Product Description

Read by the authors
2 cassettes, 2 hours
2 CDs, 2 hours

Andrew Weil - author of the bestselling Eating Well for Optimum Health - brings to this perfect collaboration a comprehensive philosophy of nutrition grounded in scientific fact. Rosie Daley brings to it her innovative style.

Their lively dialogue about ingredients and preparation makes clear that there are many approaches to creative, healthy cooking. Information is provided on such subjects as the real meaning of "organic," the safety of our water, the most health-giving oils, how much salt/sugar is good for us - and much more. There are tips on losing weight, developing good eating habits in children and nurturing seniors.

THE HEALTHY KITCHEN is an audiobook that will forever change the way you cook for yourself and your family.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1045712 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-02
• Released on: 2002-04-02
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

From Amazon.com
In Eating Well for Optimum Health, one of Amazon's bestselling health books of 2000, alternative-medicine maverick Andrew Weil revealed his version of the ideal diet (and backed it up with scientific proof): a variety of unprocessed, or "whole" foods; just-picked, organic vegetables; whole grains; "good" fats, such as the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and nuts; fresh herbs and spices instead of heavy sauces; and a minimum of meat and dairy products. Eating this responsibly is certainly an admirable pursuit, but home cooking of this caliber can be intimidating, requiring much more energy than it would to pull up to the drive-through and order a burger and fries. In The Healthy Kitchen, Weil successfully teams up with Rosie Daley, formerly chef at the ritzy Cal-a-Vie Spa, to show how to cook with confidence within these dietary guidelines, creating dishes that are not only good for you, but are also fun to prepare, beautiful to look at, and delectable.

For those of you predicting a tofu-fest, have no fear: Weil stresses he's "unwilling to eat food that is boring, artless, and devoid of pleasure even if it's somebody else's idea of healthful." Indeed, the gorgeous color photography in The Healthy Kitchen will get you drooling over healthy entrées like Warm Chicken and Asparagus Salad and desserts like Lemon Yogurt Sorbet. You can be proud to serve these recipes to your family and friends--many of the appetizers and entrées are perfect party foods, sized to feed a dozen. Some recipes are notably more complicated than others--Cold Vegetable Pasta Primavera involves grilling five different veggies; baked Vegetable Wontons are time-consuming if you're not familiar with the folding process. However, Daley and Weil advise working your way up to these more complex dishes.

Sprinkled throughout the book are witty and wise health tips from Weil and cooking shortcuts from Daley. The two admit they don't agree on all cooking matters; Weil would substitute cashew milk for coconut milk and adds his two cents on making the Thai Shrimp and Papaya Salad spicier, for example. The Healthy Kitchen seems to be influenced a bit by Martha Stewart's Healthy Quick Cook, with Weil's text shaded in that unmistakably Martha sage-green, and Daley's in what Stewart might call bisque. Both books emphasize seasonal fresh foods and boast sumptuous photography and tempting menu suggestions. However, Weil and Daley outdo her with calorie and nutritional breakdowns for each dish, shopping guides for easy meal planning, and tips on encouraging children to help out in the kitchen (and develop lifelong healthy eating habits in the process). --Erica Jorgensen

From Publishers Weekly
What might at first seem a jumble of nutrition facts and recipes turns out to be a stimulating invitation to healthy, pleasurable eating. Well-known for his holistic approaches to physical and mental health, physician Weil (Eating Well for Optimum Health) loves good food. Not one to settle for bland albeit health-promoting fare, Weil insists that not only are low-fuss, delicious meals and good health more easily attainable than most Americans imagine, they actually go hand in hand. Coauthor and former Oprah Winfrey chef Daley (In the Kitchen with Rosie), provides recipes that, for the most part, reflect Weil's conception of the optimum diet. (Where they differ, Weil offers options.) Weil's introduction is a concise version of his dietary philosophy, with more advice scattered throughout the book. All of the 135 recipes include nutrition counts (calories, fat, cholesterol, etc.). According to Weil, eating has become yet another stressful activity that must be fit into jam-packed days. To remedy this, Weil and Daley not only offer satisfying recipes that make use of nourishing, readily available ingredients, they give tips on stocking the pantry, preparation, reading food labels and daily menu planning. Recipes include tempting twists on classics (eggs, grilled fish, pasta), to more adventurous items (broccoli pancakes). While miso, tofu and yogurt may not be appetizing to the meat-and-potatoes crowd, others willing to spread their culinary wings will find in these recipes and the authors' enthusiasm for good food a serious incentive to get their daily requirements of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

From Library Journal
This appealing collaboration (first printing, 750,000 copies) between Weil (Eating Well for Optimum Health) and Daley (In the Kitchen with Rosie: Oprah's Favorite Recipes) is filled with healthful recipes and information on topics ranging from growing herbs to wine to the Mediterranean diet. Recipes contain nutrition information, but this is not "diet food": recipes include Smoked Fish with Horseradish Sauce, Roasted Cornish Hens with Roasted Garlic, and Thai Shrimp and Papaya Salad. There are "Tips from Rosie's Kitchen" and boxes called "Andy Suggests" scattered throughout the text, and the authors don't always agree (Weil often opts for "more spice"; he doesn't eat chicken, but Daley does). Obviously an essential purchase; most libraries will want multiple copies.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Good Mix of Healthy Culinary Advice.
'The Healthy Kitchen' by holistic medicine expert Andrew Weil, M.D. and professional chef Rosie Daley promises to be the very best union between expertise on food and health. It is not limited to simple weight reduction or to curing any other specific medical problem. It is true to the holistic doctrine of treating the whole person.

The book generally takes the form of a dialogue between the two authors. The contributions of the two different voices / areas of expertise are clearly delineated by printing them with a header indicating the speaker and differently colored pages to signify which voice is speaking.

Regarding the good doctor's contribution, I believe it is all sound, reflecting a synthesis of the most recent conventional wisdom on health and food. The value of this material will depend much on how much you have read in this area before reading this book. If you have read any of Weil's earlier books, especially the title 'Eating Well for Optimum Health', you will have already read almost all of Weil's material reproduced on the his green pages in this book. Much of this information has also appeared in other recent books on nutrition; however, I believe there are several tips in the book on kitchen practices which are unlikely to appear in a book general nutrition. One example is Weil's comments on cooking oils, especially the recommendation to never heat oils to the smoking point and to never breath the smoke of heated oil, as it is highly toxic. This is why he recommends grapeseed oil, as it has a very high smoke point.

I am especially happy with Weil's bringing out the distinction between simple and complex carbohydrates and that in spite of the current low carb diet fads, one should not avoid all carbohydrates. Even more important is his discussion of the glycemic index of foods, which is a measure of how fast a food is converted from the gut into glucose in the blood. High glycemic index foods such as most sugars and starches have the undesirable effect of quickly raising blood sugar, triggering the production of insulin. This also has the effect of making you feel hungry again, soon after eating. Low GI foods remain in the stomach longer and maintain satiation longer.

The culinary half of the partnership is shared by the two authors, with Ms. Daley providing the recipes and Dr. Weil providing 'color commentary' and comments on the health benefits and risks of various cooking techniques. All recipes include a nutritional analysis, giving the weight in grams of calories, fat, saturated fat, protein, carbohydrate, cholesterol, and fiber per serving. The serving size is not indicated directly. Rather, the recipe gives the number of servings in the dish. Given the totally acceptable variability in the practices of home cooks and the variability of nutritional content of ingredients, I would use these figures only as a means of comparing one recipe to another. As usual, portion sizes seem to me to be rather small.

The recipes are divided into very familiar headings, giving us chapters on: Breakfast, Beverages, Appetizers, Salads, Soups, Entrees, Accompaniments, and desserts Desserts. The last chapter gives a week's worth of menus with a composite nutritional analysis for the entire day's menu.

The selection of dishes fits your expectations for a healthy eating book. There are no beef or veal dishes and the authors flatly state that they are excluded to avoid saturated fat and environmental toxins. On the positive side, there are several pasta dishes. Dr. Weil offers the very wise suggestion that he typically looks to Oriental cuisines for his pasta recipes instead of to Italy, as Oriental dishes have less fatty sauces. There are many fish, shellfish, chicken, and tofu dishes, plus an emphasis on grilling and roasting techniques.

Overall, the book borders on but does not enter the world of dietary extremism parodied by a menu of tofu, bean sprouts, and wheat germ. It celebrates things like garlic that many people enjoy and which are also good for you. It devalues carob as a pale imitation of chocolate and endorses chocolate in moderation, especially as an accompaniment to fruit.

If you have a limited budget for cookbooks and are concerned about food and health, this is a very, very good book. The list price is lower than almost any other recent hardcover cookbook you are likely to find and the recipes are very good. They are not simple. This is not quick cooking a la Rachael Ray. My only concern with the book's nutritional advice is that it may be just a bit dated. It touts the benefits of garlic; however, I think the nutritional value of garlic has been devalued recently. It is still tasty and quite safe.

My main concern with the culinary material in the book is that it does not adequately provide a good substitute for white bread. While bread appears in one chapter title, it does not appear in the index and the closest I can find to a bread recipe is a recipe for blueberry pancakes. This may be too much to ask from a $27 book, but it would have made the book a lot better.

Highly recommended, especially if you own no other books on nutrition by Dr. Weil. Requires some preexisting culinary skill. Not fast cooking.

Annoying; recipes are mistake-laden
If the recipes here were written clearly (they're not) and you were a novice cook, you'd find enough basics to get a good grounding in healthful cooking. As it is: kitchen disaster on most pages. If, on the other hand, you were an experienced cook, you'd know where the recipes miss the mark --- but then again, you could find far better ones elsewhere. Examples: a pancake/waffle batter that is fat free, as far as the ingredient list goes, but unlisted in the ingredient list, buried in the directions for pancakes, is 1/4 teaspoon butter, for greasing the griddle. First off, if butter is called for, list it in the ingredients. But secondly, why not use a non-stick skillet in the first place, and/or a spray of oil? And thirdly, the recipe says that you do not need to add more butter to the pan. This is probably not true, unless you are using a non-stick or have a superbly seasoned skillet --- which amateur cooks would not know. And fourthly --- when you get to the waffle variation, no fat of any kind is called for in greasing the waffle iron. Even non-stick waffle irons (which are not specificied here anyway)require lubing with oil or butter, and most waffle batters contain oil because of the tendency towards sticking. Doing it as suggested will result in ruining your waffle iron, since you can't soak waffle irons lest you screw up the regulator. Books like this waste readers' time, money, even equipment. Directions like "strain the raspberry puree through a colander" are so annoying: Hello! A colander's holes are too large to catch the seeds; you need a strainer. (Why didn't an editor catch this, at the very least?) And what of a Citrus Mango Freeze made without added sweetener that has 1/4 cup each lime and lemon juice to 3/4 cup orange juice and 3 mangos: Yikes, that is some serious tartness! Not a word to even warn readers / eaters so they now how sour it is, or to suggest modifications. I could go on. As an experienced cook and cooking school teacher I find these kind of omissions unsconscionable and irritating. Frequently such errors occur in celebrity cookbooks, especially when "packaged", as this one, to judge from the intro, was --- put together by the publisher, not a self-generated collaboration between friends or colleagues.
Best thing about this book: Andrew Weil's dietary advice, which is sensible and informative, if basic, and a lovely lay-out. But you don't eat the lay-out. Bottom line: get this out of the library for Weil's advice, but the recipes are not worth cooking from. Try Passionate Vegetarian, Laurel's Kitchen or World of the East for superb, healthful and varied recipes which work.

Good taste, but hard to assemble
The beauty of this cookbook is that it offers interesting, tasty foods that are healthy beyond being low fat or low calorie. In other words, they offer healthy food, not diet food. Each recipe includes a nutritional guide, but there are also notes on the actual nutritional value of many ingredients and on various food groups. The problem I've found is that many of the recipes call for foods that just aren't easy to come by. This is a cookbook for the focused chef with time to shop and prepare full menus, not for the casual health-conscious cook.