Do you know how many “please review my cookbook” requests we get each year? Seven hundred and forty two (estimated). But as you may have noticed, we don’t take book reviews lightly around here. Especially cookbook reviews. We made a decision a long time ago only to promote foods, books, and recipes that fall in line with our Whole30® program, so that when you came to our blog, you knew everything you saw here was appropriate for your Whole30 program (and beyond). When it comes to cookbooks, that means that the vast majority (we’re talking 90%) of recipes have to be Whole30-compliant before we’ll promote it here on the site.

Last month, we were thrilled when a truly great cookbook arrived as part of our Amazon order–a cookbook that fits in really well with our Whole30® tenets.  So today, happy day, you get to hear all about it!

Breakfast, Lunch, and Go!

Paleo Lunches and Breakfasts On The Go by Diana Rodgers of Radiance Nutrition is exactly our kind of cookbook. Not only is it beautifully written and photographed, the overwhelming majority of the recipes fit our squeaky-clean Whole30 requirements for food that makes you more healthy. Diana also echoes our “real food first” mantra, writing, “For those new to a Paleo diet… the focus should be on real, nutrient-dense foods as opposed to mimicking the Standard American Diet with Paleo foods.”

Over the years, we’ve discovered that we all (us included!) need help planning our everyday food. Three meals a day, with 30 days in September… that’s 90 meals we have to plan, prepare, and eat! We have busy schedules, kids, long work hours, and extracurricular activities. Dinners, we can usually handle by planning ahead and getting the whole family to pitch in, but those other two meals? Who has the time, patience, or creativity to come up with delicious, healthy, interesting breakfasts and lunches seven days a week?

Oh, actually, we do… now. (We told you it was a happy day!)

The Recipes.

The recipes in Paleo Lunches and Breakfasts on the Go are what your Paleo recipe repetoire have been missing. Easy to follow. Easy to make. Easy to pack and take with your to the office or school, but still elegant enough to serve for a lovely brunch with friends. This cookbook has 150 pages of cold wraps, hot wraps, portable salads, office-ready soups and stews, busy morning breakfasts, and some dinner essentials (bonus!), plus vegetable sides and delicious dressings and sauces. It’s amazing how many different wrap variations you could create, or how many different things you can use for the wrap itself. (Move over lettuce… there’s a new wrap in town.)

Finally, a few tips for those using this cookbook on the Whole30. You’ll still have to watch your ingredients–when it calls for bacon, make sure it’s Whole30 approved bacon, and cranberries have to be sweetened with apple juice, not sugar. If you can’t find the fruit-sweetened preserves some recipes call for, just cook down the fruit itself, squeeze a little lemon, mash, and allow to cool. Homemade preserves, easy! Where she calls for white potatoes, just sub sweet potatoes. Finally, there are just a few yummy looking (but not  Whole30) breakfast ideas, like sweet potato and apple pancakes and coconut crepes. Save those for life after your Whole30, okay?

Now, enough chit-chat… onto your sneak peek recipe (and a teaser for a delicious on-the-go breakfast)!

This Prosciutto and Fig Salad is gorgeous. The colors alone make this dish sparkle, but it’s the marriage of the flavors that will make this one of our go-to fancypants salads when we have guests over. (And lucky you, Diana said we could share the recipe here. Dig in!)

Prosciutto and Fig Salad from Paleo Lunches and Breakfasts on the Go

Ingredients

2 cups arugula
About 12 basil leaves
6oz sliced prosciutto, torn into thin strips
4 fresh figs
1/2 red onion sliced very thin
pepper and salt to taste

For the Dressing

1/2 tsp truffle honey (leave this ingredient out to make it Whole30 compliant)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tbsp crushed hazelnuts

Mix it all up then eat it all up. Trust us, you’re going to want to try this one out for yourself. Especially since figs are in season here in the States (but not for long!).

We also prepared a second recipe from the book, Crabby Morning Egg Muffins. Our Director of Operations, Erin Handley, can attest to the “on-the-go-ness” of these yummy egg muffins as she took them with her on a 25 mile backpacking trip in the High Uintas over the Labor Day weekend. “I just threw them in a ziplock, tossed them in with the rest of our food, and they held up great as a protein-packed breakfast for the two mornings that we ate them. And we didn’t get crabby from eating them even once!”

If you want this recipe, though, you’re gonna have to buy the book. Trust us, it’s well worth the $15.

Enjoy Paleo Lunches and Breakfasts On the Go, and be sure to visit Diana at Radiance Nutrition for more recipes, stories from her farm, and Boston-area special events.

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Full disclosure: We bought the first copy of Paleo Lunches and Breakfasts on the Go, but Diana was kind enough to give us a second (signed) copy at the AHS. At no time did Diana ask us for a review–we just liked the book so much, we decided to write about it. The link to buy the book is our Amazon affiliate link. Erin told her husband Kevin all the crab and egg muffins were gone, but really there was one left.