Don't Cook the Planet: Deliciously Saving the Planet One Meal at a Time

by Emily Abrams, Robert Kennedy Jr. (Foreword)

Choosing meals prepared with fresh, natural ingredients isn’t just healthy, it’s good for the earth. In Don’t Cook the Planet , author Emily Abrams and an all-star collection of chefs and ecoactivists share more than 70 delicious recipes as well as tips on how to minimize your carbon footprint. Each contributor—including Stephanie Izard, Top Chef star and executive chef at Girl & the Goat; Chevy Chase; MasterChef judge and acclaimed chef Graham Elliot; actor Joshua Henderson; and many others—provides easy, everyday ideas that will save you money and stock your kitchen with fresh, delicious foods while preserving the planet for generations to come. The author, an 18-year-old activist, approaches sustainability from a personal perspective, striving to make changes that will impact her generation, and in so doing, has created a cookbook that explains how positive food choices significantly impact one’s environment as well as one’s health.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Meg - A Bookish Affair · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Don't Cook the Planet" is an ambitious project from high schooler, Emily Abrams. It is a cookbook designed to draw attention to the issue of global climate change. This book is chock full of recipes from various people (chefs, environmental activists) who believe that by changing the way that we eat and cook, that we can help to save our environment. This book draws together some huge names (Kennedy's and highly rated chefs abound). It's really amazing that Abrams was able to draw so many big names together! The caliber of those included in this book is quite astonishing! The profits for this book are actually going to help to address the issue of global climate change so you can eat deliciously and help an environmental cause at the same time! Yay!

I am a foodie and the more that I learn about the food industry and how our food gets to us, the more I believe that shopping locally and sustainably is the way to go. I absolutely love farmers markets and am lucky to live in an area where although I'm in a major metropolitan area, we still are fairly close to places where there are local farms that grow amazing produce. I also love growing my own food in my garden and this book definitely plays right into that.

The book has a focus on sustainable food although what may be local to some in the book may not be so local for others. In some cases, the book addresses that but in others it does not. The recipes in the book range from the very simple to more complicated, which means that this book would be good for those with a variety of cooking skills. With it almost being the high season for my garden and for farmers markets all around, there are a ton of recipes that I am really excited to get my hands dirty with. The book is nicely organized and I know that it's one that I'm going to be using a lot this summer!