YOUR Favorite Cookbooks-PART 2

Don't miss YOUR Favorite Cookbooks – PART 1. That post got too long, so this is a continuation…

• Joan: “James Beard's Great old recipes – some of the first written recipes from the “Colonies” are included. Plus it's James Beard, ‘nuf said!” (Joan, I couldn't find a link for that one. All I could find was James Beard's American Cookery and The James Beard Cookbook.)

• Roxanne: “I have also been googling lots of recipes and then NT them. I like Barefoot Contessa's stuff on food network. A few years back when I watched the food channel for a while, I noticed a woman who wasn't the Barefoot Contessa (who I did like), and I can't remember her name though I do think it was Paula. Anyway, she was southern, and thought everything should be cooked in butter, or have butter added. Of course I agreed, and that's why I liked her. The only problem is that she used a lot of grain foods, probably not properly prepared, and she was overweight as a result. (Probably less than me though.) I always thought that her recipes would be great to NT-ize, if I could come across them that is. On the other hand, I think it would be wonderful if there was a person who was very good at NT cooking who made an amateur version of a food network show. I bet that there would be a lot of us out there who are new, or maybe not so new to NT that would love to get our hands on a show like that!” (Roxanne, if I could ever figure out how to upload my first video post, I'd consider doing a few more to put on here and YouTube…pretty pathetic!)

• Sharon: “I would say that NT has only enhanced my lifetime mantra of living to eat. There are just so many good, wholesome, nutritious, satisfying, delicious foods. They are that way because they fill a physiological need. If the proper foods tasted bad I could convert to an “eat to live” frame of mind. But they don't. They taste good and the wisdom of mother nature has made it that way so that we could trust our own instincts and our own tastes. With the proper foods, things like Tim Horton's Cappuccino, pasta, chocolate bars, coffee with synthetic creamer and such don't even appeal to me. In fact, now when I try them, there is just no satisfaction in them. What we have learned from reading NT and Weston Price our bodies already know. We have been conditioned by little people in high places with way too many advertisements and official sounding cautions, and so called “experts” repeating lies they have been told to spread by some of those little people in high places. I remember reading in NT of a group of POWs who had been released and returned to their homes. The townspeople provided a huge feast of every kind of food imaginable. The POWs naturally ate the high fat foods first because that's what they craved as it was also what their bodies needed. We have also been poisoned, or drugged, by things like MSG, excitotoxins and high amounts of sugar. Top it off with an almost fanatical societal aversion to almost everything that IS good for us, it is not so easy to trust our own body's messages of what to eat. Thankfully people like Sally Fallon and Weston Price have shared a knowledge base that will serve us in the meantime, while we rebuild our bodies and our appetites for real foods. I'm sorry, I don't have any other favorite cookbooks. I just wanted to express that.” (Sharon, I agree with what you said, except maybe for that chocolate part…I still really like my chocolate now and then, and no, it's not even the healthier dark chocolate!)

• Roxanne: “I really liked The Professional Charcuterie Series: 2 Volume Set by Marcelbut. You have to disregard the advice to add nitrates to the product. I know that the books themselves are hard to find, but I did borrow them through inter-library loan, so you don't have to buy them to take a look. These books fueled my imagination to no end, and because charcuterie is the art of preserving meat, I don't think there was a single NT incompatible recipe.”

• April: “The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals and the one written by Jerry Seinfield's wife: Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food…on sneaking veggies into recipes. Sneaky Chef is my friend's newest rage. She matches color with color, tastes with tastes and also vitamins (like D foods to help absorb Calcium rich foods) to get good veggies into favorite recipes. There's also a blog: www.thesneakychef.com/blog.

• Amy: “I’m reading through Living Cuisine: The Art and Spirit of Raw Foods (Avery Health Guides) by Renee Loux Underkoffler – it’s similar to Nourishing Traditions in the way it’s set up, with lots of nutritional information. I have not yet cooked from it, but am looking forward to it after vacation.”

• Henriette from Denmark: “Favourite cooking books well apart from NT…Elizabeth David (the grand old UK lady who wrote several cooking books just after the war) – at the moment I use her Summer Cooking – lots of cream and butter based dishes :-D. But really anything by her is a good read.”

• Shauna: “Kelly, I do the same as you – I've used Nourishing Traditions as my “primer”, and re-worked many of our family favorites. However, A couple of cookbooks that I do love: “The Grassfed Gourmet” by Shannon Hays – this cookbook that educates about the benefits of pastured, grass-fed, traditionally raised meat and eggs, just as Nourishing Traditions educates about traditional diets! The Fannie Farmer Cookbook – can't recall the author…. it's in nearly every library, and most bookstores. This is a comprehensive “how to cook anything from scratch” cookbook. All whole food ingredients, some mentions of margarine, but rarely. It was first published in the turn of the century, before the big margarine push, and it continues to be reprinted. The hardback version is expensive ($40?) but the paperback is cheap (about $10), although you need to be able to read small print to use the paperback! My new favorite cookbook – one I just got this year: Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables – this cookbook is FUN (published by Farmer John and his CSA) and will tell you everything you can possibly do with ANY produce item you bring home from a CSA or the Farmer's Market.” (Shauna, this is another one that is going on my Christmas list!)

• MommaofMany: “I use More-With-Less Cookbook by Doris Jantzen Longacre. I have benefited from The Natural Foods Cookbook by Jean Hewitt, as well. Martha Greene (of Marmee's Kitchen) has put out several wonderful cookbooks (here's one: Marmee's Kitchen Primer) – I always ignore when soy is hyped as a health food. That stuff is dangerous!”

I hope you found some good information in these two Favorite Cookbook posts – be sure to comment below if you have more to share!

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