Natural Birth and Baby Care.com

Cookbook Suggestions

I have tremendously benefited from your Postpartum Freezer Meal Planner (mostly for the delicious, healthy, and easy recipes!). I am starting my family and really looking for great, easy, and healthy recipes.

My mother never taught me how to cook, as we ate many processed foods growing up. So I am starting from the beginning.

Any tips on what books or cookbooks to get would be greatly appreciated. I saw you have recommended Nourishing Traditions, but am wondering if there's anything else you partially like?

In addition, I am having trouble locating raw, grass-fed cheese and butter. Do you have any suggestions on where to find resources for this?

Thank you for all the knowledge you have provided for a natural, healthy family!

Janelle

Answer:

Hi Janelle,

I'm so glad the freezer plan has been helpful to you! I worked hard to put it together for my family and thought that other moms may like taking a "shortcut" from my hard work ;)

I was very much like you - my mom really didn't teach me to cook (though I have a few good recipes she taught me, like the soup.) So I pretty much taught myself.

Nourishing Traditions is my main cookbook. With all of the sauces and soups and such, there's really a huge variety of foods that come out of it. Once you learn how to cook the basics - roasting chickens, cooking roasts, and steak/beef recipes, you can add a lot of variety just with sauces and seasonings.

I also like Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking - she really breaks down the recipes to basics so even a beginner can learn. Plus the sauces and things are just divine!

I cook out of the recipes from Eat Fat, Lose Fat - by the same author as Nourishing Traditions.

I also try recipes that I find online (usually crockpot recipes), and I have a subscription to Taste of Home cooking magazine. I have to really adapt a lot of these recipes - they don't always use good traditional ingredients. But at this point I can do pretty well with adapting them.

Usually the recipes at Mark's Daily Apple are good (look for "Eat Primal" on the right sidebar... I can't find if he has a recipe index other than that.) My husband really likes recipes from Mark's site.

I have a couple of cookbooks on my list of "to-buy" but for now, those above are my main standby's!