The Tastes of Ayurveda: More Healthful, Healing Recipes for the Modern Ayurvedic

I saw this book at Barnes and Nobel tonight...I bought it here on kindle books. But it is amazing. As a certified holistic nutritionist I am always looking for recipes. While this book does discuss the doshas and foods for healthy balance, it is really modern and not a traditional style Ayurvedic diet. So if your looking for something super authentic...you might not like this book as it has some Greek and Asian style recipes. If you like a more fusion approach and looking for some superfoods, smoothies, gluten free recipes, and over all just rockin information...you will enjoy this! Very nice layout and easy recipes.

Awesome book!! The recipes are simple and all work together. You don't need to spend a bunch of money to eat this way. Alot of the same ingredients are used over and over with varying flavors!! The information is so helpful and easy to follow. Easy lifestyle to maintain.

A downright wonderful cook book, even for those who don't know what Ayurveda is will love it, and Vegetarians will also enjoy

Let me just say right from the start that The Tastes of Ayurveda is more than just a cookbook. While the primary emphasis is certainly on the food and it's preparation, there is also a significant amount of information about Ayurveda itself, along with yoga exercises to facilitate your overall health.The book starts out with helping you identify what sort of dosha predominates in your body. Basically, this is sort of a personality test to help you be more attuned with your body. There is a questionnaire for you do take to help you determine this. Ayurveda divides food into six tastes including sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. Each one effects our doshas differently. This cookbook helps you keep your doshas in balance using the whole, natural ingredients that are in these recipes.The Tastes of Ayurveda includes lots of the basics you need to know before diving into these recipes. There is an extensive section on ingredients and terminology which is quite helpful. Each recipe is marked with a symbol to indicate which dosha it helps balance: Vata, Pitta, or Kapha. This makes it quite easy to skim through the book and find a recipe that would appeal to you on any given day. The cookbook is divided into traditional chapters like Breakfast, Appetizers, Soups, Sweets, etc. Many of the recipes include useful tidbits of information like what exactly is a wheat berry or what healing property a certain ingredient may have. There are also a few nice, colorful pictures scattered throughout.The last 40 or so pages of the book include sample menus, yoga suggestions, information on cleansing and food guidelines for basic constitutional types. There is also an index to search by recipe name.Overall, I think this is a very well put together cookbook/health primer to help you get started on the road to Ayurveda. You do have to be willing to try some new and exotic flavors along with some ingredients you may have never heard of before. You will find `traditional' recipes (like the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies) and some bean burritos but you will also find a few more exotic recipes like the Yellow split mung bean and spinach dal. There seems to be a nice balance though so I think most people will find things they enjoy.I tend to be a person who eats what I'm in the mood for and not necessarily what my body tells me I need so I'm not sure how successful I would be at trying to design my diet on the principles of Ayurveda. I know I will enjoy these recipes, whether it helps balance my doshas or not!Disclaimer: I received one copy of this book at no charge to facilitate my review. All opinions are my own.

Awesome cookbook. This book is highly recommended to anyone who is serious about eating and living healthy. The recipes are well written and easy to follow. Highly recommended!

My daughter in law is a great cook - she has been to India and wanted to try some of the recipes in this book. It details a healthy way to live that she is interested in.She has mentioned to me how much she likes it - so I like it too!

excellent!

I've been studying Ayurveda for the past couple of years and have been following the life style. I bought this book when I was a beginner and didn't know much about Ayurveda. But now, that I am more knowledgeable I can confidently say that recipes in this book are quite far from Ayurvedic.Proper food combining is the most important topic in Ayurveda. This book somehow misses that which is a big deal! Interestingly enough, many recipes have food combinations that Ayurveda very strongly advises against! For example, many recipes call for combining yogurt/kefir and fruit/fruit juice which is a big NO in Ayurveda. Fruit should be eaten alone, away from everything. Then there are recipes that have fruit and vegetables together, which is again considered a bad food combination in Ayurveda. Fruit and cheese??? Fruit and dairy is especially bad!From the Ayurvedic standpoint the combinations in this book are just terrible.... fruit, milk and yogurt together is an abominationl! All incompatible amongst each other! Apple and cheese muffins?? Incompatible! And I could go on and on. I was disappointed with indications of Doshas for each recipe. I am Pitta-Vata and many of those recipes are useless to me because vast majority of ingredients, while indicated ok to use, are aggravating to my constitution.My question is - was the list of poor food combinations left out on purpose because it would contradict the recipes?If you want to learn about true Ayurvedic cooking get "Ayurvedic cooking for self healing" by Dr. Vasant Lad.

While this book has some very interesting information, it is also unbelievably annoying to read. I have never before been annoyed with a book. For every single recipe the author Amrita Sondhi has in this book, she has a paragraph about some mundane nonsense about herself, her friends or her life (but totally useless information) for example, she will say things like "my friend Marcel, who is a scientist and fabulous french chef, enjoyed this for dinner..." or "Rolanda has been using this recipe every Wednesday evening to make pizza for her family on British Colombia's sunshine coast." WHO ON EARTH IS ROLANDA? WHO ON EARTH IS MARCEL AND PAULINE AND KATE AND STENYA!?? These are just a few of the completey random names she mentions on every single page, placed right before you can read the actual recipe so you have to annoyingly keep skimming your eyes over or actually read all this pointless nonsense. She also names the majority of her recipes with these random people's names too like "Tanya's fig and goats cheese.." or "patrick's vital flax seed.." it drives me absolutely crazy. While there might be some appeal for some people in this sort of thing as it can feel more personal it's only ever good when it's done properly - in moderation. This author cannot help but include a whole autobiography in the disguise of a cookbook. In my opinion, if you are writing a book on health and advice on how to balance your life and you do it well, people will naturally want to find out a bit more about the author, you shouldn't have to force people to read all this inconsequential rubbish about your life when all they want is a good dosha balancing cookbook! I recommend buying ayuveda books by Vasant Lad who is B.A.M.S certified. This author is clearly ridiculously self absorbed and can't help but talk about her glamorous American life and fashionable yogic 'lifestyle'- i thought by her name she was actually Indian which would naturally make things more authentic but she is clearly fully westernised (which isn't a bad thing necessarily but in this case it very much is).

ich habe nun schon einige Rezepte aus diesem Buch nachgekocht und ich bin wirklich angetan...und ich hatte schon vergessen wie köstlich Okraschoten sind!

Je suis bien contente de mon achat; les recettes sont intéressantes mais surtout il est possible de savoir si elles conviennent à notre prakriti ( vata, pitta ou kapha). J'espère que ce livre sera traduit en français car j'ai beaucoup d'amies qui se le procurerait. Il y a aussi des informations de base sur l'ayurvéda, un questionnaire pour connaître sa prakriti et des listes d'aliments convenant à chaque dosha.

I do love the way the book is set out with great tips, colourful recipies and clear guidlines about how to plan meals. Worth buying.

Compared to other ayurvedic cookbooks that I have used, Sondhi's recipes tend to take less time while never failing to be great tasting. A very reliable cookbook that I would easily recommend.