The Healthy Cookery Index

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book but not for Everyone
Review: The Healthy Cookery Index is an index to 20 cookbooks devoted to healthy eating or to restricted diets. The indexing begins with Acorn Squash and ends with Zucchini. The reader can look up major ingredients and find lists of recipes. There is over a page of references to Zucchini recipes to help out the Summer gardener. Individual recipe names are not indexed, but well-known dishes like Gazpacho are listed with short descriptions of specific variations and the name of the book and page number where the recipe will be found. Also types of dishes like Soups, Sauces, or Salads are headings with recipes listed alphabetically beneath them, again with references to the pages in the cookbooks. Recipes are also indexed by ethnic groups, countries or regions. Being a healthy food index, recipes are even indexed by method of preparation (e.g.: Grilled Food, Steamed Foods, etc.). The indexing is excellently done and my mouth began to water reading the brief descriptions.

However, this book does not have a single recipe in it. Without the indexed cookbooks, the book has little, if any, value. I personally have only one of the indexed cookbooks so this volume is of no use unless you own or buy at least some of the works indexed. Ideally, I see this book in the kitchen of a person building a collection of healthy eating cookbooks where they can use this book as a guide for purchasing quality cookbooks for their own use. Also it would be great in a small public library where they also made the effort to purchase the indexed cookbooks and maybe even keep them on a shelf together. One problem I see with this book is that the cookbooks it indexes cover a lot of different health needs. Low-fat, low-cholesterol and vegetarian (or natural foods) cookbooks are well represented. There are a couple of general food allergy cookbooks indexed as well as books on special needs like gluten-free, diabetic, and dairy-free cooking. Thus only a library or cook serving a large group of people's needs would have reason to purchase all or most of the cookbooks.

Also, even though this book came out only last year, a quick search of the Amazon website revealed that two of the indexed cookbooks are already out of print: Graham Kerr's Best and The Living Heart Cookbook. Luckily, the Internet makes obtaining out-of-print books relatively easy.

I would think that anyone who is considering buying this book should know what cookbooks are indexed in it. So here is a list of all the ones still in print:

Better Homes & Gardens Healthy Family Cookbook;

American Heart Association Cookbook;

American Heart Association Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol Cookbook;

American Heart Association Low-Salt Cookbook;

500 Fat-Free Recipes;

The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook;

Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook;

High-Flavor, Low-Fat Vegetarian Cooking;

Nikki & David Goldbeck's American Wholefoods Cuisine;

The Greens Cookbook;

The Moosewood Cookbook;

Rodale's Basic Natural Foods Cookbook;

The Allergy Self-Help Cookbook;

The Complete Food Allergy Cookbook;

Dairy-Free Cookbook;

The Gluten-Free Gourmet;

The Art Of Cooking For The Diabetic; and

The Joslin Diabetes Gourmet Cookbook.