The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia - Reviews
Kudos and Reviews
"A useful, common-sense guide." -- Deborah Madison
"This will become my bible! A much needed complete reference book for healthy living and eating, filled with information and studded with wonderful anecdotes, Rebecca Wood's encyclopedia of foods is a "must" on any bookshelf!" -- Nora Pouillon, Chef/Owner, Nora's, Washington DC. America's first Certified Organic Restaurant.
Publisher's Weekly Paul Pitchford, Author of Healing with Whole Foods, (from the Forward)
I first met Rebecca Wood when we were both teaching
at a pristine mountain retreat center in the Canadian Rockies. I can still recall
her delightful cooking class dishes composed of wild herbs, whole grains, recently
harvested vegetables from the garden, and freshly plucked berries.
Meeting Rebecca, I found her attuned to the present
and exuding a sense of ease. In speaking with her, I could only begin to plumb
the depths of her life experience, which included her natural cure from cancer,
and studies with expert cooks, shamans, and master healers. Through the medium
of whole foods, she has invested incredible time and effort in bringing a healing
message to the world.
A few years later, with her revision of the Whole
Foods Encyclopedia in hand, I was enthralled by the lore, insights, recipes,
properties of foods, and her intuitive awareness that so clearly touches every
part of her writing. One senses mastery and integration…
In summary, what distinguishes The New Whole
Foods Encyclopedia is the blend of wisdom and wit, the personal stories,
the anecdotes as well as the hard science you would expect from such a seasoned
researcher as Rebecca Wood. She has studied, grown, written about, sought out,
and taught whole foods and their cookery over the last thirty years. I can think
of no one else in America with her expertise. No other reference is as complete.
The book is a superb resource. May you be inspired to dive in and delight in
foods that are elegantly simple. -- Paul Pitchford
Amazon.com
If you eat natural foods, or want to learn more
about them, reading The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia will be a treat. The book
is an invitation to learn the lore, health properties, and use of more than a
thousand familiar and unusual foods and herbs. Each entry consists of a description,
a little history or legend, the health benefits, and how to buy (or find) and
use it. Author Rebecca Wood clearly delights in her subject--her writing is warm,
like love letters to these intriguing foods. "I don't know what I love most
about asafetida--its knock-your-socks-off sulfurous aroma ... or ... its pungent
but pleasant and satisfying flavor," she writes of the herb also known as
devil's dung. "I also love the way the word rolls off my tongue." Not
all the entries are complimentary, though--Wood tried to like banana squash,
but ended up feeding it to her chickens.
Dotting the food entries are sidebars of recipes,
preparation suggestions, and weird information that doesn't fit anywhere else:
how horses get sunburned, why young wives fed their elderly husbands celery in
the 1600s, tips for not crying over onions, and how to harvest natural chewing
gum, for example. You may start by looking up a particular food, but you'll linger,
reading just for the pleasure of it. -- Joan Price
From Booklist, June 1, 1999
Wood has offered up a comprehensive listing of
the world's whole foods. She briefly describes the origins and characteristics
of each product of nature, and then she outlines its traditional health benefits.
Paragraphs follow on use of the item in cooking, and buying hints to ensure the
best version of the product for the uninitiated. An abundance of cross-references
help guide the reader through multiple names of the same food. Occasional recipes
dot the text, and their simplicity makes them attractive. Illustrations help
identify some of the more obscure items such as cardoons, but more thorough graphics
would help even tyros in the field. Health benefits claimed for these foods assume
agreement with the philosophy of the whole-foods movement, and one may marvel
at such sentences as "Garlic and ginger are effective folk remedies for
jet lag." Libraries with high demand for books on natural foods should add
this volume to their reference collections. -- Mark Knoblauch
Anne H. Silver, The Crestone Eagle, July 1999
There's a tendency to let a book entitled The
New Whole Foods Encyclopedia languish on the shelf until you really want
to know something practical like how to make chicos or how to substitute honey
for sugar in a recipe. Even this reviewer let at least a foot of other "must
read" material accumulate on top of Rebecca Wood's latest opus while waiting
for the opportune moment to tackle it. What a surprise to find it as fascinating
as anything else in the stack!
A renowned teacher of nutritional cooking and healing,
this book is her latest in a line of successful whole foods topics. Rebecca's
writing style is as fresh as the ingredients she would have us use, and her anecdotal
research is as ample as the scientific facts, rich experience and practical instructions
she offers.
Hardy sustainability types will be glad to know
how to do things "from scratch" like make our own baking powder. Doubting
scientific types may be more accepting of amaranth as a cereal grain if we know
it belongs to an "elite group of photosynthetic super-performers which botanists
call the C4 group." Artists who are looking for ways to market original
work might take a look at Kalamazoo Michigan's technique for introducing a new
celery variety.
"May all beings be well-nourished" is
an appropriate dedication for Rebecca's book. I feel my life is nourished in
many ways by reading it. I will now choose a balsamic vinegar knowing that the
brand I choose must say "tradizionale" in order to fulfill the destiny
of its taste. My next encounter with the seaweed "alaria" on the Maine
coast will be enriched by having learned something about it. It doesn't surprise
me that "alfalfa" originated in Arabia and was called "father
of all foods," but it is good to know the dangers of eating commercially-grown
alfalfa sprouts and how to circumvent them (cook them or sprout your own).
The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia celebrates
wholeness with a rich feast of fact and fancy. This is probably the only encyclopedia
I will ever read cover to cover. I haven't made it past "C", even though
the tome has made it into my select stack of bedtime reading. After reading that "In
New York, Broadway zags off-course at the East 10th Street intersection because
a cherry tree once grew there that was more valued than a tidy crossroads," I
slept soundly for the first night in weeks. -- Anne Silver