Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite

Food is much more enticing and digestible if prepared from scratch in one’s own kitchen. This doesn’t have to be an overwhelming task, as long as you plan ahead and organize your week’s cooking to include healthy and nutritious ingredients. Chay Wike’s The Kitchen Commune is a great book to help us organize and create meals that we can all enjoy without fear of having an adverse reaction. There are so many more food allergies and intolerances affecting the general population and we need to be prepared to provide inclusive meals that everyone can eat. The author has her own food intolerances and she’s explored many alternatives to allow her, her family, and her friends, to enjoy the foods she loves with tolerable ingredients.

Chay Wike’s cookbook, The Kitchen Commune: Meals to Heal and Nourish Everyone at Your Table, is a thorough and concise book that provides useful information as well as a wealth of interesting recipes to suit multiple tastebuds and food requirements. The author leads the reader through her own journey of experimenting with alternative foods, providing a list of some of these alternatives and how she incorporates them into some of her favorite dishes. The recipes are categorically organized, written in a clear, concise fashion, and accompanied by spectacular color photographs of the finished product. As Chay clearly points out, you don’t have to cut out certain foods because you suffer from an intolerance: there’s always an alternative option. This book is a great resource as well as being an interesting read.