I am super excited to finally share this review with you, Nicki Sizemore is the author of this amazing cookbook and of the From Scratch Fast blog. Nicki and I made a blogger to blogger connection late last year which led to me receiving an advance copy of her debut cookbook: The Food Processor Family Cookbook and culminating in a podcast episode that we recorded two weeks ago.
Nicki is truly a renaissance woman in every sense of the word. A mother, wife, culinary artist, chef, cookbook author, and food blogger there doesn’t seem to be much that Nicki cannot do. How she manages to do it all so well (and with a glowing smile) isn’t totally beyond me since she has shared at least one of her secrets with the world: making efficient and purposeful use of her food processor. That’s right. That cumbersome kitchen appliance that almost everyone has but almost never use is the secret to being able to create delicious from scratch healthy meals in a flash.
The Food Processor cookbook (which by the way was released Friday January 15) does not skimp on recipes (120 to be exact) or detail on how you too can create mouth watering, savory, sweet, and simple scratch meals every single day of the week. It’s not rocket science, but even with my culinary experience it was a concept that I too take for granted most of the time. Even though I use my processor more than most folks, I so often find myself chopping, slicing, and dicing a ton more than I should be. Before reading this cookbook (yes, I read cookbooks for fun) I guess I never gave it much thought. I think it has something to do with the fact that we have been conditioned to see the food processor as this behemoth of an appliance that has one to many parts and takes to long to clean.
I love that Nicki busts a hole right through that rhetoric and gives real time advice and tips on how to get the most benefit from your processor. The introduction is almost like a how to guide and step by step manual on processors. There’s a brief history on how they came to be a kitchen counter staple and why they are so often overlooked. The food processor is really your saving grace as a home cook. Nicki helps you see it as the ultimate sous chef to do the heavy lifting, chopping, mixing, dicing, and pulsing so you can get your dinner on fast and spend as much time as possible with your family at the dinner table. And isn’t that really what cooking it is all about. Cooking and dinner time is in most homes; family time. A way to connect and bond over healthy, hearty, food. With careful thought and a little pre-planning you can get scratch meals from the stove to the table in record time.
Dinner time for most families is a way to connect & bond over healthy, hearty, food
I must mention that the meals contained in the “Processor” book are not trite nor are they overly complex. These are everyday meals using every day ingredients that everyone no matter what region they live have access to. Ninety-five percent of the meals are gluten free and most of them are vegetarian friendly. Meals that have bold flavors using minimal ingredients including:
- Indian Spiced Chickpea and Collard Green Stew (can’t wait to try)
- Curried Carrot Coconut Brown Rice
- and Sriracha Chicken Wings (another one I am itching to try)
Nicki’s years of culinary expertise shine through yet her writing style is simple and conversational. You can tell that these are meals that she has genuinely created, tested, and shared on more than one occasion. This not not just another stock celebrity chef book filled with generic recipes written by a team of ghost writers. These are real recipes developed with love by a real woman looking to feed her family. I could simply go on and on about this cookbook. For anyone new to cooking or gluten free eating if you could only buy one cookbook, I would recommend that this be the book you buy hands down.
For anyone new to cooking or gluten free eating if you could only buy one cookbook I would recommend that this be the book you buy, hands down.
The Food Processor Family Cookbook is sold both online and in major bookstore retail outlets and is available for purchase now. Be sure to come back to this blog tomorrow to enter into our raffle for a chance to win your very own FREE copy. Until then listen to our podcast interview here.
RATING 5/5
