The Celery Juice Book (Everyday Wellbeing)

by Melissa Petitto, R.D.

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog Nonstop Reader.

The Celery Juice Book is a recipe collection for using celery and its juice in diverse ways from straight juice to smoothies and more traditional soups and stews. Due out 24th Dec 2019 from Quarto on their Chartwell imprint, it's 160 pages and will be available in hardcover format.

There is undoubtedly a lot of good advice in upping our intake of raw and unprocessed foods. More solid nutrients, fewer empty calories, fewer bad choices ... all of those are good for us. This book (and author) are very enthusiastic, zealous even, proponents of every kind of green smoothie you can think of. This book concentrates on celery of course, but it doesn't just have a feature role in the recipes here. There are smoothies including fruit, other vegetables, nut milks and other interesting ingredients. The recipes run the gamut from straight juices to more complex main dishes and there's even a recipe for dog treats included.

The recipes we tried all tasted 'healthy and good for you'. There weren't any gooey, cheesy, comfort food type recipes. For readers looking for those, this book won't be a good fit. On the other hand, there really were a lot of recipes which will appeal to readers already following a plant based diet who are really making an earnest effort to improve their food choices and who are maybe following a special diet (like anti-inflammatory, gluten free, etc). Not -all- of the recipes will fit into a special diet, but there are a number which are potentially useful, but none of them are marked as AIP or other diet compliant, so readers will have to be aware and check their protocol lists.

Each of the recipes includes an introductory description, ingredients listed in a bullet point sidebar (US measurements given, with metric in parentheses), and step by step instructions. There is no nutritional info provided. The recipes are all photographed very well and clearly. Serving suggestions are attractive and appropriate.

The recipe ingredients themselves are easily sourced and will be available at most well stocked grocery stores. I was amused to see a whole chapter dedicated to cocktails including celery in one form or another. I'm not sure how easily dirty celery martinis and celery juice mojitos will catch on, but solid points for trying.

Four stars for the celery fans out there.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.