THE COOKBOOK ADVANTAGE

Bret Jordan on Unsplash

“Cooking is simpler and more necessary than we imagine. . . . We must regain our faith that cooking can be advantageous, something that makes eating well make sense.” —Tamar Adler

BOOKS FOR GOOD EATS AND GOOD LIVING

September—a month we associate with returning to school and resuming learning—sees students at all levels gathering supplies, registering for classes, and reviewing reading lists. These lists may include a few books on life skills, but they rarely include cookbooks. Yet a good cookbook can help remedy our collective lack of skill in preparing delicious, nutrient-rich foods.

Good cookbooks provide more than recipes and lists of instructions. They inspire us to imagine enjoying tasty, well-prepared foods, and once we’re inspired, they stoke our initiative to get cooking. Good cookbooks reward our efforts with appetizing meals and dishes; the best ones even reward imperfect efforts with flavorful foods. Learning and using food-preparation skills that transform vegetables and other nutrient-rich ingredients into tasty, satisfying foods enhances our ability to build high levels of health.

Cookbooks help families inspire their children to embrace nutrient-rich foods instead of dodging them as cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt did when he was growing up. “For many years I thought I didn’t love vegetables,” writes López-Alt. “If only my mom had known how to properly roast a Brussels sprout when I was a kid, I could’ve had a good couple extra decades of fine vegetable dining.”

FINDING GOOD COOKBOOKS

With millions of cookbooks available, the first challenge is to find the good ones. Until I discovered what the qualities of a good cookbook are, finding them using trial and error turned into experiences of trial and terror.

According to food writer Kristen Hartke, a good cookbook includes, “an evocative theme, a distinct progression of recipes, and an invitation to the reader to collaborate.” Good cookbooks are also interesting, practical, and reliable.

These qualities stand out in three cookbooks I use regularly: Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette’s Twelve Months of Monastery Soups; Nicky Corbishley’s Seriously Good Salads; and J. Kenji López-Alt’s The Food Lab.

The recipes in Twelve Months of Monastery Soups progress with the four seasons of the year. In Seriously Good Salads, Corbishley’s collection of colorful, refreshing meals forms an evocative theme. And in The Food Lab, López-Alt’s conversational style makes us feel like we are beside him in the kitchen feeling confident that our elegant salads and mouth-watering vegetables will be a hit.

These cookbooks’ carefully developed frameworks mirror carefully developed recipes that create delightful foods.

THREE GOOD COOKBOOKS AND THEIR BENEFITS

Good cookbooks can be inexpensive or obtained at no cost from a public library. Beginners may want to start with easy, simple soups such as those presented in Twelve Months of Monastery Soups. Risk-free experience can be built with books like Seriously Good Salads, and fine dining competency can be had by following López-Alt’s procedures and witty instruction. I have found helpful cooking instruction online, too, though I find that an author’s cookbook is often more detailed and comprehensive than their blogs and videos.

THE COOKBOOK ADVANTAGE

Knowing how to prepare appetizing, nutrient-rich foods is an essential life skill that unfortunately is missing from most school curricula. The resulting skills gap hinders our capacity to prepare and consume foods necessary for high levels of health. A good cookbook can narrow the skills gap and offers the advantage of enhancing the appeal—and consumption—of health-building foods.

Using good cookbooks along with like-minded others in a community may be the most advantageous approach, especially if the community also furnishes additional knowledge, proven practices, and access to experienced mentors. These are all desirable features of a good health-building resource like the High Health Network. We have the option to learn alone by trial and error, but combining good cookbooks with good communities may provide the best returns for our efforts. If you want to successfully prepare and eat more nutritious foods, contact us and find out more.

Joyce M. Young, MD, MPH
Managing Director, Advanced Wellness Systems
Lead Expert for the High Health Network

Photo by Nadin Sh on Pexels

 “Certainly one of the important requirements for learning how to cook is that you also learn how to eat.” —Julia Child

Sincerely,

Your colleagues at Advanced Wellness Systems