The Blue Zones Kitchen: 100 Recipes to Live to 100

If you’ve ever thought, “I’d love to cook like someone who can blow out 100 birthday candles without needing a nap,” then The Blue Zones Kitchen is your culinary holy grail. This book is essentially the love child of a cookbook and a life coach, showing you how to eat like the world’s longest-living people while keeping things simple, hearty, and delicious.The recipes hail from the fabled “Blue Zones”—places like Sardinia, Okinawa, and Nicoya—where people somehow outsmart death while making meals that are surprisingly low on kale but high on flavor. It’s filled with vibrant, plant-based dishes that make you realize beans are not just a side dish—they’re the main event. And it’s a feast! Chickpeas, black beans, fava beans, beans that probably haven’t even been named yet—they’re all here, ready to make you feel like a champion of longevity.The best part? The recipes aren’t preachy. You’re not required to meditate while stirring the soup or perform yoga poses between courses. It’s all about creating wholesome, satisfying food that nourishes without making you feel like you’ve been banished to a life of quinoa and sadness.And don’t worry, you’re not signing up for a monk-like existence. There’s wine (thank you, Sardinia!), there’s olive oil, there’s bread—because even centenarians know that life without bread isn’t really living.The Blue Zones Kitchen isn’t just a cookbook; it’s a passport to living longer, better, and tastier. It’s filled with mouthwatering photos and storytelling that makes you feel like you’re learning the secrets of life from your wise old Italian grandmother—except she’s also best friends with a Japanese fisherman and a Costa Rican farmer. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to add a dash of longevity to their plate without sacrificing flavor.

In order to use a cookbook, you need to enjoy looking through it (otherwise, you’ll pull something up from the web and never find it again, right?). This book should be on coffee tables, it’s so beautiful! The photos from around the world and of people living happy lives makes you want to create these dishes. I also appreciate the included stories and info on communities/people.I love that the ingredients are SIMPLE. You don’t have to wander Whole Foods for an hour looking for an exotic spice you’ll never use again! The dishes are hearty, flavorful, and easy to make - very satisfying. They also give room for you to add your favorite veggies and spices if desired.I’ve even been to a Blue Zone dinner party where everyone brought a dish. We were soooo full, because everything was delicious! There’s no guilt associated with this book, only visual beauty, great health and satisfying flavor - WHY would you pass that up?!

I have a LOT of plant based cookbooks. This one is such a wealth of information, extremely interesting, gorgeous photography, and simple, interesting, authentic dishes that our grandparents and great grandparents ate daily.Don't pay attention to the sniping - the majority of the centenarians across the 5 blue zones were NOT vegan, and DID eat grains regularly. Which should put to rest the Western phobia about grains and gluten. But apparently many did not make that connection.The recipes are simple and tasty - after all, they are what everyday rural, non-industrial populations eat EVERYDAY (someone criticized the recipes for being "ordinary everyday food."And surprise, there is white flour and sugar in a few recipes. So, yes, if you're eating pounds of beans and vegetables everyday and getting lots of daily exercise, a) prevalence of lifestyle disease is very very low or nonexistent, and therefore, b) it's possible to enjoy a sweet treat once or twice a week - like ONE serving, not a whole cake - without your body and brain having a meltdown.Don't be deceived by the simplicity of most of the recipes - the natural flavors of the whole foods, the food and spices and herb combinations reveal the instinctive genius of our ancestors and explains the lack of lifestyle diseases that lead to the long, slow, and miserable health declines we've come to take for granted in the past 100 years. If you didn't die of infectious diseases, accidents, or acute, random maladies such as appendicitis, or childbirth, most people lived into their 80s. Then in the 50s, in spite of the miracle drugs such a insulin, antibiotics, etc, more people began living into older age - but began declining sooner. Doesn't have to be that way.

Lovely book, great recipes. But really, I just wanted a kitchen book. This is a heavy, photo laden coffee table book.