The Essential Good Food Guide Is Here

If you’re looking for a resource to help you make smarter choices at the store and at the stove, one has arrived with author Margaret M. Wittenberg’s The Essential Good Food Guide: The Complete Resource for Buying and Using Whole Grains and Specialty Flours, Heirloom Fruits and Vegetables, Meat and Poultry, Seafood, and More.

An inspiring and indispensable one-stop resource, The Essential Good Food Guide is your key to understanding how to buy, store, and enjoy whole foods. Wittenberg shares her insider knowledge of products available at national retailers and natural foods markets, providing at-a-glance buying guides.

Think of this book as your encyclopedia for good eating. It is both a buying guide and a cooking guide, covering both raw ingredients like fruits and flours as well as prepared ingredients like pasta, cheese, and soy sauce. Foods are listed with a brief description of what the food is, what it tastes like, its texture, how it can be used, and what to look for when buying it. While these descriptions certainly don’t cover everything there is to know about each ingredient, they do give us aa better understanding of what to do when shopping and cooking.

Wittenberg spends a great deal of the book on grains and flours, diving deep into descriptions of flavor and texture, details on cooking methods, and discussions on gluten-free flours. The other sections cover fruits and vegetables, beans, pastas, nuts and seeds, dairy products, oils, seasonings, and sweeteners, and focus mostly on foods and ingredients that may not be as familiar.

Her ingredient profiles include:

-Detailed preparation advice (such as dried bean cooking times)

-Cooking ratios of whole grains to water

-Culinary oil smoke points

-Clarification of confusing food labels

-Misleading marketing claims and common misperceptions about everyday items

Each chapter focuses on specific foods and related ideas that Wittenberg has personally found to be essential to an intuitive style of wholesome, delicious cooking. You’ll experience an abundant world of food within these full-color pages, which she hopes will serve as a catalyst for the development of your own natural connection to foods. Your path of discovery will bring you not only sheer enjoyment but also better health and well-being.