Food processor whirring, chef James Barry whipped up cauliflower couscous in a leafy wrap in less than 10 minutes at the What’s Cooking at ALA? stage this morning. Margaret Floyd, author of Eat Naked: Unprocessed, Unpolluted, and Undressed Eating for a Healthier, Sexier You (Harbinger, 2011), coauthored with Barry The Naked Foods Cookbook: The Whole-Foods, Healthy-Fats, Gluten-Free Guide to Losing Weight and Feeling Great (Harbinger, 2012), which includes more than 150 simple-to-prepare recipes.
Blending raw vegetables, slicing them thin, and adding familiar sauces and spices are easy ways to “sneak more vegetables into your diet,” says Floyd. The cookbook offers creative tricks to make veggies more palatable for a more healthy diet. “Pulverizing cauliflower breaks it up and makes it easier to digest,” says Floyd. And collard greens, while known to be bitter if eaten raw, can be steamed, with the rib removed, and used as a tortilla substitute.
Show participants watched Barry use a mandoline to thinly and quickly slice a zucchini that could be used as a substitute for lasagna noodles.
“We’ve had vegan bloggers tell us some of the best vegan recipes are in this book,” Barry says. But it’s not all tofu and tempeh.
“It’s an omnivore’s book. It covers the gamut,” Barry says, confessing to enjoying a little bacon now and then. Hmmmm. The whole-foods, healthy-fats, gluten-free thing is starting to sound a lot more palatable. Pass some of that noodleless lasagna, please.
