Sunday Salon: Review on a Winter Day of Spice Up Your Life by Bindu Grandhi

(This was taken from my backyard earlier today)

It's a cold and blustery day here in Ohio and we've gotten close to a foot of snow in the past few days. Winter is greeting us with a big hello this new year in 2010. Since we're snowbound, I took the opportunity to make a few recipes from a cookbook that I've been wanting to review for quite awhile now.

Spice Up Your Life: The Flexitarian Way by Bindu Grandhu is a cookbook that promotes a flexitarian diet which Ms. Grandhu describes as "primarily of vegetables, legumes, whole grains, spices, fruits and nuts with an occasional serving of chicken and fish". As it is the start of a new year and everyone is looking to shed a few pounds and eat healthier this is a wonderful cookbook that will provide you with a variety of healthy recipes. There are healthy and tasty nutritional recipes to try with an Indian focus. The recipes allow you to add various spices or modify them to your taste. Healthy food doesn't have to be plain and boring when you can spice it up and it tastes delicious. The Spice Up Your Life cookbook shows you how to do this and the recipes are easy to follow. This is a wonderful cookbook to check out if you are looking to eat healthier, eat a more vegetarian diet or eat less meat. Spice Up Your Life has many recipes that include: Appetizers, Side Dishes, Breads, Vegetarian Dishes, Chicken Dishes, Seafood Dishes, Drinks and Desserts. You can even find free sample recipes from Spice Up Your Life on Ms. Grandhu's website The Flex Cook, here.

I made two recipes from the Spice Up Your Life cookbook this afternoon:

(Sweet Bread and Mint Chai Tea)

The Sweet Bread was made with crescent rolls and had a delicious filling of brown sugar and golden raisins. Saffron was optional, but I didn't have it in the pantry. I would like to try it with the saffron as I have cooked with it and I think that it would add a nice flavor to the bread. My son doesn't usually like raisins but he loved this Sweet Bread. The Mint Chai Tea was tasty but a bit rich. I modified the recipe to use a mint teabag instead of fresh mint leaves so that may have made it too strong. We used our French Moroccan glasses to drink the Mint Chai Tea. We use these glasses to drink Moroccan peppermint tea. The glasses and beautiful French Moroccan brass etched tray were gifts from my mother in law. It feels kind of fancy when we use them and our son got a kick out of drinking tea from a glass. He found the tea a bit strong and didn't care for the flavors. I will definitely make the Sweet Bread and Mint Chai Tea again. I have several recipes flagged to try and I plan to make them soon. My son has nut/peanut allergies among others so I have to be selective with some of the recipes that we make as several include nuts. My copy of the Spice Up Your Life cookbook was an Advanced Reader's Copy and did not include photos and the cover art was in black and white. I am not sure if the final copy includes photos but that would definitely be a nice addition to see pictures of these wonderful recipes.

Make sure to check out Bindu Grandhi's website at The Flex Cook, here.

You can enter to win a Free Autographed Copy of the Spice Up Your Life cookbook at The Flex Cook, here.

Free Sample Recipes are here at The Flex Cook.



Disclosure: Thank you to the author for sending me an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book for review. I am an Amazon Associate.