Simply Laura Lea: Balanced Recipes for Everyday Living

In this follow-up to The Laura Lea Balanced Cookbook, Lea offers modern takes on comfort food, with an extensive variety of dishes focused on balanced eating. Divided by course—beverages, snacks, entrees, dessert—recipes range from carnivore to vegan, easy to complicated, with a few gluten-free options as well. The book starts out with a list for a well-stocked pantry to prepare the recipes and a list of necessary cookware. Lea includes an inviting narrative before each dish with useful suggestions for how to serve it or what to do with leftovers. Additionally, each recipe has a symbol to indicate to home cooks if there is extra time needed to marinate, soak, or chill in the fridge. Most meals are accompanied by beautiful photographs of the finished product. Lea sets out to be as inviting as possible in her world of balanced, whole eating and her narrative achieves this, even if her specialty ingredients list does not.