If there is one thing I love, it is a new cookery book and as soon as heard about Amelia Freer’s new cookery book; Simply Good For You, I was really interested to take a look at it. I already have one of Amelia Freer’s cookery books, Cook, Nourish, Glow and there are some amazing feel-good recipes in that book that I regularly use.
Simply Good For You is a brand new cookbook focusing on delicious, simple recipes that are also good for you. Amelia Freer is a renown nutritionist with several celebrity clients, but she’s recently become a mum as well. In this book she is focused on incorporating easy cooking – from breakfasts to puddings – into everyone’s lives that will become fast family favourites and also ensure your kids are eating well rounded meals.
As a busy mum, I am always on the lookout for new recipes, both to keep our family mealtimes interesting but also to help make mealtimes healthier. The key to successful recipes for me is simple. I need recipes that are fairly simple to follow, that use ingredients that I have to hand or can easily buy and obviously taste good. Simply Good For You ticks all of those boxes. I am increasingly aware of the need to encourage healthy eating habits in my children and as Amelia says in this book;
…the kitchen is one of the most powerful places to start to make changes to our well-being.
Simply Good For You starts by offering some useful tips for eating healthily on a budget and goes on to give you some ingredient swap ideas, if you need some alternative. I love this idea as I am forever searching the internet looking for alternative ingredient ideas. Next comes a few pages of essential kitchen kit and some kitchen staple ingredients and short cuts.
The recipes themselves are split into breakfast, lunch, dinner and sweet things and there are over 100 delicious recipes to choose from with lots of mouthwatering photos that make the book very appealing to flick through.
There are lots of breakfast recipes brimming with healthy loveliness such as beauty bars which are bursting with delicious ingredients and coconut muesli which is a great recipe to make and keep for a week of amazing breakfasts. There are smoothies, banana bread, protein pancakes and butternut baked beans. These is a lovely range of breakfasts that will appeal to everyone in the family and some of the recipes would such as the mini frittatas would be a great way of getting younger ones to help out making breakfast too.
The first lunch recipe that caught my eye was a recipe for and instant tomato & cannellini bean soup. I love tomato soup and I have made it at home before but often resort to the tinned versions again as I have never been that thrilled with home-made versions. The recipe looked so quick and easy to make and it really was. With simple to follow instructions and very little fuss, I had thrown a few simple ingredients together and made a delicious soup that we all enjoyed. What is even better is that this is such a healthy recipe with not only tomatoes in but also cannellini beans which were very well hidden, so super healthy too.
There are a few delicious sounding soup recipes including a soup of the soul which is top of my list of recipes to try. There are also some gorgeous salad recipes such as a mediterranean quinoa salad or a beef and rocket salad with creamy horseradish. Boring salads are definitely a thing of the past.
The variety and deliciousness continues with dinner recipes with fish, pasta, salads, meat dishes with such a mix of key ingredients and influences. There are vegetarian and vegan options too and each recipe is so easy to follow, there aren’t any recipes that look too complicated or expensive to make.
I can honestly say that Simply Good For You is the recipe book that I will be turning to for inspiration this year as I encourage my kids to try something new and interesting. I also love the fact that there are so many great tips and good advice throughout the book
It is also good to know that if you buy Simply Good For You, ten per cent of Amelia Freer’s proceeds from the book will be donated to Women Supporting Women. This is a Prince’s Trust Initiative that is committed to changing the lives of young women in the Uk by giving them the confidence to live, learn and earn.
Disclaimer: I was sent Simply Good For You for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own.
