Clean, care-free eating: a review of "A Modern Way to Eat" by Anna Jones

My happiest meals are the ones where vegetables take center stage; they're full of color, textures and nutrition. Food stylist and student of Jamie Oliver, Anna Jones has compiled a comprehensive book of not only vegetarian recipes, but also information on individual ingredients and idea generating charts of how to combine foods for maximum impact and flavor. The understated cover and philosophical title of A Modern Way to Eat, I think, was meant to signal that this book is more about promoting a life-style of simple, clean, creative eating that takes advantage of our current knowledge of the benefits of plant-based diets and our access to global ingredients and cooking techniques. And it's right up my alley.

Reasons I like this book:

It has a good variety of dishes- from breakfasts, to snacks, to light lunches to food for a crowd to desserts and condiments.

"Salad Love" by David Bez a visual feast

David Bez writes at the beginning of Salad Love that it isn't a cookbook. Instead, this is collection of 260 of the most photogenic salads he made over the course of three years of preparing lunch at his desk as part of his personal goal of eating more vegetables, which eventually gave way to the challenge to document it in a blog called Salad Pride.  The recipes in the book, which cater to vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian and omnivorous tastes with an emphasis on crunchy raw produce, are simply lists of ingredients that Bez assembled at his desk. 

In addition to not being a cookbook--as there’s not a whole lot of cooking going on in the recipes--there’s also not a lot of text in this book. The first 30 pages feature the author’s guidelines for the proportions of produce, proteins, toppings and dressings that make up his ideal salad, the back story of how his personal dietary vision became a blog and then a book, and a cubicle tour of how he was able to prepare all these culinary feats at his desk as office mates salivated in the background.