Shut Up and Cook [review]

Shut Up And Cook - Erica Reid
Title: Shut Up and Cook!
Author: Erica Reid
Publisher: BenBella Books
[Synopsis]

Say Goodbye to Your Excuses and Hello to Easy, Healthy Recipes
We all want to eat healthier and feel better, but we don’t always know where to start–and stepping into the kitchen can feel overwhelming.
Sound familiar? Shut Up and Cook! provides simple, healthy recipes for all lifestyles, dietary habits, and tastes.
After noticing how certain chemicals and ingredients were impacting her family’s energy and well-being, author Erica Reid realized prioritizing health begins in the kitchen. In Shut Up and Cook!, Erica–a healthy-living expert, mother, and wife to legendary music mogul LA Reid–shows you that creating nourishing meals can be inspiring and fun! Shut Up and Cook! features 101 healthy, everyday recipes with adaptations to suit your health needs that are easy for any level of experience including:
Rice-Free Cauliflower Sushi Rolls Chocolate Chip Cookies with Crispy Kale Game-Day Buffalo Chicken Wings Dairy-Free Challah Vanilla French Toast With the right tools and Erica by your side, you can cook wholesome, delicious food. Set aside the reasons why you can’t be healthier and shut up and cook!

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[My Review]

Shut Up and Cook is a vibrant book full of information and recipes designed to make healthy eating more understandable and less confusing. There’s so much information in the press today about what’s good or not to eat, but this book sticks to the useful info. There is quite a long introduction which I have to say I didn’t read all of – I skipped through to my favourite bits: the recipes!
The dishes themselves focus on combinations with options that are free of foods which can often cause allergies or upset in people. Some meats and animal products, such as poultry and fish, are included but there are plenty of vegetarian options too, and options without eggs, dairy etc.
Many of the recipes are easy to adapt and they’re mostly pretty simple and easy to follow, using many staples which you’re liked to have in your cupboard along with some generally easy to find fresh ingredients. The ‘load em up’ veggie stir fry, for example, is an easy weeknight dinner and there are some tasty desserts that look really delicious but also pretty healthy, which is always tricky to find. There’s a section on vegetable crisps which inspired me, as a huge crisp fan, to try some different variations, and some interesting spins on other classic dishes too, which I really liked.
I really liked the images in this book – not every recipe is shown as an image which is a shame, as I always like to see what the final dish should look like – but the ones that are included are really lovely, which makes flicking through it and noting down recipes that I’d like to try a far more enjoyable experience!
I imagine this would be perfect for someone just starting out in learning how to cook, or perhaps more specifically how to cook healthily. There’ll be plenty of options for every type of diet, whether you eat meat, dairy, eggs etc or not. I personally don’t have any issues with any types of foods, but it must be useful for those who do to have some other options without troublesome ingredients.

[Rating: 4/5]

Many thanks to the publisher for providing a copy of this book on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review.

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