Grow Cook Eat, by Michael Kelly (GIY)
Grow Cook Eat is the ultimate lifestyle book, simply because it shows exactly how to achieve the ultimate lifestyle. Michael Kelly and his many contributors have taken the GIY message and made it accessible, understandable and enjoyable. The book is first and foremost a guide to growing and cooking but, in truth, it is a book about economics, social science, health and philosophy.
Michael Kelly's brilliance lies not merely in his ability to persuade everyone to do what he wants, but also in his ability to deliver a simple but profound message about life, and how to live it well.
Mr Kelly is, in fact, an old-style preacher, because he espouses a profoundly moral viewpoint. But he's an unusual preacher in that he has written his own bible, with the help of his apostles.
Grow Cook Eat is an outstanding piece of publishing, a text that unifies the many diverse voices into a coherent ode to the pleasures of the garden, the pleasures of the table, the pleasures of the ultimate lifestyle.
Food For The Soul, by Gary O'Hanlon (Bluebird)
Over the last several years, it has been a commonplace for one or other of the editors of the McKennas Guides to tell us that the best restaurant meal they enjoyed during the year was one cooked by Gary O'Hanlon, in VM Restaurant at Viewmount House, in Longford.
Mr O'Hanlon has become one of the leading lights of modern Irish cooking, a brilliantly gifted and creative chef, whose food has a wild energy. You might expect, then, that he would produce a grandstanding, cheffy, recipe book, a testament to the many signature dishes he has created in VM.
But he hasn't done that. Instead, he has created a book of mostly simple dishes, designed to be easily achieveable, and has done so in collaboration with Bluebird Care, who work with elderly people in the community, and for whom Mr O'Hanlon acts as their food blogger.
The recipes are just fab, the sort of punky, moreish food that Gary O'Hanlon really loves, and his accompanying stories are both charming and very funny. The dishes in Food For The Soul would sustain the nation.
The Happy Pear, by Stephen and David Flynn (Penguin)
“Beetroot, walnut and feta burgers with roasted carrot hummus and sprouted seed salad”That may not sound like the key to enlightenment, the path of happiness, and the way, the truth and the light. But, believe us, when you cook this recipe from Dave and Steve Flynn's The Happy Pear, you will believe that it is all those things, and more, much, much more.
The brothers Flynn have collected recipes from the first decade of their iconic Greystones shop and cafés, and the dishes are wham-bam! delicious. But the book is about more than just tasty eating, for the philosophy of life and health which the brothers describe is inspiring. It is inspiring mainly because it is achieveable, and because they have achieved it in a patient, organic and sustainable way.
From a simple shop they have developed a business that now employs more than fifty people, and ranges from the original shop to cafés and farming and food production. It's a great story, and they tell it well – full of humour and modesty. But just cook those beet burgers and that hummus and you will understand why these guys are always smiling.
Food For The Fast Lane, by Derval O'Rourke (Gill & Macmillan)
You might not expect to discover the sagest advice on how to travel well to be found in a collection of recipes from a world-class athlete, but if you open Derval O'Rourke's book at page 146, you will discover the wise words of someone who takes up to thirty return flights each year, and who has learnt all the necessary lessons on how to arrive in good shape.
Ms O'Rourke's book is funny like that. It's really a collection of life lessons, interspersed with tasty, health-focused food – “She woke up one day and threw away all her excuses” is the sort of empowering mantra that many people can work into both their diet and their life, and there are lots more where that came from. The dishes are far from the pleasure-denying regime of fasting that you might expect from a gold medal sprinter, so this is a great book for someone who wants to refit their diet, whilst still getting the maximum joy from eating.
The book also contains a truly astonishing photograph, on page 20, of Ms O'Rourke in action: the determination! the determination!
