The Self-care Cookbook: A Holistic Approach to Cooking, Eating, and Living Well

The Self-Care Cookbook, written by health and wellness expert Dr. Frank Ardito, explores the intersection of cooking, eating, health, and wellness by offering 130 recipes designed to help you improve every aspect of your life.

Unlike most diet and health cookbooks, The Self-Care Cookbook acknowledges that eating well means sometimes eating “bad.” Ardito doesn’t believe in bad food, restrictions, or denial. True wellness―complete wellness―addresses both ends of the spectrum: fresh, light dishes that strengthen our bodies and wonderful indulgences that feed our souls.

The first of its kind, The Self-Care Cookbook is divided into 10 chapters, each of which focuses on one dimension of personal wellness: physical, spiritual, emotional, environmental, intellectual, nutritional, protectoral, social, occupational, and financial. Each chapter includes 13 recipes―from starters to mains to desserts―that support well-being through carefully selected ingredients and cooking methods. For example, the intellectual wellness chapter includes foods that improve cognition and kitchen techniques that challenge the brain.

This book encourages you to prepare these recipes by yourself, for yourself, as a way to create a true sense of wholeness and satisfaction. A balanced life includes both celebratory and health-supportive foods, and this book helps you decide which you most want or need at any given moment.

Dr. Frank Ardito has been a professor of health and wellness sciences for more than 20 years. He is the author of seven academic titles as well as numerous scholarly articles and publications. He currently serves as professor and department chair of health and wellness promotion at College of Lake County in suburban Chicago. As a wellness educator, Ardito has worked with hundreds of organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society, and has coached or consulted with several Olympic athletes and the Chicago Blackhawks. Ardito established the Center for Health and Healing, one of the first truly holistic health and wellness centers in the United States, and founded the Wellness Registry. He was recently inducted into the National Wellness Institute’s Circle of Leadership for his contributions to the field of health and wellness. He lives in Spring Prairie, Wisconsin.