Info & Reviews

Here is a quick list of any entries I have on this blog regarding food reviews, restaurant reviews, nutrition, and more! Pretty much anything that isn’t on the recipe page can be found here. This list will be updated often, so keep checking back! 🙂

Feel free to visit my profile on Yelp for reviews on places/events.

|| REVIEWS ||

|| INFORMATION ||

Also, here are some short & sweet reviews of my favourite cookbooks and food related iPhone applications on this page. 🙂

|| BOOKS ||

| The Eat Clean Diet Cookbook (1 & 2) |

Tosca Reno’s amazing books filled with wonderful clean eating recipes. Click here to view her books, and learn more about her!
Let me be blunt: Tosca Reno is in her 40s, and looks better than many women who are half her age. Seriously! She is a major inspiration, and really shows you what you can do with your health and fitness if you live a healthy lifestyle. These two cookbooks are great! They have little bits about her experiences, great information on health and nutrition, and recipes that are no-fail, healthy, and super tasty! She is a big inspiration to me, and to so many others. When you go to the Eat Clean Diet website, you can also become a member of the community. With the first cookbook, I purchased it after a friend of mine had told me about it. It’s the one recipe book that I turn to most often when I need a kick to cook something healthy. The second book I actually won (a signed copy by Tosca Reno herself!) by entering a clean eating recipe contest. (Let me tell you, that was the highlight of my day!)
When I got a chance to ask her what her inspiration was when starting out with eating clean, she said “I took my inspiration, motivation and dedication from my beautiful daughters who I knew I had to take care of for life. Find what resonates for you and dig deep. Being an example for smoeone you love is a true gift.”
For anyone who wants to start eating healthy/eating clean, but feels a bit lost when thinking of where to start, I highly suggest getting one, or both, of these cookbooks. I know how daunting it can be to walk into a bookstore, and see hundreds of books on healthy eating. These two books really will give you all the tools you need, along with visiting the website, to become a lover of clean eating! I’ve enjoyed healthy eating for a long time, but learning just how versatile clean eating can be really gave me that extra push to kick most packaged foods out of my life.

| Culinary Concepts: 100 Recipes and Tips for the Home Chef |

Judith Baigent (Author), Marty Snortum (Photographer) Publisher: Gibbs Smith (September 5, 2007)
Click Here to view this book on Google Books.
I’ve got to say that even though the index is not well planned out, the book is pretty good over all. {I’m going to make good use of that onion soup recipe very soon! 😉 } There is a nice assortment of recipes that I haven’t seen in other cook books, and the pages are filled with beautiful photography of foods that you really wouldn’t expect to look all that pretty.
Normally this book is in the $30-$40 range, however I got it at a great price of $6 at Kitchen Stuff Plus. (The outlet on Orfus Rd. in Toronto, near Yorkdale Mall, always has great finds and amazing sales! Visiting this store will always lift my spirits if I’m having a bad day. In the nicer weather, they also have sidewalk sales on the weekends. There’s some junk, and crowds… But if you get there early enough, you’re guaranteed to find something good!)

| MARTHA STEWART’S CUPCAKES |

Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes is hands down, my favourite recipe book when it comes to cupcake recipes. My ultimate favourite cupcake recipe is the peppermint patty filled chocolate brownie cupcakes. There is also a whole section dedicated to decorations for cupcakes, and a whole section on different types of frosting and icing. This is an amazing go-to book for any of your cupcake needs!

| THE CHOCOLATE AND COFFEE BIBLE |

(Catherine Atkinson, Mary Banks, Christine France & Christine McFadden)
I’m a huge fan of coffee, and I am also a huge fan of chocolate… Luckily for me, chocolate and coffee go hand in hand in many ways! This book can be summed up in one word: AMAZING. It literally is a bible of chocolate and coffee. There are MANY recipes for chocolate desserts, coffee desserts, and chocolate-coffee desserts. There are also many recipes for coffee beverages, alcoholic and non-alcoholic. This book covers every detail imaginable about coffee, starting from the history of coffee, all the way to how to properly brew and prepare the perfect cup of coffee using so many different methods. It has information on different types of beans, and information about different types of coffee from around the world. (They even have an index of coffee suppliers across the world!) This book has more indulgent and elegant dessert recipes than I have seen in many dessert books. This book is a definite must-have for any coffee, chocolate, or dessert lover!
Click here to go to the book on Amazon.com!

|| IPHONE APPLICATIONS ||

| All Recipes |

iPhone’s app for the allrecipes.com website has got to be one of the most simple and easy to use apps out there, that are just simply amazing. The “Dinner Spinner” is a fun idea that allows you to pick the course of the meal, the main ingredients and the amount of time it will be ready in. It comes filled with user reviews and full recipes that you can look through even when your phone is offline. It also has an “add to favorites” feature, which many of these already have, but it’s still worth mentioning! For more information on this awesome foodie app, click here! You can also go into your app store on your iPhone, and search “All Recipes”. It’s a free app, and definitely a 5 star in my books!

| Betty Crocker Cookbook |

Another gem for the iPhone foodie is the Betty Crocker Cookbook. You can search for a specific recipe, search by main ingredients, and store recipes in your favourites. You can find this in your app store by searching “Betty Crocker Cookbook”, and this app is also free. Click here for more information!