Allergy-Free Cooking
Maureen Diaz
available from www.nourishingtraditionalcook.com
In this well done DVD, Maureen Diaz, busy mom and traditional homemaker, often referred to as “the mother of many,” invites us into the kitchen with a lovely welcoming style. It is as though the viewer were standing at her shoulder rather than tuning into an impersonal cooking show. Drawing from her years of experience, Maureen explains and demonstrates the ways in which she makes nourishing traditional foods for her family, some of whom have allergies.
It is a reality of modern life that many of us have family members with allergies. Generations of eating what Dr. Price called “the displacing foods of modern commerce” has left our modern children with a variety of health problems including allergies. These are often a challenge for parents who have been taught to provide for their children with quick, on-the-go meals containing many allergens. These facts make this DVD a most important tool in a traditional cook’s learning library. In addition to showing how to prepare many wonderful nourishing traditional foods, Maureen explains the why of their preparation. She teaches techniques like soaking, sprouting and fermenting with a simple grace that lets the viewer know this is the way to do it, without making parents feel devalued for the way they are doing things now or the fact that they are dealing with allergies.
Throughout the DVD Maureen points us to the easiest ways of doing things and gives options for different methods of preparing a particular recipe if you have a special occasion or wish to make it for those without allergies. This reviewer especially appreciated the fact that Maureen offered options for taking one recipe and splitting it into several different ones that work if you have a variety of allergic individuals in the family.
Not only does this DVD help us to prepare nourishing traditional foods for allergy sufferers but it gives us an education in proper preparation of these foods for us to maintain optimum health. Tips for obtaining, storing and caring for foods are also mentioned. The one thing that could be added would be printed recipes that the viewer could take into the kitchen and use after viewing the how-to. This however, if not enough to discredit a quality DVD cooking course. I give it a THUMBS UP.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Fall 2010.
🖨️ Print post
Leave a Reply