“I intend for this book to be your first step of many in decolonizing your plate, exploring your own cultural roots around food, welcoming heritage and traditional ways of eating into your home, and discovering the amazing flavors from cultures around the world.”—Maya Feller, from the Introduction
The typical American diet is heavy in added sugars, salts, and synthetic fats, but one-size-fits-all nutrition plans often leave us uninspired. There’s a more delicious way to eat sustainably and healthfully: by getting back to flavorful traditional cooking methods from cultures around the world, including the Caribbean, South America, Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.
Registered dietitian and nutritionist Maya Feller is known for her approachable, real-food-based solutions to making informed food choices that support health and longevity. In this deeply personal cookbook inspired by Maya’s childhood visits to her grandparents in Trinidad and Tobago and her family’s annual trips to the Caribbean and western Africa, she highlights nourishing dishes from around the world with a focus on whole and minimally processed ingredients. Maya shares realistic ways to think about how we relate to food, along with nutrition tips, plant-based substitutions, and meals that can be made in thirty minutes or less. She makes it easy to enjoy the vibrant flavors of your favorite cuisine with over eighty recipes for any meal of the day, including:
• Sweet Potato and Leek Soup with Crispy Potato Skins from West Africa
• Salted Cod from Trinidad & Tobago
• Mezze: Cucumber Za’atar Salad, Olive Oil Labneh, and Olives from Lebanon
• Pad See Ew with Chicken from Thailand
• Cajun Gumbo from the American South
• Pao de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread) from Brazil
Featuring mouthwatering photography and insightful reflections on the evolution of global cuisines, Eating from Our Roots offers an inclusive and diverse way to think about healthy eating and celebrates nourishing, flavorful dishes and the cultures they come from.
“I intend for this book to be your first step of many in decolonizing your plate, exploring your own cultural roots around food, welcoming heritage and traditional ways of eating into your home, and discovering the amazing flavors from cultures around the world.”—Maya Feller, from the Introduction
The typical American diet is heavy in added sugars, salts, and synthetic fats, but one-size-fits-all nutrition plans often leave us uninspired. There’s a more delicious way to eat sustainably and healthfully: by getting back to flavorful traditional cooking methods from cultures around the world, including the Caribbean, South America, Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia.
Registered dietitian and nutritionist Maya Feller is known for her approachable, real-food-based solutions to making informed food choices that support health and longevity. In this deeply personal cookbook inspired by Maya’s childhood visits to her grandparents in Trinidad and Tobago and her family’s annual trips to the Caribbean and western Africa, she highlights nourishing dishes from around the world with a focus on whole and minimally processed ingredients. Maya shares realistic ways to think about how we relate to food, along with nutrition tips, plant-based substitutions, and meals that can be made in thirty minutes or less. She makes it easy to enjoy the vibrant flavors of your favorite cuisine with over eighty recipes for any meal of the day, including:
• Sweet Potato and Leek Soup with Crispy Potato Skins from West Africa
• Salted Cod from Trinidad & Tobago
• Mezze: Cucumber Za’atar Salad, Olive Oil Labneh, and Olives from Lebanon
• Pad See Ew with Chicken from Thailand
• Cajun Gumbo from the American South
• Pao de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread) from Brazil
Featuring mouthwatering photography and insightful reflections on the evolution of global cuisines, Eating from Our Roots offers an inclusive and diverse way to think about healthy eating and celebrates nourishing, flavorful dishes and the cultures they come from.
Reviews-
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January 2, 2023
“Disentangling ourselves from restrictive eating patterns and focusing on sustainable and enjoyable nourishment is liberating,” declares dietitian Feller (Southern Comfort Food Diabetes Cookbook) in this wide-ranging exploration of healthy eating. Her intention to decolonize accepted notions of mindful eating is clear from the start, and she includes dishes and practices from the African diaspora and other non-Western cuisines to spotlight the foods that “have often been left out of health and culinary conversations.” Feller enlists the help of seven expert chefs, offering creative dishes like savory French toast imbued with Indian spice and stuffed with cashew cream, or watermelon “steaks” treated to a marinade of beets, tamarind, and hibiscus leaves to intensify their color and add tart flavor notes. Her own Caribbean heritage is celebrated in several ways, including a coconut quick bread from Trinidad and Tobago and the vegetarian diet of Jamaica’s Rastafarians, whose Ital stew contains pumpkin, plantains, okra, split peas, corn, and habanero pepper. Sprinkled throughout are essays that explore histories of global cuisines and track the ways ingredients spread through trade and enslavement. A helpful chart of plant-based substitutions for meat and dairy ingredients adds to the richness of this well-researched guide. Those seeking healthy recipes and culturally diverse fare will be pleased. Agent: Josanne Lopez, Lopez Talent Management. -
January 1, 2023
Nutritionist and cookbook author Feller (Southern Comfort Food Diabetes Cookbook, 2019) teaches readers about the importance of nutrition, using foods from various cultures. Nutrition is an ever-evolving science, she explains, not a rule written in stone, and nutritional goals can be met by eating more of the foods that we already enjoy. Readers will appreciate Feller's helpful tips, such as advice on how to stock a pantry, with a section on understanding processed foods, and a helpful chart for plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs. Some recipes are local, such as griddlecakes from the northeastern U.S., while others boast more international roots: coconut bake from Trinidad and Tobago, French branzino bouillabaisse, and sweet potato and leek soup from West and Central Africa. Recipes are about a page long and include a summary about the dish as well as occasional historical commentary and ingredient-based highlights. A perfect book for health-conscious readers and armchair-traveling foodies.COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
