It loses a star for me because there should be a disclaimer that this cookbook will really only work to it's fullest potential for people who live in large cities with bountiful selection of produce, spices and fresh markets/grocery store produce sections that carry *everything.* It's not suitable for anyone who lives in a food desert, for sure. That all said, while it's mango season here right now, I'll absolutely be making Martha's (yes, the Martha) Mango and Mozzarella salad. I started just taking all the scraps home and surviving off those scraps and making my own meals. And slowly but surely, everything I make came to be a kind of a salad. I just love to eat as many vegetables as possible with a little bit of protein. And I think in the book, I really stretch the definition of a salad. It's not just going to Sweetgreen and getting a huge bowl of kale, it's anytime you're eating in that style of just ‘light, fresh, and truly delicious.’ Strip the leaves of two bunches of Swiss chard from their stems, and tear the leaves into bite-size pieces. Chop the stems into half-inch pieces. As a side note, I wish cookbooks would state their values & biases up front. For example, do you think saturated fat is healthy or unhealthy? Do you have concerns with GMOs or food miles? Who is the intended audience (both in terms of cost & hunting down unusual ingredients)? If an author says, "Put coconut oil in everything, I only go to farmer's markets & co-ops, and I don't care where food is from" then I'll know to avoid the author. A Love Letter to I’m Sorry and a Tribute to Funny Moms in 3 Bits By Annie Berke September 6, 2023 | 11:48am

Salad Freak: Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession eBook

Gorgeous array of veggies and easy-enough-sounding technique. Every salad gets its own full-color picture to tempt.The book fittingly has an intro from Stewart herself, advises home cooks on the best salad essentials to keep in their pantry, and provides recipes for hearty and unique produce combinations that firmly cement salad as a main dish rather than a side.” Thrillist In summary the cookbook does not contain recipes with ingredients many people can readily get their hands on or likely afford! The "What to Have on Hand, Always" is not your typical list of pantry items. Roasted pumpkin seed oil, toasted walnut oil, pomegranate molasses, yuzu kosho, saffron, za'atar- these are not easy to find items. Not to mention the cost of keeping the 10 recommended cheeses and over a dozen seeds and nuts on hand. Many of the ingredients are not readily found in our local grocery stores - puntarelle (chicory), endive and radicchio can be grown here but there is not the demand to keep them on the shelves. (I live in a city of over 100,000 people so we are not talking just one local grocery store). Perhaps if I lived in a different part of the continent, closer to where the cook book author resides, the recipes would be more relevant. UPDATE: I took full advantage of paraíso mango season to make the Martha's mango and mozz salad and Y'ALL IT WAS DELICIOUS. I added a touch more honey to the vinegarette because I used a larger lemon. As Borat would say: great success! Another personal favorite is the mandarins and cream, which also appears on the front cover. This recipe challenges the accepted definition of a salad: Can peeled mandarins covered with burrata, olive oil and salt really be called a salad? Apparently so. While this dish could easily get a meal off to a great start, it can also make for a delightful dessert for the ultra-sweet-averse among us.

Recipes from the New Book, Salad Freak by Jess Damuck

I was excited to start this book because I was hoping for some exciting takes and ideas about eating salads/vegetables more. However, while there are definitely some interesting and inspiring salads in the book, on the whole it is very un-approachable. Where to start ... for transparency I did not make a single recipe in this book. I took this cookbook out of the local library after seeing it recommended on a local IG feed I had followed for quite some time. Some of the recipes are laughably simple. I'm all for simple, but a recipe for scooping balls of melon? No herbs, salt, nada. Sure there's a nice anecdote to go with it, but scooping balls of melon is not a recipe (at least not to me). Neither is adding some edible flowers to tomatoes.Recipes are meh-it feels like the author went more towards niche/hard to source ingredients rather than doing anything revolutionary to the salad genre. What about people who want to eat more veg on a budget? This author either doesn't care or is tone-deaf enough to not realize the inaccessibility. This was very bougie. While many of the recipes for the dressings were creative and tasty sounding, many, many ingredients for the salads themselves might be hard to source for many readers who don’t have easy and consistent access to farmers markets or…actual grocery stores themselves. Food deserts are real, after all. The Overlooked Cobweb Is a Well-Crafted, Future Halloween Cult Classic By Jim Vorel October 28, 2023 | 12:15am

Salad Freak, Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession by Jess Salad Freak, Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession by Jess

Things I was less wild about: It's totally bougie. Like, there are play lists involved, mindfulness reminders, things like that. How I eat my salad and how the author eats her salad can be two totally different ways - like she's talking about mindful chopping, and maybe I'm angry and want to rage chop? Either way is OK (I think). And unless you've got some really unique suggestions (like Marcus Samuelsson does in some of his books), I don't want to know what you're listening to. stars. My current rating is solely from reading the book - I have not yet made any recipes. I'll update my review (and maybe rating?) as I cook through it. In her first cookbook, our friend tosses salads together in a whole new way: They're irresistible, exciting, and delicious any time of day.”— Martha Stewart Living What a joy this cookbook has been! It’s helped me see salad in a new light – what it can be, how it can look, and how it can taste. I loved him before he broke the melon open with his hands, but that day on the beach was one of my favorite days and stands out in my memory - one of those that makes me laugh when I'm angry and believe in my bones that it's right."RF: We’re sharing your Matzo Fattoush recipe, which I'm so excited about. Can you tell me about the inspiration there? Put ¾ cup labneh in a small bowl. Use a Microplane to zest one lemon and one clove of garlic into the yogurt. Stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper. I got this from my local library (in Idaho!) and tons of this doesn't apply since the ingredients just aren't available, or are too specialized. I really wish books would push for local foods (local Idaho oils include canola, safflower, mustard, rapeseed, sunflower, and flax), rather than telling everyone to buy the same stuff from a place in Europe or South America. RF: I really like the concept of ‘anything can be a salad,’ because it's kind of true. It doesn't have to be lettuce with stuff on top of it. JD: I tried to give a lot of tips in the book. I put in every step of prepping the ingredients, because I don't know that everybody really understands what ‘slice on a bias’ means or why it's important. I wanted to give people as many tools as possible to be able to make the recipe they cook look like the photo, because that is such a huge part of life now. I want people to feel really proud of what they're making. And so many of these ingredients are so beautiful anyway. But if I call for something that is a little bit fussy, I'd also like the readers to understand why I'm doing that.