Allergy and Asthma Books I've Read and Strongly Recommend

I own quite a few allergy cookbooks -- because I cook nearly all of my food from scratch and am always looking for variety. But, of course, not all allergy cookbooks are alike, and some are far better than others.

What I find is that cookbook authors tend to write for their own family's specific allergies. This is fine, but it leaves many sufferers of multiple food allergy with few options other than using cookbooks and trying to substitute on their own.

I'll review other allergy cookbooks in time, but for today, I'd like to review two of my favorites -- The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook: Two Hundred Gourmet & Homestyle Recipes for the Food Allergic Family and Great Foods Without Worry.  

We first turn to The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook: Two Hundred Gourmet & Homestyle Recipes for the Food Allergic Family, by Cybele Pascal. I love this book, not only because it contains numerous recipes that lack eight major allergens, but because the author is well aware of all it takes to prepare food for an allergic family with multiple food allergies.

As the product description states, this is "the first cookbook to eliminate all eight allergens responsible for ninety percent of food allergies." The recipes are all free of these major allergens, which include peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, dairy, wheat, soy, fish and shellfish! The baked goods are vegan. Pascal also provides a guide to recipes that are gluten-free for readers with celiac disease. She also includes a listing to help allergic readers locate ingredients that aren't always easy to find.

Now, you might wonder whether it's even possible to fill a 213 page cookbook without using the eight top allergens. But it is, and Cybele Pascal does so, presenting the reader with recipes such as Grilled Chicken Breast with Mango Salsa, Quinoa Tabouli, and Sweet Potato Cranberry Muffins.

This is, simply put, an amazing allergy cook book. I highly recommend it.

You can buy the book by clicking on the book image above, or by clicking here.

Another book on my shelf that really fills a need for multiple food allergy sufferers is Great Foods Without Worry, by Cindy Moseley. Free of wheat, dairy, egg, nuts, soy, and gluten, these recipes are excellent, and kid-friendly. (So are the recipes in Pascal's book, reviewed above. In a way, I find that these two books are good companions on my bookshelf.)

My only critique of the book, which is a minor one, since the 90+ recipes within it are wonderful, is that the book really deserves an expansion of its 164 pages, or at the least, a sequel, as there are very few books like it on the market. But again, you can't have everything, and I'm generally very pleased with the quality of these recipes.

One of the real strengths of Great Foods Without Worry is the use of alternative flours such as rice flour for those who can't tolerate wheat. And if it's baked goods you're looking for, this book contains many recipes that taste delicious, and won't leave allergy sufferers feeling deprived of a treat.

You can buy the book by clicking on the book image above, or by clicking here.