Cookbook Review: Super Natural Every Day


photos by gluttonforlife

Much has been said already about Heidi Swanson, a talented writer, photographer and designer with a popular blog, 101 Cookbooks, and cookbook, Super Natural Cooking. With its gorgeous visuals and original approach to healthy eating, her blog really inspired me to create my own. It helped me realize that there is an audience out there of people eager to forgo fast foods and trendy diets in favor of sophisticated cooking with whole foods. Heidi’s got a great aesthetic, an earthy NoCal sensibility and a soulful approach to living. She’s vegetarian but not in a preachy way, and many of her recipes are easily adapted to include meat (or chicken or fish). She likes bright flavors, seasonal produce and ethnic cuisines. In short, a girl after my own heart. So it was with great pleasure that I received a review copy of her new cookbook, Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen, already highly acclaimed in the blogosphere and climbing the ranks at Amazon and on The New York Times’ bestseller list. It’s a beautifully photographed compendium of her favorite everyday preparations, most of them pretty quick and easy.  Read the rest of this entry »

Plenty Good


photos by gluttonforlife

After avidly perusing London-based Yotam Ottolenghi’s contributions to The New Vegetarian on The Guardian‘s website, and reading various reviews of his cookbook (including this one) as it swept the latest Piglet cookbook contest on Food52, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my own copy of Plenty. It looks like there’s an American edition coming out in March, but it’s not such a big deal to convert to metric if you have a handy kitchen scale like this one. (I use mine constantly, it takes up no space at all, and is so worth the $35.) Ottolenghi, who owns four eponymous restaurants in the UK, is not a vegetarian himself, but the book contains 120 vegetarian recipes that reflect his Mediterranean background, his original and exciting use of fresh ingredients, and his passionate approach to vegetables. I can’t wait to get my hands on my copy. In the meantime, I made one of his recipes published in The Guardian and it came out great. This crisp, fresh salad of celeriac, apple, quinoa and poppy seeds is lightly dressed with a tangy sweet-sour dressing. Read the rest of this entry »

Joy to the World


donabephoto by george billard

Seven years ago, I made a Christmas picnic on top of the bed where my then-husband lay dying of cancer. He was home for the holidays, having just been released from the hospital after undergoing major surgery to remove a part of his spinal column that was infested with tumor. He was grateful just to be able to lie in his own bed and wolf down some foie gras on toast. (He was quite possibly the original glutton for life.) My gift from him that year was a watch, and I remember being painfully aware of the irony. On its face, I would measure the last moments of his life.


I could not have imagined then what my own life would become. That I would discover a new fulfillment and joy, that I would marry again, seemed impossible at the time. But we must find a way to forge ahead, to believe in possibility and renewal. Read the rest of this entry »