Healing with Food Update

Pumpkin "Ice Cream"

Accompanying recipe: Pumpkin Ice Dream

Chef Rachel Albert-Matesz’s Ice Dream Cookbook: Dairy Free Ice Cream Alternatives with Gluten-Free Cookies, Compotes & Sauces. Planetary Press: Phoenix, AZ. 2008. $25 paperback, 7x10, illustrated, 300 pages

If you have not yet discovered “ice cream” made with coconut milk, there’s pleasure ahead. Here’s an important book for everyone who wants both good ice cream and health. More than a cookbook, Chef Rachel Albert-Matesz offers this comprehensive guide for making nutritious desserts as well as highly relevant background and research on today’s health issues.

In this information-dense, but highly readable, text you’ll even find a disclaimer about eating too many frozen foods. Indeed, health writer maven Albert-Matesz, cares about your well being enough to honestly inform you why it is important to moderate ice cream consumption. Additionally, her basic healthy eating guides enable moderation; when you are nutritionally satisfied, you don’t overeat.

You’ll learn how to use quality ingredients including sweeteners, gluten-free flours and healthy fats and oils. There’s information on how to upgrade your favorite dessert recipes with superior ingredients plus abundant charts, sidebars and appendices and mail order resources.

The 80 recipes in Ice Dream Cookbook include over 200 variations plus she abundantly offers ingredient options so that, no matter your preferences, you can adapt the recipe to your specific tastes and needs. For simplification, in her Pumpkin Ice Dream recipe, I’ve listed only her first—and therefore favored—ingredient.

May you be well nourished!

Rebecca Wood