The Healing Kitchen: 175+ Quick & Easy Paleo Recipes to Help You Thrive

My husband and I wanted to start eating a healthier diet and he has food allergies (dairy and gluten). I bought this book based on the reviews and have not been disappointed! There hasn’t been a recipe yet the we haven’t loved and we’re feeling better because of it.I would highly recommend this cookbook!

What a privilege it is to feel in control of your health outcomes! My health restoration journey began in 2013 when I learned that gluten and dairy were causing the hives and itching I had lived with constantly since college (30 years ago).... along with asthma, allergies, migratory joint pain, brain fog, and undiagnosed Hashimotos thyroiditis. At that time of searching for information, it was hard to decipher the online fact from fiction in the health world. As a pharmacist, I was skeptical about claims made by gurus who easily spouted off too good to be true generalizations.I was eager to find someone who did the hard work of reading the studies and distilling the information so I could just glean the bottom line! Eventually I found that person and it was Dr. Sarah Ballantyne! I devoured everything she produced or was a part of... summits, e-books, her podcast: The Paleo View, Youtube videos, her books: The Paleo Approach, The Paleo Approach Cookbook, Paleo Principles, and now this gem: The Healing Kitchen.What I love about this book is that the first 1/3rd of it has a concise, colorful, and memorable explanation about the "why" of the healing diet. Not only is Dr. Sarah great with the science, but she is also creative and artistic... this shows in the diagrams and illustrations. My favorite example of this is page 36 and 37 where is shows the balance of "yes" foods and "no" foods. It is brilliant the way she shows that even some very good whole foods have both health-promoting nutrients and health-undermining compounds that need to be taken into consideration. I have returned to that page so many times!The book also has specialized meal plans that are helpful for people to customize as they and/or their family need. The cookbook provides so many options for those of us on the autoimmune protocol (AIP) with intros. Our favorite recipes are the Pumpkin Chili (p. 157), the Tangy Carolina BBQ Sauce (p. 118), Garlic & Herb Breakfast Sausage (p. 130), Hamburger Stew (p. 152), and the Rosemary & Prosciutto Stomboli (p. 203) I have recommended this book to so many people who are just starting their health restoration journey because it gives just enough information to get started and not be overwhelmed. It is truly a breath of fresh air to be able to pick up a cookbook and not have to modify anything for our dietary needs.Thanks to Dr. Sarah for the tireless work for our AIP community! She is such a treasure to us! Because of her extensive resources, I have been able to enjoy my new normal glowing health which is without the symptoms I mentioned at the top and no meds... even for Hashis! I highly recommend this book and look forward to her future works!

I was given a copy of this book and while I am an experienced cook, I loved the recipes. It is not full of weird ingredients that you would have to look hard to find or that would be strange for the family. But it's best use is for the cook who is not comfortable in the kitchen and not sure how to best prepare healthy food so I got one for my sister who is not a "natural" in the kitchen. It is full of easy to understand recipes that are delicious and the different techniques for food prep are well explained. There is a section on meal planning which is very helpful for the uncertain cook. If you now buy prepackaged for foods for the convenience of it, this book might help you to discover that it is just as easy to cook for scratch if you have a plan.

I don't usually write reviews...but this book needs one. I can't say enough about how wonderful this book is, but I will try.1. Best Gifting AIP cookbook ever! With the 70 pages of awesome narrative at the front, this is the least intimidating AIP narrative in the history of books. (Granted I'm a science gal who also appreciates laymen science...thus I LOVE The Paleo Approach by Sarah Ballantyne, but newbies that aren't like me might get a little lost if its a first introduction to AIP) I would give this book as a gift to someone thinking about or wanting information on AIP. There are even weekly meal plans. This makes AIP as simple as you can get to kick off your healing journey.2. This book has such awesome things that AIP people miss in their lives.....like creamy Cesar dressing, pizza crust, and marinara sauce to name a few. There aren't a ton of recipes that have been done over and over and over like some books.3. The recipes are so down to earth, but useful. Sometimes a book comes along and you think...why did I buy this, because I put this kind of thing together all the time, and I already have three books that give me basically the same recipe. However....that is NOT the case with this book. I love the simple but well built flavors and concepts that these women have put together.4. It makes AIP easy. You don't need to go out and buy six specialty items to make the dish. I literally picked out meals to make that I already had items for and granted, I have some of the traditional AIP cooking items to begin with, but there are so many that don't need those kinds of things. You can literally pick up the book and start making stuff today.Honestly, I expected a lot from these women knowing their other work..... and they truly went above and beyond any of my expectations for this book. I am SO thankful for both of them, and their very hard work so that we can have this awesome resource.So what are you waiting for? Go order this book TODAY! Happy healing.

What The Healing Kitchen promises is "budget-conscious" recipes that "use no special equipment and need no hard-to-find ingredients." I would say this description is misleading and inaccurate.First, what I liked about the book was: the information section in the front is well written and has useful visual guides. The seasoning mixes are a nice edition and versatile. The photography is nice and the book is visually appealing.The ingredient swaps page is useful but needs more info - swaps for plantain, white sweet potato, Vidalia onions? An alternative is given for Palm Shortening using coconut cream and coconut oil but I'm left wondering if that means the hard blocks of creamed coconut or coconut milk from a can or is it some other ingredient I haven't been able to find? The nearest store bought alternative I can find is Trex, which is palm oil and rapeseed oil but as a rule we try to avoid palm oil because of environmental concerns. Alternatives are given for Arugula but for simplicity why not just put that information on the same page as the recipe? (if you're wondering, spinach)The Eating on a Budget section is basically one page and feels like an afterthought. It feels like a bit of an insult actually and lacks understanding of the socio-economic situation of many people with complex, disabling auto-immune disorders. It is absolutely possible to eat well and follow an autoimmune protocol diet but I'm not sure this book will help you do it. Canned seafood is mentioned as "food that gives you bang for your buck" but where are all the inspired recipes that include canned fish? It is mentioned as a snack option, whereas for us canned fish is used to create main meals. It would have been nice to see more fish recipes generally as the book is VERY meat heavy - 23 recipes include bacon, which we don't eat, so again this involves omission or substitution, but for some recipes this is not possible. The included meal plans were a real eye-opener, some included more meat in one week than we would eat in over a month.The "navigating your grocery store" section is very telling because it features a plan of a huge supermarket where you can buy things like arrowroot starch, carob powder, plantain chips, coconut aminos, canned sweet potato or pumpkin puree etc. We are a mixed British/American household and this 'example supermarket' is unlike most supermarkets we have been in, apart from the mega-Walmarts in some areas of the USA. The fact is, does the book even need a section about navigating a grocery store anyway? Visiting a supermarket, plus a health food store, plus ordering online, we were still unable to source all the necessary ingredients to make these recipes. And some of the ingredients were simply too expensive.The 5 ingredients or less section is useful but be aware that some recipes combine two recipes. Giving a second recipe as one of the 5 ingredients is misleading because it obviously uses multiple ingredients. The Leftovers reinvented section assumes that your family is small enough that there will be leftovers, plus if you can't source the ingredients to make the original recipes then you aren't going to be able to make the 'reinvented' recipes either! And onto Plantains! I just can't source them. I count 18 recipes in the book that require plantains, some of which cannot be made without plantain and there is no substitution info. One recipe calls for Vidalia onions which an internet search tells me are "sweet onions grown in Georgia", so why not just state 'sweet onions' in the recipe, or red onions with a teaspoon of honey? Sainbury's Taste the Difference range offers 3 sweet onions for £1.50, but I don't frequent Sainsbury's and aren't planning on spending £1.50 on 3 onions any time soon.Also, particular equipment is needed to make a portion of the recipes, equipment which I have never owned, never planned to own and which plenty of people would not be able to afford to buy. It annoys me that the book specifically states "uses no special equipment and needs no hard-to-find ingredients" because this is simply NOT the case.All the included shopping sources are American, bar Amazon. Cooking temperature is given in Fahrenheit only, no Celsius, no gas mark - which leads me to conclude that this book was never meant for anyone outside of the USA.There are some good recipes but too many needing special equipment and hard-to-find ingredients. Other recipes are so simplistic they barely constitute a recipe (mashed carrots?!!!).My main concern is that this recipe book will put people off trying an autoimmune protocol diet. As an autoimmune veteran, I contracted my first autoimmune condition aged 5 years (a loooong time ago), I was very sceptical about trying this diet but it has improved my health problems massively. Rather than buy this book, check out Comfort Bites blog by Jo Romero, who also has recipe books available on Amazon (I will be buying Spice as soon as I can). Another lovely blog is Adventures in Partaking by Bethany Darwin (again her recipe book is also available on Amazon and I hope to get it soon). Another amazing resource is Matt Embry's website MS-hope which has information that you can print off for free. Yes, his website and documentary (Living Proof) focus on MS, but the information is useful for any autoimmune condition. No one is more surprised than me at the way my health conditions have improved. It's worth trying!

We ordered this and two other books to start to understand the AIP diet and healthier meals.This book in particular has a lot of good lists of dos and don'ts as well as handy checklists and shopping lists.Highly recommend the book, some of the recipes are incredibly simple (3-5 ingredients) and take no time at all to make.Make sure you have a food processor however, as most of the recipes require one.

Best cookbook I've found if you want to follow paleo for autoimmune conditions. Pretty good variety considering, everything going I've made has turned out pretty much as expected and we're all pretty straight forward to follow.

Excellent book, found the recipes very easy to follow and, unusually for a kindle book, easy to navigate. This is my AIP cookbook for the caravan and when travelling. I can stand in a strange supermarket and pick out the ingredients for a recipe from my phone. Lots of ideas for adapting the recipes too and love the fact she gives recipes for various sauces that are impossibly hard to find as gluten, dairy, soy, onion (I am FODMAP challenged too) legume, nightshade free varieties. Love the Worcestershire Sauce recipe.

This book is amazing. The recipes are very easy to follow and taste delicious... Perfect if your starting Paleo or AIP. Definitely recommend.