Healing Spices: How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease Hardcover – January 4, 2011

The Introduction of this book has led to anticipation of what I will learn from the pages ahead...well done!

This book was in great shape! A good bargain.

This book covers the healing powers of spices from Ajowan and Allspice to Vanilla and Wasabi, from Arthritis to Ulcers. It gives information on 50 different spices. How to buy, how to store them, 50 recipes, useful combinations for cooking and healing and just to keep on hand. I still have a lot of reading to do.

Useful

I am an experienced home cook who uses some combination of spices nearly every day. I thought I had a pretty good handle on their properties, and what to use when, but this book expanded my knowledge more than I ever thought possible....and introduced me to some new ones I'd never heard of or worked with (kokum, amchur powder, black cumin). The chapters are structured thus: an introduction to and description of the spice, a discussion of its healing properties with actual medical evidence from peer reviewed journals and studies, a listing of what other spices and flavors the spice complements, and ends with a recipe including the spice. The recipes range from the simple (tomato-basil sauce) to the complex (By the Bay Fisherman's Chowder, designed to showcase the bay leaf, which has an extensive list of ingredients), but all are wonderfully delicious. Appendices at the back of the book contain several recipes for custom spice mixes and curries. The Madras curry paste, which contains a whopping amount of coriander seeds, is absolutely superb--I make sure to have a tupperware in my fridge ready to go at all times because it's THAT good. I cannot speak to if I've gotten any health benefits out of this book, but it's a joy to cook with and my copy is quickly becoming dog-eared because I use it all the time. My 1YO son gives it a thumbs-up too, as he wolfed down the chili con carne I made a few nights ago (in the Cumin chapter).I appreciate that the author includes notes throughout certain chapters on other names for certain spices, and what to watch out for. For example, black cumin can be elusive because sometimes it's mislabeled in stores or customers confuse it with another spice like true cumin or curcumin, a substance found in turmeric that has no relation to either. So the author includes a helpful note about the various names you might see for black cumin, like nigella or kolonji--I finally found a bag labeled "nigella seeds" which I wouldn't have found otherwise. He also includes a headnote in the Basil chapter, advising on the differences between various types of basil (everyday basil, Thai basil, tulsi, etc), and a heads-up in the Saffron chapter so that you don't find yourself shelling out a lot of money for safflower instead of true saffron.

I recently became interested in the health benefits of spices. I bought a couple of books and this is far better than the others. It's laid out well and includes meal recipes and spice blend recipes. There's a section in the back with common health problems wih spices that could help.I plan to bring it on road trips to read to my husband while he drives so he can benefit and we can discuss possible meals.

I bought three of these so far. One for me and two for gifts. I heard a woman speak on healing herbs at an Herb Day seminar and she spoke very highly of Dr. Aggarwai so I searched You Tube for some of his lectures and was impressed with what I heard so ordered this book. I have recommended it to many others. Long and short, we must change the way we are eating if we have any hope to lessen the chances of our bodies getting cancer and other debilitation diseases. This book lists many foods/spices with properties to make your body less susceptible to cancer and other diseases. It is not a book with miracle cures for those people who already have cancer. It has an index in the back that lists certain diseases and food that are beneficial for that particular disease but most of the book is divided up into various spices which are listed in alpahbetical order for ease of finding, a history of that spices, research findings about that food, ways to order a purer form of those spices is also given. Some of the spices I have never heard of but was already aware of turmeric, lemon grass,basil, pepper, almond, all your normal spices like cinnamon and allspice, but it was so great to read about what Dr Aggarwai's research at MD Anderson is revealing about why these spices and herbs that are used all the time in India and other areas may be affording these groups a much smaller percent of cancer and other diseases like arthritis and Alzheimers. If you eat at McDonalds or eat Lean Cuisine for every meal and don't cook, don't waste your money. This book is trying to convince you to start preparing your foods and seasoning them with life-giving spices to improve your health. As a result of reading this book, I now drink a cayenne pepper tea every day for my arthritis. I have worked up to the amount of pepper I am now using and I believe it is helping.