I love reading as much as I love food, and discovering a great new cookbook worthy of some space on our family bookshelf makes me insanely happy. I almost always have a cookbook wish list tacked up somewhere in the house, and it’s the most common Mother’s Day gift I get from my kids.
With over 100 cookbooks already in my possession, I now try to be fairly selective about which ones I add. A recent one almost didn’t make the cut because I wasn’t crazy about the title or the cover photos, but after spending some time turning the pages, I’m happy to say that I’m glad I gave it a chance (it’s true what they say about judging a book by its cover).
The Mom 100 Cookbook is a collection of recipes based on a formula the author put together: take 20 real-life cooking dilemmas, come up with five solutions for each, and the end result is a book full of 100 tasty recipes.
The book, like the title, could have been gimmicky, but thankfully it isn’t. Instead, the dilemmas are common for most moms, making the solutions real.
For example:
The Dilemma: Finding snacks that don’t come in a crinkly bag.
The Solutions (Recipes): Edamame Several Ways, Seasoned Pumpkin Seeds, Chickpea Poppers, Old-Fashioned Stovetop Popcorn, Baked Pita Chips
In addition to the problem-solving recipes, the book is also peppered with cooking tips, sidebars with ideas on what the kids can do to help, variations that allow you to customize the recipes for your fish-phobic family, and secrets to successful make-ahead meals.
I’m planning on sharing one of the above recipes next week—which one would you most like to see?
Good news for moms. I read last week in The Globe and Mail that Loblaws has announced plans to remove all artificial colours and flavours from their signature line of President’s Choice products.
Artificial additives in food have quickly become one of the biggest nutritional issues for Canadians in recent years. Consumption of faux-coloured and flavoured foods has been linked to everything from allergies and ADHD, to behavioural problems and, in some cases, cancer.
While members of the medical and scientific communities are still divided as to whether there are risks with ingesting these products, most consumers don’t want to wait around for the professionals to form a cohesive opinion. Instead, according to the article, they are demanding there be a shift in the food manufacturing industry, and companies are starting to respond.
Loblaws will be the first Canadian chain to embrace this movement, and by the end of this year, all artificial colours will be removed from the PC line; the artificial flavourings will follow in 2013. Now that Loblaws is positioning itself as a company that is highly interested in our health, experts are predicting this could translate as a good move for their bottom line.
However, according to a professor at Ryerson University, we need to be cautious about assuming that all naturally enhanced products are good for us. Despite the lack of dyes and chemical flavourings, they may still contain stabilizers, preservatives and excessive amounts of sodium and sugar which aren’t good for our health either.
I’m curious, are artificial additives a concern to you when it comes to feeding your family?
Not that I’m a fan of artificial flavours and colours but they will replace them with “natural” ones. These will have to be sourced from nature, which last time I checked included metal oxides, beetles and dubious plants. Try to remember it is the compound which is bad for us not the source.
thanks for your posting but I’m more interested in knowing more about that ‘however’ part because that’s where the hidden agenda of the corporates are hidden!
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Chickpea poppers!