The Taste for Living Cookbook: Mike Milken's Favorite Recipes for Fighting Cancer

Enter Beth Ginsberg, Culinary Institute of America (CIA) graduate and natural foods chef. When Milken hired her in 1995, she turned his medicinal soy drinks into tasty, healthy fruit smoothies, his tofu-spread sandwiches into Vegetable Reubens--with tempeh bacon! It became clear that a healthy, cancer-fighting diet need not mean an end to culinary pleasure. In the beautifully photographed The Taste for Living Cookbook, Ginsberg collects more than 75 of Milken's favorite dishes, from Tofu Dog Casserole with a Pretzel Crust to Greek Spinach Pie in a Phyllo Nest to Devil's "Fool" Cake with Cocoa Frosting. Colorful icons next to each recipe let you know how long a dish will take to prepare--many are under an hour from kitchen to table. Nutritional details are given at the end of each recipe, and Ginsberg notes when a substitution can be made (say, low-fat turkey in place of tempeh in a sandwich). Proceeds from the sales of The Taste for Living Cookbook will go to further CaP CURE's research--resulting, one hopes, in even more delicious, healthful meals from chef Ginsberg. --Rebecca A. Staffel

At first, I was a bit concerned that most of the recipes in the book called for ingredients that I had never heard of, but even the small health-food section of my local grocery store had almost everything that I needed.
April 19, 2001