the winter solstice experiment

Twelve months ago I started an experiment on this site. To celebrate the winter solstice I shared some of my favourite healthy cookbooks and linked them to an online bookstore with affiliate sales, to raise money for a couple of my favourite charities. Some of you joined in and I added your suggestions to the list. Around summer solstice I updated the list and added a new donor.

So what did we raise for The Smith Family’s Learning for Life and Ian Thorpe’s Fountain of Youth? The princely sum is $286.53, which would have been more if Fishpond hadn’t halved its affiliate rate earlier this year. I’ve thrown in some bucks of my own and rounded it up to $400 in total.

I’m still on the lookout for healthy cookbooks – especially vegetarian ones that are simple to follow and don’t rely heavily on dairy or wheat. I’m also curious as to where you turn to for inspiration cooking seafood and if you have any vegetable gardening books that ring your bell.

The healthy cookbook roundup

Here’s the list, with a few new favourites added since the last update. Anything else you'd add to the list?



Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook has been popular with those who went shopping on Fishpond.


Melbourne’s own Flip Shelton’s latest offering Veg In: Simple Vegetarian Dishes from Around the World ticked all my boxes.


How to Cook Everything: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food: Vegetarian
I'm a big fan of Mr Bittman and I think this book is an absolute ripper for techniques and good vegetarian recipes.


Eastern Vegetarian Cooking
This is probably my most tattered cookbook attesting to how often I've used it. Madhur taught me how to make dolmades, roll sushi and cook tasty simple dishes with pulses and grains. It's a cheap book and written for the British who've traditionally not been known for their cookery skills - so it is also suitable for beginners.


Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: An Unrivalled Sourcebook of Over 600 Recipes and Ingredients from All Over the Globe
This is newer than my all time favourite and not limited to Eastern cuisine. It's the pick of one of my oldest vegetarian friends.


The Cook's Companion
This might be too ambitious for a newbie but for those building some cooking confidence she covers basic techniques well but what makes this book a star for me is the list of other foods that the featured ingredients goes with.


The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen
If Nigel Slater was straight, and I believed in marriage, I'd tie the knot with this bloke because I like his writing so much. Wasn't Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger one of the best foodie memoirs ever written? I've included a couple of Slater books because not only is he a joy to read, his recipes are easy to follow and I figure for those who enjoy eating meat, you can't go better than his chicken roast.


Real Cooking
More Slater love!



Feel Good Food
Another local chef/food writer to be proud of. Great macro inspired recipes.


The Asian Vegan Kitchen: Authentic and Appetizing Dishes from the Continent of Rich Flavors
Lisa's pick.


Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking with What You've Got
Lucy's pick.



The Yoga Cookbook: Vegetarian Food for Body and Mind
Zoe's pick.


Edmonds Cookery Book
Ok not a health book but I was cruising the site and came across it. Other than my mother's tuition, the Edmonds ("Sure To Rise") cookbook was the one that taught me how to make afghan biscuits and fairy cakes.

And for those who like a serve a politics with their food


The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-food World
An eye-opening read, without the sledge-hammer approach of some other authors of the genre.


In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
You can't get enough of "the thinking woman's crumpet".


Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating
Barbara Kingsolver's journey into the locavore lifestyle never goes out of season.


Give a little

Don’t forget it’s only a couple of days until the end of the financial year, wouldn’t you prefer to give your favourite charity a few dollars and be able to claim some of that back on tax?

solstice giving update

At winter solstice I gave thanks and started an experiment. In gathering my (and your) favourite healthy cookbooks I linked them to a Fishpond (online Australasian bookstore) affiliate program. The promise was to give any profits from affiliate sales to my favourite charity. As an act of faith I donated $200 in advance to the Smith Family’s Learning for Life and I’m glad to say that has almost been met in affiliate sales.

Today, while listening to 774 I caught Ian Thorpe talk about his foundation. Those of you who’ve read my other (ranty) blog may know I’ve had a thing for Thorpie over the years. But all jokes aside, after listening to flipper feet talk I’m proud of what he’s done to encourage literacy in Aboriginal communities. So continuing the theme of giving I’ve donated $200 to his charity. If you’d like to support it too by purchasing books via this Fishpond link or directly through the foundation, good on you.



As for the virtual bookshelf I’m building elsewhere, it’s still a work in progress. The list of things to consume my post holiday replenished energy supplies in the New Year grows ever longer! You’re welcome to continue to add your thoughts on healthy food related reading.

A big addition to my original list is my cookbook of the year, Tony Chiodo’s Feel Good Food.

Feel Good Food
I’ve broken my minimalist rules this year with a small haul of recipe books and Chiodo’s is certainly the healthiest.

Lisa Dempster recommended

The Asian Vegan Kitchen: Authentic and Appetizing Dishes from the Continent of Rich Flavors
I like the idea of an Asian cookbook that avoids mock meats/sauces and focuses on the authentic vegetarian recipes. It’s winging its way to my letterbox right now!

I’m keen to check out Lucy’s suggestion, it's just a pity I didn’t remember it when I ordered the Hema Parekh’s book! But good to see that Fishpond currently have it on sale.

Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking with What You've Got

A few of you also suggested

The Yoga Cookbook: Vegetarian Food for Body and Mind


Speaking of cookbooks I made an interesting discovery recently. Do you ever fall in love with a book in the shop, bring it home, touch it lovingly from time to time but never really end up cooking anything from it? This year I realized that the key to success is committing to make at least one recipe from the new book within the first week of purchase. This reduces the likelihood that it will languish on the shelf with its recipes mere pipe dreams.

What books are tickling your fancy, culinary or otherwise, this season?

A big thanks to all of you who clicked through to Fishpond in the last 6 months and bought all sorts of wonderful books and electronic equipment via the affiliate link. It gives me a buzz to think that your reading choices are helping some Australian children learn to love words and become readers for life.

Hope you all are keeping your head above water and remembering the spirit of the season.


Update: Lucy added From Spiders to Water Lilies Cambodian cooking for a great cause.

I'm excited - Feel Good Food

A few weeks ago I shared a few cookbooks healthy enough to get the Food Nazi stamp of approval. I'm excited to add a new one fresh off the press. Unlike many other foodbloggers I don’t actually buy many recipe books, to hand over my hard earned cash these days I have to be sure that I’ll actually cook from it, rather than just be seduced by the pretty pictures.

Tony Chiodo has had a mention on this site before, I did one of his wholefoods cooking courses years ago that began with learning how to sharpen our knives and ended with making a yummy fruit kanten. Readers living further a field from Melbourne may not of heard of him but a potted history includes being apprenticed under local French chef Jacques Reymond, then studying and working in Italy before swapping animal fats for tofu at the Kushi Institute where he trained in Macrobiotics. I met Tony long after I'd become a fan of his cooking at Wild Rice Cafe (back in the days when you could find healthy food to eat in St Kilda) and Cafe Angelica in Kew, so I can say with a clear conscience that it really is his culinary skills that hooked me before I was subjected to his Italian charm.

While his first book Eating Well: Tony Chiodo's Food for Health and Happiness, based on his Epicure column in The Age, didn’t give me the same tingle (nice but not as wholesome as his workshops) Feel Good Food is everything I’d hoped a Chiodo cookbook would be – a wonderful marriage of European lushness with Asian inspired health affirming food. For example, there’s a baked silken chocolate tart with a picture that looks so good I want to lick it off the page. The crust is made from spelt flour, ground almonds and coconut oil and the ‘silken’ filling is based on tofu, cocoa and rice syrup. I love his idea of adding cardamom to a sweet quinoa dish too. As you’d expect from a macrobiotic influenced cookbook the savoury dishes use a variety of grains, beans and soy. There are also a handful of seafood and chicken dishes but overall the book is about 80% vegan (including the cakes and how to make tofu sour cream).

I was happy to see some old favourites from his cooking classes included in the book, like the millet and cauliflower mash (that tastes more exciting than it sounds), variations on his pilafs and the aforementioned kanten (a jelly made with agar agar).

His recipes are accessibly written but may include ingredients unfamiliar to a novice. However it includes clear instructions on how to use or cook them, such as recipes for steaming millet or quinoa. There are also some commonsense guidelines on how to cook and eat well, including seasonal eating and incorporating colour, texture and flavour. Like the recipes, the information is conveyed with a sense of fun and exploration without being preached at.

Feel Good Food manages to deliver a very challenging brief, it presents food that looks and tastes so great that your guests or family won’t know they are being fed “health food”.



Feel Good Food

Feel Good Food is well worth the $45 I paid for it, though if I'd followed my own Fishpond link I could have got it for a few bucks cheaper!

winter solstice and a little giving

For those of us at the bottom of the world, tonight is the longest night. Yippee. I'm really enjoying long, cold evenings at the moment. Hot soup, an adoring cat (the SE is interstate at the moment) and a damn good dvd enjoyed under the comfort of a pure wool blanket is perfect for seasonal hibernation.

The dvd du jour is a television series I was far too young to appreciate when it went to air in the late '70's but is currently appealing to both the cook and feminist in me. The Duchess of Duke Street begins with a young woman going into service as a cook in London in 1900. There are shots of her making veal pies, cooking pheasant and demonstrating the original slow cooker (a hay box). Between her and the French chef she works under there are some great lines and tips on cooking. It really is a treat watching the creations of the time (I'd say it shits over Masterch*f but to be honest I haven't watched a single episode of it this season).

On twitter I did a wee rant and a link to my more serious thoughts about the winter solstice. The gist of it is, one of the rituals I have is to practice gratitude and use the day as an end of financial year prompt to give some money to my favourite charities (usually The Smith Family, The Fred Hollows Foundation and Kiva). Tax deductible good karma - how great is that!

Speaking of which, I am in the process of preparing a page for my work website. I'm often asked to recommend credible health related books and then I had the wonderful idea - how about I link my favourites to an online bookstore with an affiliate program and donate the profits to the Smith Family's Learning For Life program.

As I've begun compiling my list it has become pretty obvious, if you haven't worked it out already, that for me one of the cornerstones of good health is eating well. I thought I'd share the first handful of food related books I've come up with and see what you'd add to the list. We aren't talking gastroporn here, rather books featuring easy to follow recipes. Often what people struggle with the most other than the utter basics of cooking, are those who are newly vegetarian or adopting Meat Free Mondays, learning to eat a balanced diet not reliant on pizza or pasta.

(Update: the book icons haven't been showing up in all browsers, so have re-tagged in text. Let me know if you can't see the icons and what browser you are using)


How to Cook Everything: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food: Vegetarian
I'm a big fan of Mr Bittman and I think this book is an absolute ripper for techniques and good vegetarian recipes.


Eastern Vegetarian Cooking
This is probably my most tattered cookbook attesting to how often I've used it. Madhur taught me how to make dolmades, roll sushi and cook tasty simple dishes with pulses and grains. It's a cheap book and written for the British who've traditionally not been known for their cookery skills - so it is also suitable for beginners.


Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: An Unrivalled Sourcebook of Over 600 Recipes and Ingredients from All Over the Globe
This is newer than my all time favourite and not limited to Eastern cuisine. It's the pick of one of my oldest vegetarian friends.


The Cook's Companion
This might be too ambitious for a newbie but for those building some cooking confidence she covers basic techniques well but what makes this book a star for me is the list of other foods that the featured ingredients goes with.


The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen
If Nigel Slater was straight, and I believed in marriage, I'd tie the knot with this bloke because I like his writing so much. Wasn't Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger one of the best foodie memoirs ever written? I've included a couple of Slater books because not only is he a joy to read, his recipes are easy to follow and I figure for those who enjoy eating meat, you can't go better than his chicken roast.


Real Cooking


Edmonds Cookery Book
Ok not a health book but I was cruising the site and came across it. Other than my mother's tuition, the Edmonds ("sure to rise") book was the one that taught me how to make afghan biscuits and fairy cakes.

Of course, once you know how to cook the next step is understanding the politics of food.


The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-food World


In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto


Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating

Imagine if Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollen had a love child?!

Thoughts people - on giving, the affiliate idea (pros and cons) and cooking of course?

Though my giving page has not gone live I have already enrolled in Fishpond's affiliate program. That means if you click any of the links above and end up buying something (not just the linked books or dvd) from the site, I receive 10% of the sales. Any profit I gain from the program will be donated to charity.


Update December 2010: A big thanks, a donation update and more healthy cookbooks.