Plant-Based Magic
120 Seasonal Recipes for Healing Body and Soul
Both a healer’s guide to food and a reinterpretation of what makes a tasty meal, Lisanna Wallance’s tantalizing gluten-free cookbook Plant-Based Magic celebrates fresh food’s connection to personal wellness.
An encyclopedic breakdown of the health-giving qualities in foods, the book combines crash courses in topics including herbalism (extracting medicinal compounds from plants) with recipes divided into four seasonal sections. All are targeted at improving specific areas of health, including rare diagnoses like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, celiac disease, and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. Each dish highlights ingredients with the potential to aggravate particular health conditions, lays out possible substitutes, and details essential vitamins and minerals. And the glossary, which categorizes and defines the most important vitamins and minerals, allows for a deeper level of engagement with the book’s information.
Mouthwatering photographs complement the book’s detailed, diet-sensitive descriptions. A spring egg-free, potato-crust asparagus and pea quiche tailored to digestive health is accompanied by a photograph of the finished quiche in vibrant greens, roasted browns, and creamy yellows, flanked by the raw ingredients that went into it. An autumnal hibiscus flower vinaigrette for radiant skin is deep burgundy in a mason jar beside dried hibiscus flowers. The recipe itself delves into hibiscus substitutes, including dandelion root and stinging nettle, the different healing properties each ingredient has, and other recipes in the book to pair with the vinaigrette. Such easy-to-use substitution guides make personalizing recipes for health and taste preferences accessible. Further, most of the recipes are made up of five steps or less, with ample space for personalization and note-taking on the page.
A delicate curation of recipes and health tips for navigating complex medical diagnoses and food intolerance, Plant-Based Magic makes healthy eating a rapturous endeavor.
Reviewed by
Willem Marx
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
