Elizabeth TenHouten's, author of Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin is passionate about beauty and skin care, and how what you eat directly impacts how you look. She's a true believer in eating antioxidant rich foods to literally feed your skin.
The book is almost like three books in one. The first portion is about educating yourself, the second is about what foods to feed your body, and the third is how to use natural antioxidant rich food to feed your skin.
Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin - Education
Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin is broken down in good chunks of information that helps you learn why, according to Elizabeth, antioxidants are key to beautiful skin and a healthy body.
It starts with a thorough, but quick introduction to antioxidants in skin care. It's a bit science-y, but it is science, and Elizabeth does a good job at making it easy to understand.
The next part is about self-love. Elizabeth gives you "love thoughts" that she encourages you to journal about. One example is, "I am a unique being, radiating my inner, authentic self as beauty". These are sweet messages that, if you're into self reflection, you may find fun. If you're not into that, don't worry, it's only 3 pages long.
The book moves onto two aging gracefully and balanced skin, where Elizabeth shows you how antioxidants can help transform your skin. Also covered in small chapters are how hydration, sleep and makeup play important roles in the condition of your skin. There is also a chapter devoted to cultural beauty, and there are some really interesting facts about what different cultures find beautiful.
Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin - Recipes
Once you have a firm grasp of beauty, the book moves into recipes chuck-full of antioxidants. There are over 100 pages of recipes - some easy, some advanced. The recipes range from breakfast, to full meals, desserts and beverages. The ingredients she uses are wholesome, natural foods that most would have no problem getting their hands on.
Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin - Beauty Bytes
The last 20 pages are full of, as Elizabeth calls them, Beauty Bytes. Little tid-bits of information and tips on how to provide your skin with doses of antioxidants. Some are simple things you can do in a flash, others are more pampering ideas that you can spend some time on.
Here are a few recipes from the book that Elizabeth wanted to share with you.
We love that Elizabeth makes it easy for someone to take charge of their skin right at home, no fancy ingredients needed. Natural provides us with so much that many times is overlooked for some expensive tub on a shelf. Elizabeth reminds us to look at what nature provided us with first.
Final Thoughts
Cooking Well: Beautiful Skin has a beautiful image on the cover of pomegranate seeds in a bowl. I was excited to see images of the recipes in the book, but there are none. The images that are in the book are black and white and consist of different fruits and vegetables, mainly.
I feel this book would have been so much better with real images full of color and vibrancy because that's what this book is about: Colorful, vibrant foods!
Besides that, if you're looking to feed your skin healthy antioxidant-rich foods, this book has them all clearly available to you in an easy to read skin instruction manual.
