What inspired you to write your book?
Some years ago, I started making up recipes to fit the health needs of specific family and friends. After moving to Hawaii, I started systematically altering dishes of my own, my mother’s family recipes that she handed me down, and of others to include higher nutrient density, to be lower on the glycemic index, and to be pH balanced. My family and friends seemed to really love these dishes and began asking me for my recipes. I have never cooked strictly by a recipe and did not have my original recipes nor my altered recipes written down. So, I spent two years watching myself cooking and recording my recipes. It seemed easier to just put them all in a little book and I am so glad that I did because now I can use it too!
About your Book:
There are over 50 original recipes in this book and all are very delicious and healthy foods–many entire meals. The recipes included are from my personal collection that I have created over a 40-year span of time and that I have refined over the years to be healthy versions for the gut and heart, reflecting modern knowledge about excellent nutrition and well-being.
Best of all in this book, you will be given cooking tips throughout that will help you become a skilled and creative cook with gut and heart health in mind. Once you have learned these 50+ recipes, you will have not only a great daily diet, but also the ability to make up your own variations of a large selection of types of dishes and alter any recipe you find on the internet or otherwise into a healthy but very tasty version of your own that will serve your own dietary needs. “Mom’s Island Bakens” is not only a recipe book, but also a course in how to cook and to alter recipes to your health specifications. Reading this book will demonstrate to you, for instance, how to take an old family recipe of your own mother’s and make changes to it that render it healthier—and yet satisfy your yearning for the comfort of her cooking. Furthermore, many of those delicious looking recipes you come across while surfing the web can also be altered to a healthy version for heart and gut and some of those have been included in this book as well.
Cuisine Style or Food Genre
Health Food
Sample Recipe or Food Advice
From “Mom’s Island Bakens”:
Mom’s Island Ginger Bread
(Preheat oven to 350 degrees)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup organic olive oil (or a little less since
you are also using flax meal)
1/2 cup organic raw agave
1 organic omega-3 egg
2 tablespoons black strap molasses
1 and ¼ teaspoon baking soda (organic or
Red Mill Brand)
1 & 2/3 cup organic white whole wheat flour*
or gluten-free flour mix (see page 22)
3 tablespoons ground ginger
½ teaspoon clove powder (optional)
1 tablespoon cinnamon**
½ cup boiling drinking water (or use coffee
instead of water for an extra rich flavor)
1 tablespoon organic vanilla
pinch of Himalayan salt ***
5 tablespoons of organic flax meal
1/4 cup chopped walnuts (or use pecans)
1/4 cup organic raisons (optional) ****
Directions
1. I usually double this recipe and use a glass baking dish that is 12” by 8”.
2. Mix all dry ingredients except raisons and walnuts (flours and baking soda first, then salt and spices) and then in a separate bowl mix all wet ingredients (except boiling water). Add them together in one bowl. Mix well, and then add hot water to mixture (don’t forget the hot water like I did once or you will have a very dry bread).
3. Grease 6” by 10” glass cooking dish with olive oil and lightly flour (dumping excess flour out in trash). I however usually double this recipe and then use an 8” by 14” dish. So, use what you have and double the recipe if it is the longer dish.
4. Pour in batter evenly, and let settle. *****
5. Cook on middle rack for 35 minutes (40 if recipe is doubled. Also. Check to see if done by inserting clean knife in the middle of bread and if the
knife comes out clean, it is done. If knife has batter stuck on it, then bake bread 5 more minutes)
6. Let cool, but while still a little warm, cut into pieces and put in a refrigerator dish, cover, and refrigerate. ******
Mommie’s Notes and Tips: For Mom’s Island Ginger Bread
* I have also made this with a substitution of other types of flours. I particularly like using 1/2 cup sorghum flour, 1/2 cup oat flour, and 2/3 cup whole wheat flour. If you double the recipe, try using 2 cups Organic Whole Wheat and 1 ½ cups Organic Buckwheat Flour. Now that is delicious!
** Remember that most cinnamon that you buy in the US is not Ceylon cinnamon, or what is often called “real cinnamon”, but is instead Cassia. Cassia cinnamon is a high source of coumarin, a naturally occurring toxin that may potentially damage your liver in high doses. Ceylon contains only traces of coumarin. Ceylon cinnamon may be found in health food stores and I prefer an organic
brand—Frontier Organic Fair Trade Ceylon Cinnamon.
*** I have recently learned that Himalayan Salt is the best for you, but you have to be careful from whom you buy it because most companies still use copper sifter/grinders that could have a toxic level of copper left in the salt. So check this out. Find a recommended company that uses a stainless steel grinder.
**** Extra tip: Roll raisons in flour before stirring into bread or cake batters to prevent them from going to bottom.
***** To make sure bubbles are out of the batter, give the filled dish a little tap on the bottom on your kitchen counter.
****** Refrigerating bread while it is still warm keeps the condensation in the bread tin moist. It is helpful to wipe the water collected on the inside of the lid off after the first hour of refrigerating.
What formats are your books in
Print
How do you see writing a food/cookbook as different from writing other genres of books?
I have co-authored a book, “What’s Behind Your Belly Button?” that is a non-fiction psychology book on the intelligence of Gut Feelings and Instincts. That book was one that took a lot of serious reflection on over 40 years of counseling and research and was written as a professional in the field. But my cookbook is written strictly as a Mom and family cook, and was far more relaxing to write. Of course, cookbooks are tedious and every detail must be correct, as you do not want to leave something out that would cause a disaster in someone’s kitchen.
Advice to someone that is thinking about or currently working on a food book or cookbook
If you are working on a cookbook, I advise you to take your time and do not be in a hurry! It is a very time consuming adventure, requiring you to cook your written recipes over and over to make sure they are correct and explained completely. Also, I had two people that tested my recipes and I think that is very important.
How did you decide how to publish your book and where is it published through:
I used Createspace to self-publish on demand. I love on demand publishing that saves trees!
Author Bio:
While Martha Char Love has spent her career life exploring the intelligence and psychology of gut feelings, she does not write “Mom’s Island Bakens” as a professional but as a Mom and lifetime family cook who has always had the well-being of her family’s gut and health in mind. She has used her long years of cooking experience coupled with her professional counseling abilities to write a book to guide people who have found it a necessity due to illness or simply a smart move toward well-being to strive to make healthy changes to their diet.
Martha Char Love, MA, PMA, is the co-author, along with her colleague Robert W Sterling, of “What’s Behind Your Belly Button: A Psychological Perspective of the Intelligence of Human Nature and Gut Instinct”, available on Amazon and in Hastings bookstores. She has made exploring and studying the intelligence of the gut response her life work as a former counselor and professor in psychology in community colleges; a licensed school psychologist for Alachua County Schools K-12 in Gainesville, Florida; and a researcher in the field of Analytical Psychology.
Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon
Link to Book on Barnes and Noble
Link to Book for sale via other sites
Your Social Media Links
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22560010-mom-s-island-bakens
