Anyone interested in getting back to basics will enjoy The Primal Blueprint Cookbook, a collection of recipes designed to encourage readers to fill their plates with simple, healthy and unprocessed foods. The concept is based on the fact that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had no option other than to feast off the land and relied on ingredients that could be picked, caught or speared. It is not, author Mark Sisson notes, a coincidence that our current reliance on processed food and the lack of fresh food in our diets has lead to increased obesity, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and other diseases.

This cookbook features many traditional recipes guiding readers to prepare substantial meals made from meat, seafood, vegetables and eggs. Some less traditional ideas like marrow and parsley spread, for example, can be found in the chapter on offal, and the section dedicated to primal substitutes includes some unique creations such as coconut pancakes and root vegetable chips.

The presentation of the cookbook is crisp and clear, including enticing photographs of the fresh ingredients in their natural state as well as the finished product. In addition to the book’s font (it is refreshingly larger than normal), I greatly appreciated the fact that the ingredient list was offset in a green box on the page, making it easy to scan any recipe to determine whether it is a viable choice based on what is stocked in my kitchen.

The Primal Blueprint Cookbook will make a wonderful additional to anyone’s cookbook collection, since it uses basic ingredients to create unique results - and the added bonus that the resulting creations are actually healthy alternatives to the quick processed foods that are too often staples in our meals.