Dan Titus
Amazon Price: $13.22
List Price: $16.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Juice Gallery
Amazon Marketplace: 35
new & used starting at $1.99
|
Buy at Amazon.com
|
Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Juice
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Smoothies
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> General
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
Some Unique stuff, but certainly not the best smoothie book 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 20 people found this review helpful.
`Smoothies, The Original Smoothie Book' by Dan Titus is the sixth book on smoothies I am reviewing. These six fall into three different categories. The first, with titles such as `The Smoothies Bible' by Pat Crocker and `The Ultimate Smoothies Book' by Cherie Calbom claim to be `everything you wanted to know about smoothies. In this category, the first is far superior to the second. The next category, with titles such as `Ultimate Smoothies' by Donna Pliner Rodnitsky and `The Best 50 Smoothies' by Joanna White are quick references, presumably with a selection of the best recipes. Again, the first of these two titles is the better in this class.
Mr. Titus' book may seem to belong to the first category, but I think it really belongs in a third with `Smoothies for Life' by Daniella Chace and Maureen B. Keane, where these books claim to offer things which may not be in other books, without pretending to be a `complete' reference on the subject.
Dan Titus' angle is that his book includes recipes from six major smoothies and juice bar chains, with the claim that this means you can make them at home just the way they are made at these chains in your local mall. This `feature' has some serious shortcomings, as I describe below. Mr. Titus does give us something unusual in a little history of the smoothie and the leading smoothie franchise chains. He also gives us some rather nice tips on smoothie technique, including an explanation of the phenomenon of cavitation, so well known and loved by fans of the movie and novel `The Hunt for Red October'. While cavitation makes it easy to detect submarines by sonar, it spoils the action of a blender rotor, which, on close inspection, looks suspiciously like a submarine screw, hence, the common effect.
All this material in the early part of the book gives the reader a good feeling that this is a worthwhile book. Especially interesting is Mr. Titus' scheme for rating smoothie recipes based on the freshness of ingredients and the extent to which they are prepared at the time one places an order.
Many of these recipes rely on juiced vegetables. This is a good thing, since vegetables contain some nutrients not found in most fruits, but I don't rank it too highly, as it means some of the recipes require a juicer, which narrows the suitable audience for the book.
I was pleased to see nutritional information on many of the recipes, but this effort is not as valuable as it could have been if the nutritional analysis was done for ALL the recipes, and, like Ms. Rodnitzky in `Ultimate Smoothies', put all the nutritional analyses at the same place on the page, so you could easily buzz through the pages to find a high potassium or low calorie recipe to fit your needs or whim of the moment.
Mr. Titus includes other worthy nutritional information, especially a no nonsense description of various important ingredients. The Appendix contains some good recipes for milk substitutes from rice and nuts. This is useful since I just discovered that soymilk is not as unalloyed a good thing as some make it out to be. This appendix also gives some quick guidelines on which smoothie ingredients are good to aid in treating which ailments. This is nice, but not nearly as good as Ms. Crocker's index of smoothie recipes by ailment in `The Smoothies Bible'.
Mr. Titus presents recipes by type, consistency, and by commercial originator. These recipes are missing my most important criteria for smoothie recipes, which are both English and metric units. I also give demerits for not including the nutritional analysis for many of the recipes and for not applying his very clever rating system for smoothies to these recipes. I also find some of the recipes to be almost worthless for the average reader as they include proprietary nutritional supplement ingredients marketed by some of the featured franchise operations. There are instructions for ordering these products but if you are put off by having to find a local GNC for protein powder, you will have no interest in spicing up your smoothies by something you need to order from the Internet.
This isn't a bad book. It just does not deserve five stars because there are several other books in the same price range, which are better. My overall favorite is `Ultimate Smoothies'. The most complete is `The Smoothies Bible'.
Editorial Review:
Smoothies! The Original Smoothie Book: Recipes From the Pros is the first book in The Original Series trilogy, by Dan Titus. This book begins with a history of the whimsical juice and smoothie industry, and defines the word smoothie from its early uses to its use today as a delectable drink. For example, the first reference to the words smoothie, smoothy, or smoothee was in the early 1930s and were used to sell bras and girdles! The book contains more than 80 professionally-developed smoothie recipes from companies like: Crazy Carrot, Robeks Juice, Jamba Juice, Planet Smoothie, Juice Stop, Juice It Up!, and Smoothie King. There is also a section where readers can record their own smoothie recipes and/or make notes for future reference. The goal for this book is to educate the readers about the history of smoothies, and how to make the best tasting smoothies in the world right in the comfort of their own kitchen.
