The Recipe Hacker

In February 2014, my husband and I decided to do something about the way we were eating. Work, chores, and simple laziness, had us eating tons of processed foods. We found that we were eating out at least four times a week, and we wanted to change that. So, after some careful research, we decided to go on a ketogenic diet. I won't bore you with the explanation, but feel free to look it up! It's rather interesting. My husband lost 75 pounds, I lost 30, and we've both been feeling absolutely amazing. It's now a year later, and I'm finally realizing that it's a little tough to get variety when you're eating this way. Or at least, I thought it was. Diana Keuilian's cookbook couldn't have been offered to me at a better time. I was thrilled to be able to review this!

Let me say, I love a good cookbook. The two things I look for above everything else are good photos of the recipes, and easy to understand instructions. The Recipe Hacker has both of these in spades! Each recipe in the book is complimented with a lovely picture. This is a must for me, because I love to see if what I make comes out anywhere near what I was aiming for. They are also all written in a way that is extremely easy to understand, right down to mentioning things like “keep this at easy reach” or “whisk vigorously”. In my opinion, the more clear the directions are, the better! I follow them to the letter. As an added bonus, Keuilian adds a little description to the beginning of each recipe along with a “quick tip” about storing it, ideas on making it ahead, or variations. Perfection.

Now the reason I gave that long explanation in the first paragraph was to highlight why this cookbook is so meaningful to me. All the recipes in The Recipe Hacker are gluten, dairy, soy, grain and cane sugar free. This caters to a very large set of people out there, which I happen to fall squarely into, who need variations on the foods they love the most. Imagine my delight when I found a recipe for onion rings that I can actually consume! Diana Keuilian has done an amazing job of compiling tasty recipes for those of us out there with strict dietary needs. The only thing missing, and I'd love to see it added somewhere, is nutritional information for the recipes.

Still, I'd definitely recommend this cookbook. I know there are thousands of recipes floating around out there on the Internet. Keuilian even has a website of her own. Still, there's something to be said for a good cookbook that you can dog ear and love. This one is a keeper.