Book Review - How to Peel a Peach by Perla Meyers

For many of us with food allergies, special diets, and those of us just wanting to get healthier, gone are the recipes which call for a 'can of this and a box of that mix'.  We get better acquainted with our vegetables from the produce section, our meats from the butcher and try to figure out how to do it from scratch. Or at least we try...and without Great Great Grandmother around to give us tips, we learn from scratch as well.  That's where this book becomes so valuable.  Perla Meyers is an author of eight cookbooks, a graduate of the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne, Switzerland, and one of the countries leading cooking instructors.  With the exception of using canned tomatoes, everything she does is from scratch.  She is the master. And she's written a book full of those wonderful tips that help you pick the right produce and meats, the right cooking methods and the right tools to do the job. The book also includes 150 recipes. It is not gluten-free or SCD, but many of the recipes are naturally gluten-free, SCD or easy to tweak. She uses lots of vegetables which are very beneficial to those of us who are grain-free. I have found that the tips alone are worth reading the book.
Some of the tips covered:
What cut of beef do you use for making fajitas?
How long can I store vanilla beans?
Which salad greens keep best?
Is there a difference between butternut and buttercup squash?
What kind of pasta sauce goes well with spaghetti squash?
How important is it to peel and seed the tomatoes when making homemade tomato sauce?
How many shrimp are there in a pound?
I have trouble finding juicy lemons in the summer. Why?
How can you tell a really fresh blueberry?

For those of you who enjoy reading cookbooks this is a gem. Well worth a trip to the library. It's been around awhile (2004) so used copies on amazon are reasonable.