The Quintessential Quinoa Cookbook: Eat Great, Lose Weight, Feel Healthy [Hardcover]

'The Quintessential Quinoa Cookbook' certainly lives up to its title. With over 200 pages of content it covers pretty much everything when it comes to cooking, and baking!, with Quinoa. The pictures of the recipes, all by the author herself, are gorgeous and give you a good impression what the finished meal will look like. The recipes themselves are easy to follow and have all nutritional information included.

A nice touch are the recipe variations for people that follow a special diet, like vegan, gluten free or eating clean. Each recipe follows a clear set-up with list of ingredients needed, a photo (or more!) of the finished meal, cooking and baking directions, the necessary additional steps to make it vegan, gluten-free or cleaner and the relevant nutritional information. The directions are easy to follow, detailed without getting boring and there are also some useful general cooking and baking tips interspersed, like how to make perfectly brown pancakes.

A well thought out index, the food photography and some beautifully designed transitional pages make this book real eye candy, but its true value lies in its recipes that prove over and over again that healthy food can be yummy and doesn't have to be boring at all. This Quinoa cook book really made me run to the next health store to stock up on my Quinoa supply and start out to try some of the recipes!

If you care, like me, for healthy eating AND don't want to compromise on taste and visual appeal of your meals, this cook book is right for you. Whilst the book is aimed mostly at vegetarians, there also a few dishes included for 'meat eaters' and obviously, all the side dishes, salads and so on can be easily combined with a nice steak or healthy steamed fish. Healthy food has never tasted so good! Here a few of my favorite recipes so far:

Quinoa Black Bean Soup
Quinoa Salad with Goat Cheese, Raspberries and Balsamic Walnuts
Sweet Potato, Quinoa and Butternut Squash Gratin (that one especially made my hubby's mouth water, served with a nice steak of course!)
Lentil, Chickpea and Quinoa Burger with Cilantro Garlic Cream
Chocolate Chip Cherry Quinoa Cookies (try to say this five times fast in a row ;-))

Sorted from breakfast to dessert, it would be easy to prepare a whole menu based on Quinoa with this cookbook without it getting boring. If you are looking to add one more 'healthy cooking book' to your collection and / or if you are looking for a gift for a 'health nut', this is the book for you! And seriously, even if you are not into healthy living, this book's recipes are just too yummy to miss.

As no review is truly complete without mentioning also some negative points and caveats with a product, here they are:

Whilst the book concentrates mainly on cooking from scratch, what I am a big fan of, a few recipes involve using pre-made food like 'tubes of Quinoa Polenta'. Not a great deal for some, but I thought I mention it. Nothing else, really, sorry, this cookbook is as perfect as you could wish for.

Oh yes, one more, you will develop a healthy appetite by just looking at the images of the prepared meals ;-)

This cookbook is very good and very well laid out. The author's writing style makes the subject interesting and easy to understand.

I had heard about the benefits of quinoa, the super food, however I didn't know about any recipes using it. The author educates you about the benefits of quinoa and why it should be a part of every diet.

She also includes mouth-watering photographs of the different dishes. Another positive to this book is the recipes include ingredients that I normally already have in my kitchen.

The downsides to the book are twofold. One, I can't decide which recipe to try first, and two; the author doesn't come with the book to prepare the dishes.

With my recent numbers coming back bad (total cholesterol over 250, and a triglyceride count in the stratosphere) I have been looking for a way to eat healthier. I also lift weights, and I have to keep my protein numbers up - I try to eat about 1 gram of protein for every pound of lean body weight.

So - I have to drop the weight and stop eating crap - but chicken breasts only take you so far. Enter Quinoa - one of the few (the only?) plants that has a complete protein profile, meaning that you can get all of the essential amino acids from it.

Now I have something I can substitute for my formerly meat heavy diet that won't leave me wondering about my protein profile. The only question is how to keep it interesting.

That's where this book comes in. Wendy does a great job of incorporating enough different kinds of dishes and flavors to keep even me satisfied. A bonus is the book's quality - beautifully photographed, so you can get a real idea of what the dishes will look like. First up - tomato pizza!