Embarking on the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) can be a bewildering experience for many, especially if they have limited experience cooking from scratch. This is where dedicated resources like The Healing Kitchen cookbook come in, taking the guesswork out of figuring out what’s AIP-compliant and what’s not.
I was given a review copy of The Healing Kitchen cookbook when it was first published and have been cooking out of it from time to time for the past 6 months. As a mother of 2 young boys, I have to take into consideration their evolving taste buds and preferences, and provide them with nutritious food that the family can enjoy together. There are occasions whereby I cook rice (non-AIP) for them to supplement a main course, but apart from that I rarely cook separate meals for my children. Here I’ll share with you what we all tried and found delicious.
Overview of The Healing Kitchen Cookbook
The Healing Kitchen cookbook is a 352 page softcover book written by Alaena Haber of Grazed and Enthused and Sarah Ballantyne of The Paleo Mom. It is a bright and cheerful book, with easy to read sans serif font and colourful illustrations. The first 100 pages or so are dedicated to empowering the reader with background knowledge of the AIP, with chapters detailing nutrition and healthy eating, what and how to eat, and even steps on turning your kitchen into a healing kitchen.
For a beginner AIP-er, these are very useful information coming from the authors who are well-versed in the AIP (Sarah is also the author of The Paleo Approach, it’s a great resource explaining everything about the AIP from a scientific basis). For those who use meal plans to cook, there’s even a whole chapter dedicated to 12 meal plans, depending on the needs of the individual/ family! I’ve tried cooking out of a meal plan and found it realistic and easy to follow.
The Recipes
The rest of The Healing Kitchen cookbook form the recipe section with over 175 recipes covering the following:
- Kitchen Basics (Sauces, bone broths, dressings, seasonings)
- Breakfast Favourites (Breakfast-y foods like smoothies, sausages, pancakes, porridge, skillets)
- Soups & Salads (Including chowders, stews, slaws, and a variety of colourful salads with options to transform them into complete meals)
- Easy-peasy Mains (Pot pie, tacos, meatballs, burgers, stromboli, pizza, teriyaki chicken, etc)
- Simple Sides (‘Rice’, fries, roasted vegetables, stir-fries)
- Satisfying Snacks (Granola, jerky, dips like hummus and baba ghanoush, spreads, bars, gummies)
- Thirst Quenchers (A variety of tasty non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated beverages)
- Timeless Treats (Low sugar sweets ranging from macaroons, milkshake and ice cream, friendship cake, cherry pie bars and coconut panna cotta)
How I cooked from the book
I like how I could look up recipes based on the number of ingredients or time taken to cook. This is found at the back section of the cookbook and also includes a very helpful photo index (great for visual folks)! Too hot to cook? There’s a whole list of no-cook recipes in there. Love to jazz up leftovers or batch-cooked foods? There’s also a list of what to do with them. If you’re a one-pot cook, you’d appreciate the one-pot recipes section (and there’s a lot of them!) These categories are also indicated by cute little icons throughout the book beside the recipe headers for easy reference.
Just about every recipe is accompanied by a photo of the food and directions are clearly listed out. Depending on the recipe, tips are usually provided with instructions on making ahead and storing plus reheating. Serving sizes, prep and cook time are also indicated.
I like reinventing dishes and incorporating them to form a meal. So when I made the Island Roasted Pork and had a lot of leftovers, I made collard green wraps filled with vegetables and the pork. We also loved the flavour combination and taste of the Orange & Olive Tapenade, which went well with roasted broccoli.
The teriyaki chicken recipe was simply fantastic and the marinade tasted even better than traditional teriyaki sauce! The second time I made it, I used chicken hearts to increase the nutrient density of the meal. My youngest son pretty much went crazy for them!
I don’t really cook lamb that much as the greasiness and rich flavour take a bit of getting used to for me, but this quick and easy to whip up Lamb with Olive-Butternut Rice dish went down well with the family and was in fact inhaled eaten faster than it took to cook. A winner for time-pressed mothers like me.
According to Alaena, the pizzas are possibly the most popular recipes in The Healing Kitchen cookbook. I’m not a big pizza fan but could appreciate the ‘pizza-ness’ of her pizza recipes! I used the Thin Pizza Crust recipe to make pizzas with various toppings I had available in my kitchen and my young boys were naturally over the moon with these. The crust was so easy to whip up that my non-cook husband even managed to make pizza all by himself for the family!
Building up a great foundation for nourishment
The Healing Kitchen is a great book for beginner and experienced cooks alike. The recipes are down-home comfort food made AIP-compliant with occasional forays to more exotic and yet approachable dishes that have appeal for the typical American palate. Nothing is bland or dull in this cookbook, and most ingredients can be easily sourced from large supermarkets in America. The bulk of recipes can also be made by readers outside of America, with perhaps some substitution of local ingredients.
Since it’s such an adaptable book with a good focus on basics, it is easy for readers to build up their confidence in cooking AIP meals and eventually create delicious meals of their own.
Availability
The Healing Kitchen cookbook is available now at all major bookstores and also in e-book format. It is also available at Costco, and Sarah has even put together The Healing Kitchen Costco Guide to help you stock up your kitchen with AIP ingredients available at Costco!
A chance to get yourself a copy of The Healing Kitchen!
Here’s a chance for you to get a copy of The Healing Kitchen, courtesy of Victory Belt Publishing! In order to take part, please comment below stating why you think you should win The Healing Kitchen cookbook, and also visit our Facebook pages (Provincial Paleo, Grazed & Enthused, and The Paleo Mom)! Entry for the giveaway of the hard copy of the cookbook is only limited to U.S. and Canadian residents, and if you reside outside of these areas you can stand to win the e-book version instead. Closing date for the giveaway is at midnight (Eastern time) on 21st of July 2016. Good luck!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Update 7/21: Congratulations to Stefani for winning! I will be contacting you shortly!
