It is not every day that you come across a cook book with ingredients and dishes you can easily pick at the corner stall in your neighbourhood. Have you ever looked through a cook book and you had to Google the image of the recipes?

There used to be a Sunday evening culinary TV show that I followed. Often times, I skipped through the preparatory stages waiting to see the layout and presentation as he preferred to address it. This made me long for the dishes but not the preparation.

There is a lot that goes into the preparatory phase that less patient eaters like me tend to overlook. The thing with food is that some enjoy the process of preparing it while others (most of us) long for the moment to savour the meal. The beauty is in the pudding, isn’t that what they say? But what about those who labour to go through the process of preparing the food? It must be an intense process. In her cook book, Sarah Akelly paints the picture of how you can enjoy the process of preparing that dish.

I write this coming from the typical African (Uganda in particular) point of view. The kind where things like mills and all manner of measurements hold no meaning. The way we usually measure our spices and salt is by the measure of the eye against the content in the palm. You look at it and tell whether it will be enough or not. That is how pedestrian many of us are in our cooking. But there is more.

Our pans are yet to have a better feel of the contents they are to cook, they are to be heated and tickled differently. The next cookout is yet to be an inviting experience from the recipes from the market to the serving on the plate.

This is what Akelly is subjecting her readers to; not just good food but a display of an appetite whetting ordeal that will leave you wondering whether your previous meal was worth the time, the cost and more so the taste buds.

Sarah has a mastery of the food language especially the context of cuisines. We live at a time of fast fingers on the keyboard as we navigate our gadgets and the same is true for the process of preparing a quick meal.

Unlike any other cook book, Akelly takes off time to speak to you as you go through the recipes and the procedure of preparing particular dishes. As you wait for your dish to simmer, you are given a quote to ponder on and put yourself together.

The names of the dishes here presented are not the indirect recruitment to learning a new language as usually is the case. Have you ever been to a restaurant and you could not read a word off the menu. Here everything is luxuriously layered out in artistically designed colours that easily speak to your taste buds.

Do not do the mistake I made; to read this as just another book. A cook book should find a shelf life somewhere in your kitchen where you can always refer to it. I suggest you turn the pages with a platter by your side or near the kitchen where you can enter and fix yourself one of the dishes. Lest you are left swallowing dry lumps of saliva and drowning in impromptu yawns. This book is about preparing and enjoying good food. And good food is about hunger management and celebration of moments that create lasting memories. It is these memories that are always left archived in the safest place of our minds. May we always be extra for the love of good food! Get yourself a copy already.

AUTHOR:       Sarah Akelly

TITLE:             Always Extra For Love

GENRE:           Cook Book

PUBLISHER:  Self Published

PAGES:             82