Crazy Sexy Kitchen by Kris Carr with Chef Chad Sarno

Cancer is a very scary thing and Kris Carr knows all about it. In 2003 she was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer – stage IV sarcoma. She was 31 years old at the time and just had the shock of her life. Instead of opting to have her liver and both lungs removed and transplanted (that’s where the tumors are located in her body) she decided to completely change her life around with specifically how she ate. The product of that change is her Crazy Sexy Cancer story. Crazy Sexy Kitchen is the culmination of her culinary work – creating and testing the recipes, menu planning – with Chef Chad Sarno and all their 150 recipes worth of work.

This cookbook was inspiring, and inspiration was not only in her cancer story that is eloquently written in the introduction, but inside all the photos and recipes, too. If you have trouble envisioning simple and gourmet food that is also satisfying – and completely plant-based – then this cookbook will surprise you. Carr includes 150 recipes, and guest chefs who are experts in the field include their favorites, too. Her guest chefs: Pam Brown (The Garden Cafe in Woodstock, NY); Peter A Cervoni (Organic Avenue, NYC); Fran Costigan (“Queen of Vegan Desserts”); Richard Landau (Vedge, Philadelphia); Sarma Melngatlis (Pure Food and Wine, NYC); The Crew at Candle 79; Tal Ronnen (LYFE Kitchen in Palo Alto, CA); and Derek Sarno (Whole Foods Market).

Throughout the book, Carr shares her lifestyle and eating philosophy. Before she even shares any of the recipes she takes the reader on her “nutrient-dense, plant-happy approach to eating and living that harmonizes your beautiful body at the cellular level,” her Crazy Sexy Diet (CSD). Topics such as inflammatory foods, processed foods, gluten, sugar, animal products, pH levels, raw foods, complete proteins, and much more are all addressed. Her Staples and Kitchen Know-How sections are also informative. All this leads to the recipes.

The recipes are colorful, flavorful, and provide enough variety to make the cookbook useful for much of the year. And the menus at the end put all the recipes together in fun ways. I especially found the sauces incredibly simple to prepare, and they make cashew-based replacements of favorites easy to substitute for the real thing: Cashew Aioli (Raw Base), Cashew Cream Cheese, Cashew Pine Nut Ricotta, Garlic Herb Buttah.

For those that are interested in purchasing the book, Carr has made that fun, too. She is giving thank you gifts for readers who purchase the books in two ways: online access to a live streaming video of a three-part Dinner with Kris series (buy the book at any brick and mortar store) or 12 online cooking videos of Car and Chef Chad cooking at Whole Foods in NYC (simply buy the book from an online retailer). Just submit your receipt after purchasing and enjoy the gifts.

Here is a snippet of what the book is about.

Book Information:

• Crazy Sexy Kitchen: 150 Plant-Empowered Recipes to Ignite a Mouthwatering Revolution by Kris Carr
• Hay House; 2012
• ISBN13:9781401941048

Disclosure: This eARC was provided by the publisher and any opinions are my own.

Enjoy,
Renee Shelton
The Cookbook Papers
🙂