Healing Herbs and Spices: The Most Popular Herbs And Spices, Their Culinary and Medicinal Uses and Recipes to Use Them In (Healing Foods) Paperback – April 12, 2012

I tend to use the same herbs and spices over and over in my cooking. And I'm also looking for ways to cook in a more healthy manner. So I wanted to get a book that would help me learn more about herbs and spices, their health benefits and how to use them to improve my cooking.I bought Healing Herbs & Spices and got so much more than I bargained for. This is a great book! For every herb or spice the author gives you the history, where it's grown, the parts of the plant that you use, other names for the herb or spice, health benefits, how it's used in cooking and then some great recipes! The health benefits are really interesting.Cinnamon is good for arthritis, celery seed is good for lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, fenugreek can help women deal with menopause and can increase male potency. Fenugreek can also help Type II diabetics lower their blood sugar. Did you know onions are an herb? I certainly didn't. I thought it was a regular veggie.Recipes are listed for each herb and spice. The benefit is that if you find a herb or spice that you like or want to try, the recipes are right there for you. Vanilla Bean cookies, Roasted Garlic Soup, Basil Chicken. Cinnamon Maple Squash, Pizzelle Cookies (which I haven't had since I was little), Sour Cream and Chive Garlic Mashed Potatoes are just a few of the recipes I plan to try.Finally Lee Anne Dobbins sounds like she has a passion for gardening and cooking. She writes in a very conversational manner which I like. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone interested in the health benefits of herbs & spices and how to best cook with the herbs and spices you like.

If there's anything you want to know about the 80 most common herbs and spices this is a must-have book. It provides tons of useful information about herbs and spices as well as some excellent recipes. I found this book to be very informative and it provided me with loads of helpful information about herbs and spices. I can't wait to try a few of the recipes provided. They look interesting. I highly recommend this book as an excellent reference to herbs and spices that also includes great recipes.Marg RuttanInternational Best Selling Cookbook Author

I really liked this book. The author did a good job not only giving the reader information on the various health benefits of using the listed herbs and spices, but also made sure to include some easy to follow recipes including the chosen spice. I thought this book had a fun, conversational tone and was not boring to read. The passages were not so long that I lost interest but did contain a lot of information. I found it original that the author listed the part of the plant or berry that should be used as well as how to prepare it for the maximum benefit.Aside from all of that, I got a free, much needed laugh from one of the passages in this book. When writing of allspice, the author mistakenly put in that it "Aids in digestion as well as RELIVE gas and bloating." Yep, not relieve but relive. So apparently it will help you do it all over again. Normally this kind of mistake would have lowered my star rating, but in this case, it was just too cute of a slip and it added to my overall enjoyment of this product. Seriously, this is a great book and I came away feeling more knowledgeable. Recommended.

The author had displayed substantial knowledge on using popular herbs and spices to be used in recipes to enhance our health. I am a mother of 2 kids and giving the best to my family is my top priority. I was skeptical at first on getting this book, but after reading so much reviews, I decided to buy it and applied the golden information within. The author had broken down lots of interesting spices into sections for ease of reading. I, particularly like the sections on allspice, anise, basil and many others. I am surprised that my kids like my dishes so much, they ended up having second helping. I am amazed the power of herbs and spices to my dishes. It's really a good book, highly recommended.

I learned a bit when I read this book. I learned that caraway seeds aren't really seed; that bay leaves are a good source of zing. That's not a typo, not mine anyway. Can't imagine why she wasted her time with curly parsley when flat parsley has all the flavor in it.I'm ashamed to admit my garden has only two herbs: chives and lemon balm. You should never allow chives to go to seed because it will turn them bitter. Lemon balm can help repel mosquitos. You might think you can plant little patches of it in select spots around your patio or pool, but don't you dare. Lemon balm can be invasive, so put it in pots. Now I've told you a little more than the author did, but since I only have two herbs, of course I can learn more about them.But I do wish she had told us if some of this. plants were perennial, or if they were annuals, what zones they would grow in. She did tell us if the herbs and spices were tropical.In the one home economy class I took, the instructor told us to keep rarely used spices in the freezer. Some of the spices in my freezer are more than ten years old. I'll bet they're past their prime.Even with my nitpicking, I loved reading this book. My husband takes cinnamon capsules for his joints. Some of the recipes looked intriguing. It wouldn't take much of a rewrite to make this a 5 star book.