Super Natural Cooking

Five Ways to Incorporate Whole & Natural
Ingredients into your cooking
By Heidi Swanson

A review by Marty Martindale

Super Natural Cooking contains hundreds of Swanson’s own pictures; front cover and certain selections by Wayne Bremser. This book is a very beautiful way to learn a self nutrition plan, one suitable for a better life, the rest of your life.

Basically, the book builds on five different ways to eat for better health and tips for everyday cooking of same:

• Expand your pantry with whole and natural flours, oils, fats, sweeteners and spices. (Build a Natural Foods Pantry)

• Experiment with alternative grains like quinoa, teff and amaranth. (Explore a wide Range of Grains)

• Understand the importance of eating from a colorful food plate. (Cook for Color)

• Get acquainted with powerful, nutrient-rich superfoods.

• Branch out from white to natural sugars.

Here’s some random recipes in the book:

GRAINS --
DO-It-Yourself Power Bars:
Contain coconut oil, rolled oats, walnuts oat bran, brown rice cereal, dried cranberries, crystallized ginger, rice syrup, natural cane sugar and vanilla.

Wheat Berry Salad:
(dressing for the berries) orange zest, lemon juice, shallot, olive oil, spinach leaves, toasted pine nuts and feta cheese

COLOR –
Straw and Hay Fettuccini Tangle:
Asparagus spears, spinach leaves, garlic, Parmesan cheese, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, lemon juice and egg fettuccine

Sweet Potato Spoon Bread:  sweet potatoes, butter, shallots, goat cheese, wheat flour, onion powder, eggs and Parmesan cheese.

SUPER FOODS --
Crunchy Slaw Salad:  cider vinegar, lemon juice, black pepper, olive oil, cream, apple, savoy cabbage and walnuts

Sushi Bowl with Toasted Nori, Avocado and Brown Rice:  Nori sheets, firm tofu, orange zest, lemon juice and zest, natural cane sugar, shoyu sauce, brown rice vinegar, green onions, avocado and toasted sesame seeds 

Lime-Bathed Peanut Salad:  raw peanuts, roma tomatoes, jalapeno pepper, cilantro, lime juice and olive oil.

NATURAL SWEETENERS --
Fig Spread with Black Pepper and Toasted Sesame Seeds:  black mission figs, lemon juice, honey, blackpepper and toasted, unhulled sesame seeds

Dairyless Chocolate Mousse:  Soy milk, semisweet chocolate chips, silken soft tofu, amaretto and almond extract.

At the end of the book is a section, Basic Recipes and Techniques, which explains the earlier preparation of many ingredients. It is followed by a Sources list of email/mail order houses for some not-so-easy to buy ingredients.

Swanson offers excellent pointers at the end of each recipe. Your body shouts your nutritional smarts your whole life long.

You can email  Marty at mm@FoodSiteoftheDay.com.