Book Review - Nourishing Meals: 365 Whole Foods, Allergy-Free Recipes for Healing Your Family One Meal at a Time by Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre, MS, CN

Photo Credit - Amazon

A family friendly cookbook geared towards raising a healthy family. The recipe book contains 365 whole food, allergy free (such as gluten, dairy, and soy) recipes. The book contains chapters on "why to choose whole foods" and discussing the rise of food allergies. Each recipe chapter is broken out by the type of meal - smoothies, beverages,  snacks and treats, desserts, main meals, soups, and stews. The recipes do not list calories and nutritional information for anyone following a doctor specified diet. There are several whole pages of gorgeous photos and recommendations for specific products. A must have for anyone who has allergies or wishes to eat a "whole food" diet!

**Disclosure - I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion**

Book Review - The Healthy Mind Cookbook by Rebecca Katz with Mat Edelson

Photo Credit - Amazon

The Healthy Mind cookbook is chocked full of recipes, color photos, and culinary pharmacy.  The  120 recipes are organized by type of meals such as soup, dollops (almost like sauces/condiments),  seafood,  and snacks. The culinary pharmacy lists ingredients and their health benefit. The recipes are all accompanied by a short introductions and are well written. While, each recipe doesn't have their own photos -- a good portion of the book is illustrated. I haven't made any of the recipes yet but they don't require much prep time or "fancy" (read only use a drop and never again) ingredients.

**Disclosure - I received this book for free my honest feedback**

Book Review - Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes

Photo Credit - Random House

I was so excited to see this cookbook in my mailbox. I have heard of Lucky Peach but never read anything by the editors before.  I have always been a fan of Asian cooking but found a lot of the recipes to be very complex and complicated along with requiring many specialized ingredients. 

The cookbook starts off with an introduction along with basic information on equipment needed, types of noodles, rice, basic pantry items (such as soy sauce, peanut, fish sauce, rice vinegar, etc.), intermediate level pantry items (such as white pepper, nori, curry paste, shrimps chips, etc.), and expert level pantry items (such as maltose, takuan, dried lotus leaves, etc.) along with providing descriptions of each item. I love how they separated the types of pantry items by levels -- it seems a bit like video games.

The cookbook has 101 recipes all depicted in beautiful color photos.  The cookbook is organized by types of recipes for example, breakfast, chicken, super sauces, dessert, seafood, warm vegetables, meats, etc.  All the recipes are accompanied with a brief description about the recipe or history behind the recipe. The recipes are usually very clear and simple to follow. Granted I haven't made any of the recipes, yet but I probably have bookmarked at least 15 recipes ( Garlic Shrimp, Kung Pao Shrimp, Beef Satay, Pad See Ew, and a couple more). This is definitely one of new favorite cookbook addition for this year.

**Disclosure - I received a free copy of this book for my honest opinion, this had no affect on my review**

Day of the Dead Cookie Kit

I came across this cooking kit and thought it would be fun date night idea ( a very cheap date night idea as it was only $10 ). The kit came with sugar cookie mix, royal icing mix, edible watercolor palettes, brushes, black icing pen and a plastic cookie cutter. The instructions were pretty easy and straightforward.  The kit included most of the ingredients except for butter, egg, water, and powdered sugar. 

First, we made the sugar cookie mix and made the frosting while the cookies were baking. Since, we didn't have powdered sugar we used regular sugar and that was a bad idea. It came out too light and also grainy.  After we finished, frosting the cookies we used the watercolor paper palettes to paint the cookies. Perhaps, the kit was old but the colors took a lot of water before anything appeared on the brush. Sadly, the watercolors included was not enough for all the cookies we made. The kit was a fun idea but we probably would not get this particular one again.

Plated - Chicken Tikka Masala and Lemongrass Pork

My brother likes his food plain so no veggies for him~

I read so many good reviews about the food delivery services. They always have so many good recipes but occasionally they have one good recipe I would want to try and the other are so so. I kind of wish there was more variety.  This is my first order,  I can't wait to try the others. :) The only thing I wish they put the steps for creating the food before you buy, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten the Chicken one. My oven wasn't working the day I decided to make this so, I had to stir fry the chicken instead of broiling it.

Overall, the food was pretty tasty and there were generous portions. Now, if it was only a bit cheaper, I would do it more often.