’s got answers that makes sense and take all options into account. Need ingredient resources – she lists them; not all books do, many in fact don’t and expect you to fend on your own for ingredients that are free-from. (Disclosure: My website is listed as a resource) Only need to eliminate wheat but not eggs or wheat and eggs but not nuts or all top eight allergens or only three of the top eight; she has a formula that makes each of these recipe adaptable to your needs. Want to get in and out of the kitchen in thirty minutes? Yup, Cybele has done that, too. 

Here’s more about the book from her website: Allergy-Free And Easy Cooking by Cybele Pascal:"A collection of 75 completely allergen-free recipes ready in 30 minutes or less, perfect for food allergic kids and busy professionals who need to get meals on the table swiftly...With her acclaimed cookbooks and loyal following, Cybele Pascal has been pioneering allergy-friendly cooking for more than a decade. As the mother of two kids with food allergies, Pascal knows the value of weeknight-friendly allergy-free recipes that can be prepped and on the table in half an hour without sacrificing flavor or texture. Through adept ingredient substitutions and easy-to-follow techniques, Pascal excels at providing enticing recipes that steer clear of the top eight allergens and appeal to home cooks who need to avoid dairy, eggs, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, and sesame. Pascal’s allergy-friendly versions of favorites like Creamy Mac ‘n’ “Cheese,” Buffalo Wings with Ranch Dressing, Chicken Mole Soft Tacos, Gnocchi, Deep Dish Pizza with Italian Sausage,  and Beef and Broccoli Stir-Fry have all the appeal of the originals, and are perfect for food allergic kids and busy professionals. Allergy-Free and Easy Cooking is a delightful solution that will help you get flavorful, safe meals on the table swiftly."

Allergy-Free And Easy Cooking by Cybele Pascal will make an excellent addition to your home library, a fantastic gift for a food allergy loved one or a newly diagnosed loved one and I’ve even recommended it to my corporate clients!

Congratulations Cybele – can’t wait to dive in!

Detail: Cybele Pascal, Allergy-Free And Easy Cooking, Preview

0 The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Review

 

 
I received a reviewer copy of Deb Perelman’s The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook right after Hurricane Sandy. Needless to say, it's taken me a few weeks to get to it. First know this, Deb is not an allergen-free baker nor recipe creator. She is a fellow blogger who has been writing and cooking out of her small NYC kitchen for several years now, turning out gorgeous pictures and gorgeous food, with humor and seemingly without effort. Her new tome (The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook), has the same tone as her blog: a If I Can Do This And I’m An Un Trained Cook, So Can You. It has great pictures and step by steps, some lovely ideas, some new takes on old favorites and some naturally allergen-friendly finds. It also is a mix of a few recipes from her blog and mostly news ones created just for the book. From her website (with the recipe I’m dying to try ):

“The book has 105-plus recipes, with chapters devoted to Breakfasts, Salads, Sandwiches, Tarts and Pizzas, Meatless Main Courses, Main Courses with Meat or Fish, and oh yes, a whole lot of Sweets, from Cookies to Pies to Tarts to Cakes and Candies and Puddings…The recipes are overwhelmingly completely and totally new — I was a little obsessed with making sure this book had value to everyone, even if you’ve never missed a site update, so only about 15 favorites were plucked from this url, essentially things that no book bearing the name The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook would be complete without. There are a ton of photos (at least one for each recipe), stories, and every single recipe includes ingredients in both cups-and-spoons and metric weights. When you open the book on your kitchen counter, it should stay open (it’s called lay-flat binding, and I specifically requested, nay, begged for it). And I really hope you love it."

To give the book a test drive, I made Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats. I’m a sucker for the regular old krispie treats. Since becoming wheat intolerant seven years ago, I’ve made that classic recipe a few times with a few different brands, Enjoy Life has a cereal now discontinued, Kellogg’s came out with their GF rice krispies and Erewhon has an organic GF brown rice cereal. Doubling and browning the butter is one new twist to this trusted classic. It deepened and darkened the overall tone said my regular-diet recipe taster. But we both felt it was the addition of salt (I used Celtic sea salt) that pusheded this recipe into "Huh" -land, as in, "Huh, that’s interesting. Can I have some more?" Salt added to sweetness makes it a more tempered, slightly dressier affair; what is usually sickly sweet, in the best most delicious sense, for an adult palate becomes richer and ready to sit at the adult table with salt.

Great job Deb! Looking forward to diving into The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook further.

Detail: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Review

0 Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking

 
 
Betty Crocker created a gluten-free line of some of their classics last year including cake, brownies, cookie mixes and even  Bisquick. They have now combined those mixes with a book on how to use them and incorporate them into a gluten-free lifestyle. Published by Wiley (also, my book publisher), Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking has 150 recipes, all gluten-free. They sent me a review copy to check out. (On their website they also have a listing of allergen-friendly cookbooks, not just their own, including my faves like Cybele Pascal’s Cookbooks: BettyCrockerStore.com  )
 
What I didn't love about Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking:Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking: uses every allergen but wheat, barely and the major culprits of gluten. There are diary, eggs, soy, tree nuts, peanut, fish and shellfish ingredients all throughout Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking. So, if you have a celiac plus multi-allergy or multi-sensitivity household, Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking may not for you. Or if you want to be gluten-free but have severe allergies to any of those ingredients you will be making many substitutions and there is no way to know how the recipes may turn out as they don’t provide for substitutions.
 
The recipes in Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking call for gluten-free items to be added (like yogurt or deli meats) but have no listing of where to get those items or what substitutions are safe (many specialty cookbooks provide lists of safe flours and purveyor, for example). For new gluten-free cooks, this will pose an issue and may cause some unintentional gluten-free mistakes.

What I have mixed feelings about in Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking i.e. I see this as a con and a pro:
The Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking recipes use a lot of American processed foods and convenience foods. Those foods are usually high in sugar, salt and fats.  However, Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking also gives the nutritional information so you can make an educated choice for you and your family about each meal plan and how much sugar, fat and salt intake you are consuming
 
The recipes in Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking remind me of a baking or cookbook from the 1950s e.g. sloppy joe pie.  As I've never had tuna casserole or sloppy joe I don't know how these recipes stack up but I can say it seems the trend has turned to healthier choices. So, if you're a eating a classic bake, Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking has updated these classics adding the nutritional information per serving added as well as making them gluten-free.
 
The good news about Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking:
The information about celiac disease is correct which is not always the case with GF baking or cooking books.
 
The recipes use both homemade flour mixes (the recipes for which they give but again no hint of which flour purveyor is safe) and Betty Crocker brand prepared mixes which gives the reader more flexibility.
 
The recipes that use the pre-made Betty Crocker brand mixes look easy (NB: I haven’t yet tried them).
 
For a newly diagnosed celiac or gluten intolerant person, Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking has lots of easy dishes both sweet and savory, appetizers and entrees that you can whip up in no time using both processed foods and fresh produce.
 
Upshot on Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking: 
There is no one book that is perfect for everyone. But the more books out there, the better for anyone who has celiac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity, or gluten intolerance. Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking will be helpful to many in the GF community who are newly diagnosed, teens just learning to bake, cook and experiment or extended family members just learning how to bake yummy GF treats for loved one.
 
As for me, I've flagged three new recipes to make for my next dinner party: snickerdoodles, coffee cake and whoopie pie cake. And I'm betting, given the quality of the Betty Crocker mixes, they won't know the difference.

Detail: Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cooking