About two and half years ago,
Loren and I significantly changed our diets to cut out most meat and include
more vegetarian recipes. We were having
loads of kitchen fun cooking up delicious and seemingly more nutritious recipes…
but it turns out that substituting chunks of cheese and cups of creamy sauces for
the missing meat isn’t so healthy after all.
In fact, when we were introduced to the ideas in the documentary “Forks
Over Knives,” we learned that cheese and other dairy products we used a lot of (milk, yogurt, sour cream, etc.) were
perhaps even worse for us than the meat.
OK. So now we knew that eating all
that dairy wasn’t quite as healthy as the National Dairy Council would like us
to believe, but I was having a really hard time wrapping my inner Betty Crocker
around meat and dairy free
recipes. Until…
I was checking out the Barnes
and Noble (you know, seeing if it was as good as the one I’d left behind in
Frisco, TX) and I was actually looking for a book called My Beef with Meat
by that firefighter guy who’s entire fire house went vegan and they are all
happy and strong and still fighting fires but with lower cholesterol levels and
blood pressures. Anyway, next to that
book, I came across this book! I looked
at both of them, read the back, read some recipes, read the reasons behind the
recipes, etc. I enjoyed the readability
of My Beef with Meat, but I liked The China Study Cookbook for other reasons.
First, I love the pictures! Every recipe
in the book has a full-color picture to show me what my food is supposed to
look like as a finished product. This is
super helpful for me because I’m a very visual person. Second, while perusing the recipes, I only
found a couple that used ingredients that I didn’t already have. I hate when I find a picture of something I
know I want to make because it looks so yummy but then there are half a dozen
ingredients that I’ll have to search every ethnic grocery stores in the area to
find. Finally, the introduction to the
book is written so clearly and simply that even I can understand its premise. Also, the author includes a whole section
telling me that if I don’t have this ingredient, I can substitute with that
one. It’s like she’s giving me
permission to tweak her recipes! I love that because I have a really hard time with
exact amounts and measurements. My
cooking style is more “a little of this and a little of that until it looks
right.”
Ultimately, I ended up
purchasing The China Study Cookbook and I’ve never looked back. Since purchasing our copy in September, this
cookbook has had a very positive effect on our diets and health. We have cooked many of the recipes and use it
almost exclusively for meal planning at this point. Even my 13-year old son looks forward to recipes from this cookbook. Our copy is full of sticky notes to remind us
of how we “tweaked” the recipes to make them even more delicious – for me, that
usually means adding more of the ingredients I love and LOTS of spices.
For anyone who’s looking for
new recipes to try or perhaps thinking ahead to New Year Resolutions, this
cookbook would be a great place to start. J
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