The Healthy Kitchen: Recipes for a Better Body, Life, and Spirit [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Andrew Weil (Author), Rosie Daley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2002

Two of America’s most popular authorities on healthy eating and cooking join forces in this inspiring, easy-to-use cookbook. This is not a diet book. It is a lively guide to healthy cooking, day-by-day, packed with essential information and, above all, filled with enticing food.

Andrew Weil, M.D.—author of the best-selling Eating Well for Optimum Health—brings to this perfect collaboration a comprehensive philosophy of nutrition grounded in science. Rosie Daley—acclaimed for her best-seller, In the Kitchen with Rosie—brings to it her innovative and highly flavorful spa cuisine.

The recipes are eclectic, drawing from the healthy and delicious cooking of the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Asia, among other cuisines. For starters, you might try Grilled Satay or a Miso Pâté; for soup, often a meal in itself, a hearty Mixed-Bean Minestrone Stew or a Roasted Winter Squash and Apple Soup with Cilantro Walnut Pesto; a special entrée could be the Savory Roasted Cornish Hens with Roasted Garlic or Baked Spicy Tofu with Bean Thread Noodles, Corn, and Mango; for a simple supper, Turkey Burgers or Portobello Burgers; and for the occasional indulgence, a dessert of Almond Fruit Tart or Peach and Blueberry Cobbler.

Andy and Rosie do not always agree. When Rosie calls for chicken, Andy offers a tofu alternative; she likes the flavor of coconut milk, whereas he prefers ground nut milk; when she makes a pastry with butter, he suggests using Spectrum Spread. There are no hard-and-fast rules.

Lifelong health begins in the kitchen, so this is a lifestyle book as well as a cookbook. In it you will learn from Dr. Weil:

• how to make use of nutritional information in everyday cooking
• what is organic . . . and how to buy organic foods
• the importance of reading labels and what to look for
• sensible advice about eggs, milk, cheese, salt, spicy foods, wine, coffee
• the facts about sugar and artificial sweeteners

. . . and from Rosie:

• how to get kids involved—from skinning almonds to layering lasagna
• ways to have fun in the kitchen—creating scallion firecrackers and radish rosettes
• low-fat and nondairy alternatives for those with special concerns
• smart menu planning—letting the seasons be your guide

. . . and lots more.

This revolutionary book will change forever the way you cook for yourself and your family.

With 58 photographs in full color.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Eating Well for Optimum Health, one of Amazon's bestselling health books of 2000, alternative-medicine maverick Andrew Weil revealed his version of the ideal diet (and backed it up with scientific proof): a variety of unprocessed, or "whole" foods; just-picked, organic vegetables; whole grains; "good" fats, such as the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and nuts; fresh herbs and spices instead of heavy sauces; and a minimum of meat and dairy products. Eating this responsibly is certainly an admirable pursuit, but home cooking of this caliber can be intimidating, requiring much more energy than it would to pull up to the drive-through and order a burger and fries. In The Healthy Kitchen, Weil successfully teams up with Rosie Daley, formerly chef at the ritzy Cal-a-Vie Spa, to show how to cook with confidence within these dietary guidelines, creating dishes that are not only good for you, but are also fun to prepare, beautiful to look at, and delectable.

For those of you predicting a tofu-fest, have no fear: Weil stresses he's "unwilling to eat food that is boring, artless, and devoid of pleasure even if it's somebody else's idea of healthful." Indeed, the gorgeous color photography in The Healthy Kitchen will get you drooling over healthy entrées like Warm Chicken and Asparagus Salad and desserts like Lemon Yogurt Sorbet. You can be proud to serve these recipes to your family and friends--many of the appetizers and entrées are perfect party foods, sized to feed a dozen. Some recipes are notably more complicated than others--Cold Vegetable Pasta Primavera involves grilling five different veggies; baked Vegetable Wontons are time-consuming if you're not familiar with the folding process. However, Daley and Weil advise working your way up to these more complex dishes.

Sprinkled throughout the book are witty and wise health tips from Weil and cooking shortcuts from Daley. The two admit they don't agree on all cooking matters; Weil would substitute cashew milk for coconut milk and adds his two cents on making the Thai Shrimp and Papaya Salad spicier, for example. The Healthy Kitchen seems to be influenced a bit by Martha Stewart's Healthy Quick Cook, with Weil's text shaded in that unmistakably Martha sage-green, and Daley's in what Stewart might call bisque. Both books emphasize seasonal fresh foods and boast sumptuous photography and tempting menu suggestions. However, Weil and Daley outdo her with calorie and nutritional breakdowns for each dish, shopping guides for easy meal planning, and tips on encouraging children to help out in the kitchen (and develop lifelong healthy eating habits in the process). --Erica Jorgensen --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

What might at first seem a jumble of nutrition facts and recipes turns out to be a stimulating invitation to healthy, pleasurable eating. Well-known for his holistic approaches to physical and mental health, physician Weil (Eating Well for Optimum Health) loves good food. Not one to settle for bland albeit health-promoting fare, Weil insists that not only are low-fuss, delicious meals and good health more easily attainable than most Americans imagine, they actually go hand in hand. Coauthor and former Oprah Winfrey chef Daley (In the Kitchen with Rosie), provides recipes that, for the most part, reflect Weil's conception of the optimum diet. (Where they differ, Weil offers options.) Weil's introduction is a concise version of his dietary philosophy, with more advice scattered throughout the book. All of the 135 recipes include nutrition counts (calories, fat, cholesterol, etc.). According to Weil, eating has become yet another stressful activity that must be fit into jam-packed days. To remedy this, Weil and Daley not only offer satisfying recipes that make use of nourishing, readily available ingredients, they give tips on stocking the pantry, preparation, reading food labels and daily menu planning. Recipes include tempting twists on classics (eggs, grilled fish, pasta), to more adventurous items (broccoli pancakes). While miso, tofu and yogurt may not be appetizing to the meat-and-potatoes crowd, others willing to spread their culinary wings will find in these recipes and the authors' enthusiasm for good food a serious incentive to get their daily requirements of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• ISBN-10: 0375413065
• ASIN: B0001FZGR6
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrew Weil, M.D., is a world-renowned leader and pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, a healing oriented approach to health care which encompasses body, mind, and spirit. His next book, "Spontaneous Happiness," will be released November 8, 2011.

Combining a Harvard education and a lifetime of practicing natural and preventive medicine, Dr. Weil is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, where he is also a Clinical Professor of Medicine and Professor of Public Health and the Lovell-Jones Professor of Integrative Rheumatology. Dr. Weil received both his medical degree and his undergraduate AB degree in biology (botany) from Harvard University.

Dr. Weil is an internationally-recognized expert for his views on leading a healthy lifestyle, his philosophy of healthy aging, and his critique of the future of medicine and health care. Approximately 10 million copies of Dr. Weil's books have been sold, including "Spontaneous Healing," "8 Weeks to Optimum Health," "Eating Well for Optimum Health," "The Healthy Kitchen," "Healthy Aging," and "Why Our Health Matters."

Online, he is the editorial director of DrWeil.com, the leading web resource for healthy living based on the philosophy of integrative medicine. He can be found on Facebook at facebook.com/DrWeil, Twitter at twitter.com/DrWeil, and Dr. Weil's Daily Health Tips blog at drweilblog.com.

See a comprehensive list of Dr. Weil's information: about.me/DrWeil

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

227 of 231 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great recipes, but many errors and omissions, April 18, 2002

By 

"tkp-b" (Stony Brook, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Healthy Kitchen: Recipes for a Better Body, Life, and Spirit (Hardcover)

I have made quite a few recipes from this book, and have found mistakes in almost all of them. It's as if nobody tested the recipes before the book was published. In one recipe the cooking time had to be almost doubled, in a recipe for muffins there was no mention of using any liquid (juice, milk, oil, etc.) to bind the ingredients together, and a recipe that was supposed to serve 6 people called for using 12 avocados. I have had to adapt most of the recipes because of this problem. I also found that the directions for preparation were sometimes vague. For example, the recipe would say to broil something for 3 minutes, but not tell you if that was total time or on each side. I would have given this book 5 stars if it weren't for the errors. Most of the recipes appealed to me and the commentary by Rosie and Dr. Weil was interesting to read. I suggest that they make corrections and reprint this book.

76 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting hybrid of philosophy and recipies........, July 7, 2002

By 

David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Healthy Kitchen: Recipes for a Better Body, Life, and Spirit (Hardcover)

This is not your standard cookbook and if it's bought with that expectation, the buyer will no doubt be disappointed in it. The book serves as much as a philosophical treatise on healthy eating as a cookbook, and from that standpoint it's interesting and successful as both a resource and motivational statement. However, the philosophizing takes up quite a bit of space and that results in a surprisingly small number of actual recopies.

That scarcity would be a problem if there were a lot of stinkers in the mix, but that is definitely not the case--this is very definitely a "quality over quantity" effort. I gave this to my wife for her birthday early this year and we've tried quite a lot of the recipes, and all have been delicious.

Some caveats: These are by and large recipes for the more sophisticated palate--don't expect to find a lot of things that children will like very much. Quite a few of the recipes are time intensive. Planning is essential. One the more intricate offerings, plan to do them on the weekend or when you can take the time to do it right. My personal advice is, when the authors have different visions of how to proceed (a common event here) go with Dr. Weil--Rosie tends to like thing on the blander side. Finally, this isn't really constructed to be a "full meal" cookbook. While there are sections for all major meal sections, there isn't often tremendous harmony on a "whole meal" basis. In other words, pick what of this work you want to use and work around it.

This is, essentially, a specialty cookbook. Use it that way and you'll find it's a gem.

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Information, Poor Proofing, April 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Healthy Kitchen: Recipes for a Better Body, Life, and Spirit (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book -- full of great information ... the only problem is that all of the recipes I have tried so far are lacking something or have an error in the measurements. I am shocked that none of the other reviews have mentioned this. I have always found Dr. Weil's books to be interesting and informative and this book is no exception. Rosie Daley adds a delightful and educational point of view as well. This could be a great cookbook but I am frustrated with having to scrutinize each recipe. I would like to see this book reprinted with the correct recipes.