Ayurveda: Inspired Cooking for Your Individual Well Being

Rating:
Summary: Author should try her recipes before publishing them.
Review: I gave this book 3 stars because there were 3 recipes in the book I thought tasted good. Some of the recipes were so bad that I threw the food away from me in disgust (and dismay because I did not have anything to eat). The author puts ghee in nearly all her recipes and it was only afterwards that I figured out that I could substitute oil for the clarified butter. What I learned is that I strongly dislike the taste of butter in my food. But the recipes that I liked I enjoyed very much, and I thank the author for giving me some new ideas on how to cook with Indian spices. Maybe the problem is that I am an American with Western tastes. If I had grown up with these dishes, would these recipes have tasted delicious?

Rating:
Summary: Author should try some of her recipes.
Review: I gave this book three stars because I enjoyed only 3 of the 55 recipes. Perhaps my Western palate is unused to Indian food.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This is one of my most used cookbooks. I like the simplicity and ease of variability of these recipies. I also like that most recipies are sized for one or two people, making it perfect for single cooks. I have tried other Indian cookbooks before and found most often that for daily meals, there was too much time involved in the preparation. Not so here.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in altering their eating habits and relationship to food. The meals are filling, but not overfilling, and seem quite healthy on average. Of the recipies I have tried only one was too bitter to my taste.
The best are now standard in my weekly menu: beets with yogurt, sweet potatoes with basil, pumkin soup, red lentils with ginger, braised peppers, curried rice, various dal recipies, lassi and others.

This is not a great book with which to learn ayurvedic technique, however. There is some information at the start of the book but it was not particularly useful and I frequently ignore the variations the authors recommend for my type.