Welcome to the Pioneer Woman Cookbook Club! This month, Eat well Her new book is based on her blog and social media presence. Feel-good eating cookbookshares nutritious everyday meals with a Mediterranean twist. Read on to learn more and get the recipe for White Zucchini Pizza with Garlic Labneh.
You may know Yumna Jawad as Feel Good Foodie. A blogger, recipe developer, and social media force, her Mediterranean-inspired recipes have garnered a following of 8.5 million over the past decade. Now, the online star has turned her talents to the written word, with a new cookbook worthy of adding to your summer reading list. In fact, the recipes in this book will inspire you in whole new ways to enjoy the season’s finest ingredients.
Whether you’re serving caramelized eggplant on the stove top over creamy mint yogurt or transforming cuttings from your herb garden into a fragrant tabouli, a trip to the farmer’s market in mid-summer greets you with a kaleidoscope of colorful fruits and vegetables. The Feel Good Foodie Cookbook is the perfect gift for those looking for fresh ideas to bring them to life at home.
Yumna loved food from an early age, but her passion for cooking didn’t come until later. She spent most of her childhood in the West African country of Sierra Leone, where her family ate many of the dishes featured in her cookbook. “There were always the most amazing smells emanating from our kitchens in Africa,” Yumna says. “Freshly chopped parsley, the smell of garlic roasting on the stove, the floral aroma of rosewater. These smells remind me of my childhood.” The local market was all about the essentials, so her mother cooked all the meals for the family. And it was hard work. Admittedly, Yumna had no desire to follow in her mother’s footsteps. “I watched my mother toil for hours in the kitchen, making yogurt and tomato paste from scratch, and I hated the idea of cooking,” she says.
But when Yumna was 11, her family moved to the United States, where she discovered the many conveniences available in American grocery stores. Soon, her mother’s time in the kitchen was greatly reduced, “but we still had great Mediterranean meals,” Yumna says. Her mother also began cooking Midwestern dishes like pancakes and spaghetti. “Little touches made the food a little more special,” she says. “If we didn’t have Italian seasonings, we’d add shichimi pepper to a meatball recipe, and we loved that.”
When Yumna started cooking as an adult, she adopted a similar style. “I wanted to bring a homemade feel to my dinners, but I didn’t want to spend hours making them,” she says. “So I started using the substitutions my mom showed me.” With seven pantry and fridge staples detailed in the book, Yumna elevates banana bread by adding tahini and pancakes by substituting rosewater for vanilla; transforms chicken dinners and sweet potato wedges with sumac; and shares different ways to use seven spices. Feel-good eating cookbook All are vegetarian, and all but one (Yumna’s Crispy Falafel) can be made in under 30 minutes, and each recipe also contains at least one “feel good” ingredient.
The recipes presented here are typical of the heart-warming cuisine Yumna is known for. First, there’s pizza. Who doesn’t love pizza? The base is made with creamy labneh, one of her seven essential ingredients in Mediterranean cooking, and combined with a generous dollop of mozzarella cheese, it creates a “white pizza” base that’s lighter and healthier than other versions. The pizza is topped with fresh pumpkin and zucchini, making for the perfect summer dinner.
