Picky Eaters {Book Review}

When I first saw Rakhee on ‘Living Foodz’ she was baking, ‘Red Velvet Cake’……. Lil’M who was playing around joined me to watch her baking and assembling cake. We two totally loved watching her easy to prepare exotic recipes. From then on I rarely missed any of her cooking episodes. Last week when I received her book to review, I got totally glued to it. The book has got two parts. The first part deals with handling ‘Picky Eaters’….tips, tricks and techniques. The second part has got gorgeously loaded with every day recipes.

The book spins around ‘picky eaters’ and starts with kitchen basis which include must have utensils, gadgets, cooking essentials like stocks, pastes, etc. Celebrity chef Rakhee says, if you follow few key rules and plan your steps in advance, you will spend only a brief period in the kitchen every morning. Next segment of the book deals with detailed questionnaire which helps you in knowing, whether your child is a picky eater or not???  After that she emphasises on ‘establishing a healthy food culture in the house’, which according to me is very important and
I mostly try to follow it.

Some key concepts of the book are going to grocery shopping with your child, growing small herbs and plants in your home garden, sitting and eating as a family and reduce temptations. Next chapter gives you tips on increasing interest in making eat healthy food, healthy is tasty, make normal looking appetizing to eat and choosing good food over bad in a smart way to keep the family nutritious and healthy. I’m not a kid, Mummy! The very common rant we here every day from our kids. Rakhee has got smart answer and ways to tackle this in her book. Setting up a family routine is very important. Otherwise you will end up in kitchen whole day and kids before TV says Rakhee in her book…which is absolutely true.

Rakhee says once you make the effort and the kids settle down in the schedule, you don’t have to worry about picky eating. You can find tips on setting up a routine in this chapter. Stay calm is the sole mantra with picky eaters. Tips and tricks mentioned in this book will help you change a picky eater to eat healthy. Now coming to recipes part…this section is neatly categorised with breakfast, lunch, dinner, party planning and cooking together divisions. I tried Manchow soup and Chicken Satay from the book and they turned out hit.

Apart from I have bookmarked some more recipes to cook out from the book, which include Parmesan Herb Mini Muffins, Teriyaki Chicken with Veggie Noodles, Chicken in Red Curry, Missi Roti, Muffin Pizza, Ferrolicious Cupcakes and Paneer shashlik with BBQ sauce,…….many more….

Before I finish off let me take you on book rewind (Rakhee Style)….I suggest this book if you are looking out to get some interesting ideas on setting up food routine, making children eat healthy and if you have got a picky eater at home, then this book will enlighten you on how to tackle them. Though I was looking out for more recipes and some easy to fix ones for busy mom’s…..I find those missing in the book. Apart from that, this is not a complete recipe oriented book as I mentioned earlier in the post….but this book gives you tips on organising and planning everyday meals keeping health and nutrition in balance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Celebrity chef Rakhee Vaswani is a cookery expert and a Cordon Blue-trained chef who is successfully leading Palate Culinary Studio, a first-of-its-kind initiative equipped with state-of-the-art kitchen. She is  currently hosting her own TV show Rewind with Rakhee on Living Foodz, Indian’s first foodtainment channel. She is passionate about food and believes that it’s the perfect remedy for all problems. This is her first book.