Shauna James Ahern

My biggest beef with this cookbook is the lack of photos of the finished recipes. There are some beautiful photographs, don't get me wrong - but for every 3 photos of a finished recipe, there are 2 "artistic" food prep photos (such as lettuce all nicely chopped up) or random country landscapes. As much as I enjoy looking at those types of photographs, they tell me nothing about the recipes in the book. I'm a visual person, and I like to see the final product. I realize that the greatest reason more cookbooks don't have photos for every recipe is the cost of printing those wonderful pages, and I feel their photo budget would have been better spent on the actual recipes. There are also a few "doubles" in the book - couldn't they have used a different photo to showcase a different recipe?

This book does have a few recipes in it that looked promising - I'm especially interested in trying out her baking mixes, as I'm not prepared to give up good bread as I figure out how to live gluten-free! I found it intriguing that she uses psyllium husks in her baking instead of xanthan or guar gum, and am excited to give that a try, too!

I haven't actually tried any of the recipes yet, so I can't comment on how well they turn out.

So all in all, I enjoyed flipping through the book. I got my copy from the library, though, and I'm glad I didn't spend money on it, or I would have been much more disappointed.… (mer)

This book is kind of scattered but I was enthralled with it anyway . . . . I saw myself so much in these pages, it was really nice to be able to relate. Even though her writing is repetitive- the same anecdotes come up multiple times, the same food memories from her childhood, and so on- I didn’t mind because I was sinking into the words, absorbing the reality that what I’ve been going through, other people have too. I suspect the repetitive nature is from the book being based on her blog (which I would really like to read but can’t access- I arrived too late!) and it was confusing how the chapters kept switching back and forth, from describing how she ate and felt before realizing gluten was an issue, and after. (I just do so much better as a reader when things stay consistently chronological). What I like most about this book, is how she delights in her new relationship with food. Her period of anger and disappointment at having to stop eating anything with gluten is markedly short, or at least she doesn’t dwell on it. Instead she revels in how wonderful it feels to not be achingly tired all the time, to not feel constantly sick and run-down, to eat food that tastes good and makes you feel energized and alive and healthy. And now I know exactly what she means.

more at the Dogear Diary… (mer)