Review: It's okay, just okay. Not great answers for your bag lunch, though.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 11, 2013
We aren't strict paleo, but with the doctor putting my husband on a no-grain and no-white-potato diet, we've found it easier to "cheat" on paleo recipes than to modify regular ones. So I've been collecting several paleo cookbooks recently (because really, how can you have too many cookbooks?) and thought this one might answer the need for lunchtime "please make food appear, I'm busy and hungry" crabbiness. I'm not usually big on e-book cookbooks (food stains on a paper cookbook are marks of honor), but this was inexpensive enough that it was worth a shot.The results... are okay. There's nothing here to which I object, but I didn't find anything to make me bookmark the recipe for "Let's make that tomorrow!" I have many of these recipes, in some form, in other cookbooks (paleo and otherwise), such as a coconut curried butternut squash soup. Several more don't need a "recipe," just a list of ingredients ("Yeah! Beet, avocado, and arugula salad with pecans sounds good. I can throw that together"). A few more sound more like a light dinner than a weekday lunch, such as bacon-wrapped scallops. I kept thinking that this was not any better than an online recipe site, especially since there's no photos at all.We work at home, so nominally I can make a big lunch during the day, and occasionally I do. Mostly we want to grab something quick just like anyone else, though, because I have a meeting or a deadline. And if in you're in that set of people who brings a bag to work, trying to figure out how to be paleo and replace the traditional sandwich, this cookbook will be particularly disappointing. Okay, so you can do "quick tuna and avocado wraps" (the big change is to use butter lettuce leaves), or to pack a container with "kale salad with chicken." But even a recipe that sounds delicious -- Baja Fish Tacos, using cabbage instead of tortillas -- is meant to be made fresh. I doubt you can pull that off in the office breakroom.It sounds like I dislike this book. I don't; it does have some nice-sounding stuff, and it costs just three bucks. But for $13, you could get500 Paleo Recipes: Hundreds of Delicious Recipes for Weight Loss and Super Health, and have a LOT more to choose from.