“Kicking Cancer in the Kitchen” – A Review & Giveaway!

The holidays are here and this means many of us are busy cooking and baking away in our kitchens. There couldn’t be a better time for a cookbook review and giveaway, right?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve accumulated quite a few cookbooks over the years. Some of them get used time and time again and some of them, well, not so much. I have categories of cookbooks and no, they aren’t organized as such on the shelf, but they could should be.

I have what I call my bridal cookbooks; not surprisingly perhaps, these were given to me by my mother-in-law. You know the ones, the Betty Crocker “bible” and the Better Homes and Gardens checker-board hard-covered one. Besides these two stand-bys I have after work cookbooks, scads of “those church” cookbooks (personally I think these are some of the best), wild game cookbooks, fondue cookbooks (yes, they were big at one time), microwave cookbooks, slow cooker cookbooks (love these too), cookie cookbooks (one of which is my absolute all-time favorite cookbook because it belonged to my grandmother) and let’s not forget the all-important diet cookbooks.

I wonder why I seem to have so many of these…

Let’s see, my diet cookbook collection includes Denise Austin’s (not bad and of course she also has exercises in there, but I was using it right before my diagnosis, so it holds weird memories for me – yes, even cookbooks can conjure up reminders), The Weight Watchers Complete Cookbook (pretty good, but there are all those points to count and how can any cookbook be complete?), The Atkins Revolution Diet cookbook (too restrictive for me – causes the wrong kind of revolution) and I’m sort of reluctant to admit, I even own a Richard Simmons diet cookbook. These are just a few gems from my “diet cookbook collection.”

Now, low and behold I have a new category, the post-cancer diagnosis category; my goodness, who would have thought I would ever need such a category?

So far, this category is sparse in number. I only own two cancer cookbooks. One is Sheryl Crow’s recent cookbook called, If it Makes You Healthy. It’s a lovely hard cover book, but quite honestly, I haven’t used it once or even opened it up since my review on it. Sorry Sheryl.

And now I am happy to own a copy of Kicking Cancer in the Kitchen:  The Girlfriend’s Cookbook and Guide to Using Real Food to Fight Cancer by Annette Ramke and Kendall Scott. I haven’t had my hands on this guide/cookbook for long, but I can tell this one’s a keeper and will undoubtedly get used.

Kicking Cancer in the kitchen is a great addition to my collection and will be for yours too for the following reasons:

• It’s written by two cancer survivors who get it. They share their cancer stories in part one of the book. And they think like me, which really means they are realists. They don’t “sugar-coat” cancer. Pun intended. Part one also introduces and explains cancer fighting foods and offers advice on how and what to eat during treatment. One of my favorite chapters in part one is, It’s Okay to Eat Chocolate and Cry. Don’t you just love that? Part one is worth the price of the book alone.

• Part two of the book contains the easy to follow recipes. Personally, I don’t care for never use complicated recipes. I’m a big believer in simplicity while cooking. There’s only so much time and effort I want to put into cooking, even more so now post-diagnosis.

• You don’t need tons of fancy ingredients for the recipes in this book – very important for cooks like me. If a recipe lists out too many ingredients (I won’t admit how few this might be), I don’t even keep reading the recipe.

• The authors tell you it’s okay to substitute ingredients, which is nice. Who keeps some of those ingredients on hand anyway?

• I’m a visually oriented person, so I love the photographs in the center of the book. I do wish there were photos for all the recipes, but I understand this wasn’t feasible.

• Again, the authors are realists. They have recipes for things you and your family will want to eat; things like banana-pecan pancakes with chocolate-coconut drizzle, chocolate-chip peanut butter cookies, savory stuffed acorn squash and crispy kale chips. Yum!

• The recipes are not only easy, they are healthy. This is the whole point, right? Post cancer (and before too of course) we are all told to try to eat as healthy as possible. And no, you don’t have to have had a cancer diagnosis to benefit from owning/using this cookbook. This cookbook is for anyone wanting to eat healthier.

• Finally, one of the things I like most about these two author-cooks is that they encourage instead of discourage. Annette and Kendall admit to being busy just like the rest of us. They aren’t expecting us to change all of our eating habits overnight. They aren’t looking for perfection or asking us to give up our favorites. They understand that eating healthier is a process to be learned for many of us and they encourage small steps and small changes.

I can handle that. How about you?

If you’d like an opportunity to win a FREE copy of Kicking Cancer in the Kitchen, just leave a comment below stating so by 5 pm CT on Saturday, December 8^th. I will announce the winner shortly thereafter.

So what are you waiting for?

Enter the drawing and you just might be the winner of a great holiday gift to give someone else or heck, to give yourself. You deserve it!

Thanks for entering and good luck!

Do you have a favorite cookbook?

Why do you want to win this one?

Click on the photo to learn more about Kendall’s and Annette’s background and qualifications.