Book Review: The Sneaky Chef-How to Cheat on Your Man in the Kitchen

I just finished reading the book The Sneaky Chef-How to Cheat on Your Man in the Kitchen. It is an amazing healthy eating guide and cookbook! It was written on the premise that men often eat unhealthy foods and avoid healthy foods like vegetables, fruit and whole grains and that their mate can use “sneaky chef” techniques to make the food the family eats healthy. Although the catch phrase of this book is “how to cheat on your man in the kitchen” these recipes are great for everyone to cook. 

The book focuses on positive nutrition, specifically what foods to include in your diet to prevent or combat illnesses. Every recipe makes use of the concept of food medicine. It hides ingredients that will prolong your man’s life.” Her recipes increase antioxidants, phytochemicals, good fats and fiber.

The chapters include eat, drink and live to tell about it; health and the happy home; the lists; the sneaky chef’s bag of tricks; make ahead recipes and glossary of superfoods; the recipes (breakfast recipes, lunch pail recipes, soups, appetizers/ side dishes, sauces/salad dressings, dinner, on the grill, halftime snacks, drinks, and desserts).

“The sneaky chef’s bag of tricks” chapter discusses the methods that are used by a “sneaky chef”. They include pureeing;  combining refined and unrefined; using foods that hide well; substituting nutritious liquid for water when boiling foods; combining foods that are a specific nutritional complement for one another; identifying foods men are likely to enjoy straight-up; cutting the effects of toxins or fats by diluting the ingredients with something healthy; cutting calories and increasing volume with low-cal nutritious fillers; using slower-burning foods to avoid blood sugar spikes and crashes; using visual decoys to make food look appealing; using flavor decoys to distract guys from what’s underneath; and using friendly texture decoys.

The “Make Ahead Recipes and Glossary of Superfoods” chapter is essential to “Sneaky Chef” cooking. It gives you the recipes for the purees and blends that you use in each of the “Sneaky Chef” recipes. It also has a glossary of superfoods and describes for eat exactly what they do for your body. For example bananas are the best source of potassium and they help maintain normal blood pressure and heart function, can decrease the risk of stroke, and relieve heartburn.

“The Recipes” chapter is impressive. The recipes are the bulk of the book, pages 143- 337. They include recipes like power breakfast cookies, chocolate charged French toast, chicken Waldorf wrap, not-for chick’s chicken salad, concealed crab cakes, super-pop popcorn, spiced rattle snacks and minty hot cocoa. The only negatives are that the book does not contain nutritional info for each recipe and some recipes are not low cal so you need to be choosy.  But, the book is still amazing! For more information on Sneaky Chefs books go to http://www.thesneakychef.com/free_sneaky_chef_recipes.php