Solo Cooking for a Sustainable Planet is a cookbook I wrote in part as a protest because of friends who said to me, "I live alone so I don't cook," as if one is not worth cooking for. Or worse, a doctor's wife said to me, "I don't care what I put in my stomach. That really did it.
So, since I am also concerned about sustainability of our fragile planet facing multiple assaults on all fronts, I began working on this book. Because meat-eating on the American scale is unsustainable and leads to the highest rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity in the industrial world, this book contains no meat recipes. Rather, the approach is vegetarian and pescetarian, a diet approximating the Mediterrranean or traditional Japanese diet. There is a reason why the record for longevity is held by Okinawans living on the island south of the Japanese main island.
Recipes in this book are simple enough for the most reluctant cook to follow, and again, the book is designed for reluctant cooks, though anyone can profit from its use. The book also encourages experimentation in the kitchen, with suggested variations with many of the recipes. The idea is that cooking is fun, and it often produces the most delicious results.
Since I have spent many years in Japan, India, and Southeast Asia, many of the recipes reflect those influences. Those who use this book have a good chance of living to a healthy old age.
