2 out of 5 stars
I would like to thank Capstone Young Readers for providing me with a free electronic ARC of this book, via Netgalley, in exchange for an open and honest review.
Sadly, this cook book wasn’t everything I had hoped it would be. Firstly, it is presented as being a child friendly cookbook and worded in such a way as to suggest that children can cook the recipes. Some of them? Yes. Most of them? No. And I don’t just mean young children, there are some I would be wary of my kitchen savvy 12 year old trying without assistance. So, yes it might be a cook book aimed for feeding children, but not a cookbook teaching children how to cook for themselves – despite its childlike appearance and formatting.
Secondly, I know it says in advance it’s only looking at the “big 8” allergies, but stating there are “no major allergies” is rather misleading as some people may take it to mean “this is a safe thing to make” and then feed it to someone with say salicylate or allium issues… and then wonder why they got sick. These might not be part of the “big 8” but they are big issues in my line of food prep and so this book is rather useless to us because of it. Normally I don’t take offence to recipes that use allium. I’m used to it; I know allium allergies and intolerances are thought to be minor league. But to dismiss them entirely? Just put me off this book in the first recipe and I never really recovered enough to like it a heck of a lot.
I mean, yes, there are some good recipes in there, but they are few and far between. Any recipe that calls for a “packet of this” or a “tin of that” while proclaiming it is a healthy whole food cook book also will get the squinty eye from me. This book got the squinty eye.
Okay, I want to say something nice so… The formatting was good – childish, but good. Clear and precise and basic instructions easy to follow (but when you say use a packet of so and so, instructions will be easy). I did find some of the pictures confusing and misleading as they showed images of foods that were for recipes later on in the book… as if they had to advertise things to come to keep you interested. It might work better in paper format, but when reading an electronic copy, it just added a dimension of clutter and confusion.
This book is also marketed for an American audience. No biggie, I am used to that when working with Netgalley and accept it as part of the deal. But it did narrow the field down even more for those who can read, use and enjoy this book. Yes it starts with a great little conversion table at the front, big thumbs up there, but it then uses those pre-mades I’ve mentioned and without knowing the ingredients and being unable to buy those items outside of the USA… those recipes therefore become useless to try. So if pre-mades must be used, add a glossary explaining them maybe?
Please note that I personally feel cook books that try and tackle multiple food allergies as a thing tend to fail miserably. They up sell themselves and then can’t follow through on being THE food friendly cook book. It would have worked much better as a whole food, real food (besides the pre-mades) cook book that offered suggestions on how to make things say dairy free, nut free or gluten free. Trying to cover all those bases just let it down and meant it didn’t really help many of those with food intolerances and allergies. I mean, saying “if you have a wheat/gluten intolerance, use a GF flour” as a tip. Uh, yeah, thanks! I figured that out in all the other books I use containing wheat. How about just cooking without it?
Would I recommend this book to others?
No I wouldn’t, sorry. In this day and age of online recipe databases, there are far better (free) options out there teaching people how to cook foods for those with food allergies, intolerances and similar issues. This book is too sporadic and the wording just too misleading to be something I would recommend.
Would I buy this book for myself?
I’m pretty sure we all know that answer, right? No, I can’t say I would as, again, there are a lot of much better resources available to me that are far more flexible at meeting our dietary needs.
In summary: Yes this book might be helpful to some with food allergies, but not that fearless as I’d hoped.
Until next time,
Janis.
Janis's Journal 