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 Meatby 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 thatone. 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