Mustard Seed Market & Café Natural Foods Cookbook (Mustard Seed Market & Cafe) [Hardcover]

Bev Shaffer (Author)

Book Description

Series: Mustard Seed Market & Cafe | Publication Date: September 20, 2007

In 2003, the Mustard Seed Market and Café became Ohio's first certified organic retailer. Founded in 1981, this shopping and dining establishment celebrates good food, fresh ingredients, and sustainable living. This encouraging and easy-to-follow book includes 250 natural brunch, soup, salad, fish, meat, vegetable, bean, grain, pasta, drink, and sweets recipes. Indexes for gluten-free and vegetarian recipes are also provided, as well as a bounty of full-color photographs that evoke the Mustard Seed commitment to organic farming, natural food, and healthy lifestyles.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Few cookbooks can be all things to all people, but Shaffer (Brownies to Die For!) comes close in her latest. Shaffer, the director of the Mustard Seed Cooking School, offers 250 healthy recipes designed to satisfy carnivores and vegans alike without requiring too many hard-to-find ingredients. Shaffer has a dish for every occasion and season, with entire chapters devoted to grains, beans, salads and soups. Yes, there's the requisite granola recipes (Coconut-Almond among them) and a Brown-Rice Crust Pizza, but Shaffer also includes a to-die-for Crème Brulée French Toast as well as innovative takes on the familiar, such as Salmon with a Spiced Pinot Noir Sauce. Vegans and those monitoring their diet will appreciate indexes of gluten-free and vegan dishes, while omnivores will have a field day with recipes like Roasted Butternut Squash Risotto, Rib-Eye Roast with Espresso Crust and Maple Pecan Cheesecake. Occasional missteps include a unnecessarily complicated Chicken Quesadilla that requires mashing cooked black beans with spices and making chicken salad before finally assembling and cooking. Most dishes aren't nearly that involved, and manage to pack a lot of flavor without unnecessary steps or calories. A rich and varied compilation of recipes sure to become staples in many homes, Shaffer has managed to craft a Joy of Cooking for the Whole Foods generation.
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Review

"A long-overdue and important offspring of the legendary enterprise by the same name." -- --Gary Hirshberg, CE-YO, Stonyfield Farm Yogurt

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pelican Publishing (September 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589804651
• ISBN-13: 978-1589804654
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,038,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chef/cooking school director/bakery director/columnist and author

Developed more than 8,000 recipes and work in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic

Over 70 appearances on network tv, public television and have been a producer and host of an award winning cooking show

Weekly "cooking segments" on am and fm radio; member of IACP, LDEI, WCR and Chefs Collaborative

Double Chocolate Raspberry Tart recipe was featured in Chocolatier Magazine; was selected as one of the top 60 chefs by the National Turkey Federation; recipient of international culinary writing fellowships

I love to teach and enjoy what I do!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun, innovative collection recommended for any library interested in natural foods cookbooks., December 4, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mustard Seed Market & Café Natural Foods Cookbook (Mustard Seed Market & Cafe) (Hardcover)

The MUSTARD SEED MARKET & CAFE NATURAL FOODS COOKBOOK comes from an early organic retailer founded in 1981: Ohio's first certified organic retailer. It offers up natural food recipes, organic and vegetarian selections from mat and soups to beans, pastas and drinks, and it comes from a chef and food columnist who provides dishes ranging from Green Beans and Gold Potato Salad with Miso Dressing to Chili Bean Salad and Cream of Roasted Fennel Soup. Add a healthy dose of color photos throughout and you have a fun, innovative collection recommended for any library interested in natural foods cookbooks.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Natural Foods Cookbook, June 27, 2010

By 

chiropal - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mustard Seed Market & Café Natural Foods Cookbook (Mustard Seed Market & Cafe) (Hardcover)

Love this cookbook! It is wonderful to enjoy eating healthy and tastefully. Every recipe so far has been delicious.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Recipes are okay if you can get past the propaganda., July 28, 2009

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mustard Seed Market & Café Natural Foods Cookbook (Mustard Seed Market & Cafe) (Hardcover)

Bev Shaffer, The Mustard Seed Market and Cafe Cookbook (Pelican, 2007)

I often talk, when reviewing poetry (and sometimes fiction), about message writing: prose or poetry that stops its story in order to get its point across. The usual reason for inserting message into something is a belief on the writer's part that the reader is too stupid to get the message the author is trying to convey. There is another reason that I usually don't go into, because I so rarely encounter it: proselytization. In order for an author to really proselytize, that author must both have a deep-seated belief in whatever it is s/he's proselytizing--which I assume most authors do--and a deep-seated belief that s/he is not preaching to the choir--which I assume most authors don't. After all, message fiction or poetry is usually concerned with something generally accepted (for example, Dennis Lehane's pause to talk about the evils of taking advantage of children in A Drink Before the War). In this case, Bev Shaffer obviously has that deep-seated belief. The thing is, I can't imagine that she doesn't think she's preaching to the choir. This is a cookbook that has the Mustard Seed Market and Cafe's name on it, after all. However, there's no other word I can come up with for this. I've read cookbooks written by militant vegans that are less obnoxious in trying to get their points across.

The Mustard Seed Market's triumvirate of beliefs is this: natural, organic, and locally-produced. (Fair trade also plays a big part, but unless they're talking coffee, it's not quite as obnoxiously presented.) The funny thing is, for the most part I agree with what they're saying; it's how they're saying it that drives me up the wall. The same message over and over again with slightly different language, in introductions, recommendations, and everything but the kitchen sink. Even the choir's going to get tired of hearing it when it's repeated this much.

The bulk of the book is the recipes, and there are certainly some good ones to be found here, but whether you will be able to get through them without choking on the message crap is subject to debate. *