One thing that may not be obvious, although I have alluded to it, is the fact that I am vegetarian (occasionally pescetarian).
I often don't raise it with people unless specifically asked or if I have been invited to someone's for dinner for the first time. There is no particular reason for this other than the fact that I view it as very much a personal choice and I don't wish to prothlytise.
There are however a few difficulties with not eating meat; you are lucky if you have more than one main meal choice in a resturaunt and cook books often only have a few recipes you can try and they are usually starters or involve mushrooms. As a side note I know more vegetarians who dislike mushrooms than like them which is problematic when most resturaunts have a mushroom risotto as their only vegetarian option.
I am therefore disproportionately excited when I come across vegetaterian cook books that offer more than the usual bland fare. Last year I bought
Honesty Healthy by Natasha Corrett and Vicki Edgson and I absolutely adored the recipes. I initially bought it on kindle but used it so much that I bought the hardback as well. You can see a few of my attempts here and here.
The philosophy behind Honestly Healthy is that you should avoid acid forming foods and aim to eat a balanced diet based around foods that metabolise as alkaline. But whether or not you subscribe to an alkaline diet or not the recipes are a great way to increase your vegetable and fruit content and are packed with flavour.
So when a second book
Honestly Healthy for Life was announced I preordered a hard copy from Amazon with all the excitement of a child on Christmas morning. Then I had to wait.
Finally it arrived and this is my review having had an oppertunity to try out some of the dishes and you will see a few of the pictures I have taken of my endeavours tomorrow.
Layout
One if the really good things about both of the Honestly Healthy books is that they are filled with pictures. Not only does this allow you to see what you meal should look, albeit perfectly presented, but it also makes you reconsider recipes that you might otherwise have brushed over from their title (I am thinking of the rainbow salad with roasted vegetables).
However the thing that really makes the new book stand out from others is the way it has been organised beyond simple breakfast, lunch and dinner sections. Instead the book is made around your life style indicating recipes that can be made ahead of time, to share with friends, Sunday Roasts with the family etc.
In fact the layout is so good that my brother Al, who once cooked my veggie sausages in bacon fat to give them flavour and then didn't understand why I didn't eat them, spent an afternoon looking through the pages over Easter identifying meals he liked the look of.
I loved the last section which looked as food as mood medicine with tummy flattening soup and break up hot chocolate. Showing that food not only plays a role in our bodily health but also our mood.
Recipes
The recipes are relatively simple to follow but you will need quite a few different flours and nuts if you want to try the baked goods. Because I have been using the earlier book I have managed to stock pile a few of these but that said I substituted gluten free flour for a few recipes when I could not find the flour required locally and that seems to work when needed.
You do need to be good at preplanning if you want to follow the book as a lifestyle choice as there are recipes that require you soak ingredients overnight although there are other ways to make the recipes more convenient by using tinned beans and shop bought nut milks rather than make your own. However this book assists better with this than the last book by recommending recipes requiring preparation that can be made on a Sunday that will feed you across the week.
One of the critisms that I have seen of the Honestly Healthy brand on the internet is that you need to buy expensive ingredients to eat the alkaline way and there is a degree of truth to this however once you have stocked up on the store cupboard items they only need to be topped up from time to time and efforts have been made to include multiple recipes requiring the rarer ingredients. I do however think that as I am already a vegetarian this helped significantly as I had a fairly well stocked herb and spice rack which gives a lot of flavour to the food and I am used to adding nuts to food to increase my protein content.
Along with the recipes there is helpful nutritional information as to the benefits of certain ingredients so you feel virtuous as you cook.
There are also drink suggestions which would be particularly helpful for entertaining and they even include the odd alcholic suggestion. This was not present in the earlier book but is a very welcome addition to this one.
What is lacking is calorie content which would be useful for those who are using it as part of a weightloss programme or who do a lot of excercise.
Opinion
Often with books of this ilk you feel like there is a lot of repetition in the recipes between the first and second book and I did not get a sense that the authors of these books were struggling for material, and I have sense that the next book will be equally inspiring.
For a vegetarian these books are a god send full of origional ideas that fill you up without relying upon cheese or mushrooms, although both feature. When I used the previous book I found myself feeling lighter and less bloated and this book continues in that tradition.
What I love most about these books is that they encourage you to experient in the kitchen discovering ingredients and giving me a new outlook on food. This had crossed over into recipes I make that are not in this book including a gluten free feta macaroni cheese for winters days requiiring comfort food.
All in all I would thoroughly recomend this book to meat eaters and veggies alike and I am very excited that they are in the process of finalising the third book which will be added to my Amazon pre order list.
Check the blog over the next week for my attempts and top tips on where to get the harder to locate ingredients.
