The Quick and Easy Organic Gourmet: Delicious, Healthy Meals Without Meat, Wheat, Dairy, or Sugar

Cerier, an Amherst, Mass., caterer, offers some clever ideas in this collection of organic recipes (some of which do contain fish). A lengthy introductory section on organic foods and cooking includes charts of the Chinese system of the five phases, or transformations, of food (wood, fire, earth, metal and water), which associates particular foods with emotions (e.g., artichokes, a wood food, are related to both planning and anger). This section is extremely informative and almost a book in itself. The collection of recipes has the breadth to constitute a comprehensive volume, but not the organization. Millet Apple Raisin Cake--made by cooking millet and raisins in apple juice, pouring the resulting mush into a pan and allowing it to harden--is intriguing, but Cerier neglects to note the size of the pan to be used. Many recipes fail to list ingredients in the correct order, and chapters can overlap, with recipes for the same dish appearing twice in slightly different form. For example, the chapter ""Teff: Gem of Grains"" contains Super Chocolate Chip Cookies made with teff flour, while the chapter ""Guilt-Free Desserts"" contains Chocolate Chip Cookies with spelt or whole wheat pastry flour. This volume will especially interest readers who cook for people with allergies. (May)