“A Good Food Day” by Marco Canora

I love a good cookbook.  There are things that initially make me want to cook a new recipe- good ingredients, something that is new to me, a new take on a classic, and good photos.  A Good Food Day by Marco Canora has all these things.  Another thing that A Good Food Day has is fun, witty writing.  Marco Canora presents his ideas for eating well in a creative, clever way.  The English teacher in me loves the fact that the sentence “proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance” is in the book.  The breakfast lover in me loves the fact that the sentence “a slew of studies also show that eating breakfast increases mental clarity and the overall ability to get shit done” is also in the book.

Not only is this a book of recipes, but it also has sections describing various things.  For example, there’s a section on pantry staples that everyone should have on hand.  I love his list of 10 principles of a good food day.

Before every section of the book, Canora describes why certain foods are beneficial to our health.  It’s wordy and wise.

The photographs by Michael Harlan Turkell are beautiful and inspiring.  Photographs are very important to me when it comes to cooking a recipe.  Food is inherently beautiful.  It should be seen, smelled, felt, and finally tasted.

I’ve made three recipes out of this book, and all three have been excellent.  The first were Oatmeal and Dark Chocolate Cookies.  The recipe called for palm sugar (I’m actually a little wary about coconut palm sugar, because I’ve read that it isn’t sustainable, or good for the global environment…), and I just used granulated.  I also used whole wheat pastry flour instead of spelt flower.

I had a helper.  Alma is always motivated to help me in the kitchen – especially when cookies are the finished product.

The recipe is really unique and tasty – the molasses really adds something special, along with the coconut oil.

Here’s a tip:  When you make cookies, save some of the dough.  I know that we couldn’t (or shouldn’t) eat a whole batch of cookies at one time.  We shape the remaining dough into a log on parchment paper, close it up, cover it with foil, and freeze it.  Then, when you want cookies again, you can just slice off a few and bake them!

The next recipe I made was the meatloaf.  We all love meatloaf, but we usually just throw things together, and it’s probably not very healthy.  Just look at the ingredients that go into Canora’s recipe:

It’s colorful and fresh and tasty!  The veggies kept the meatloaf moist and added some interesting flavors along with nutrition.  The only complaint we had was it was a bit bitter, so I’d cut back on the lemon peel in the future.

I really loved this next recipe.  It is pasta, cheese, and peas.  Three of my favorites.  Plus, it was quick and easy!

I need to say that I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review, but that the opinions, reviews, photos, messy kitchen, cute daughter are all mine.