The Conscious Kitchen: The New Way to Buy and Cook Food - To Protect the Earth, Improve Your Health, and Eat Deliciously

I think this is an excellent, informative book. My daughter is an envirovental engineer and I gave her a copy even if she already knows it all! I also gave copies to her sister!

What's not to like! Zissu has written a fact filled book emphasizing money saving tips, which usually equate to using less energy and better taste and nutrition. Some of them challenge established learning; every pasta package I've ever read requires the use of large amounts of water. I've started to make pasta with just enough water to cover and stir -- and in a taste test, neither my wife nor I could tell whether I used one quart or four quarts of boiling water. If my maths and physics are right, that an enormous saving in gas consumption. Her style is clear and friendly; example from a recent blog entry. She writes that she doesn't want to follow craft recipes for coloring Easter eggs -- too fussy and poor results. Her solution (as it were): "I made dye out of what I was already prepping for dinner. I put up some beets to boil, and harvested some of the ensuing red water. And I used the scraps of what was going into a split pea soup -- onion skins, carrot and parsnip peels -- to create a yellow-ish liquid. I splashed a little vinegar in both (someone on Facebook said it sets the dye, and I vaguely remembered this from childhood Easter egg kits). Thrilled to have saved the day, I called my daughter to the stove to see what I had been up to. Rookie mistake; the tears flowed again when we took the eggs out of the fridge and realized that our multi-hued farmers' market dozen only contained one white egg! Oops. "No matter. That lonely egg is now deep pink. The dyes will keep overnight in glass jelly jars. And we already have a plan to seek out white eggs after school tomorrow." This is a charming, fact filled book, very useful to sharpen the reader's consciousness of his impact on the planet in every day living. Robert C. Ross 2010

"The Conscious Kitchen: The New Way to Buy and Cook Food - to Protect the Earth, Improve Your Health, and Eat Deliciously" is a delightful collection of advice on how to live a healthier lifestyle through careful choices of food and household products. Loaded with ideas ranging from knowing how to identify the best eggs to selecting organic wine to disinfecting a home. What author Alexandra Zissu wants to make clear is that healthier eating and living are within reach of most people, and that they don't need to spend a fortune at a fancy health-food store to achieve it. Among other things, the author explains how to read labels to buy the safest products, understanding PLU codes to learn if a vegetable has been genetically modified, and how to shop at a farmers' market. This is a bright and smart book, easy to read, easy to search for specific information, and a great addition to any home and is small enough to be easily carried on a shopping trip to verify the right way to go about making purchases.

My biggest beef with organics is that they seem very expensive and only affordable to the affluent. However in "The Conscious Kitchen" Alexandra gives great money saving tips! I love the "The Conscious Commandments". The list of better kid gear is a great guide to buying dishes and utensils that are toxin free. But I must say my favorite part of the book is the wine and beer section!