Paleo Comfort Foods: Homestyle Cooking for a Gluten-Free Kitchen by Julie & Charles Mayfield was published by Victory Belt Publishing in 2011.  The book is a large format paperback, with 335 pages.  It contains a Foreward by Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet with photographs by Mark Adams.

The Preface of the book outlines the Mayfields’s premise for the book.  The intention of the book is not to explain what the Paleo lifestyle is, it’s to provide a resource and guide to those who already know about the Paleo lifestyle and are looking for tips on preparing healthy and tasty food.

The introduction of the book outlines how the authors met, became involved in the Paleo lifestyle and ended up writing this book.  It’s interesting background and humanizes the authors.

The authors included sections on kitchen basics.  These sections outline the foods and tools that a well-stocked kitchen should contain.  I am a gadget lover, and enjoyed this section.

Finally we get to the meat of the book.  The recipes are divided into six sections followed by an index.  A beautiful photograph accompanies each recipe.  This book is Food Porn at its best.  My favorite recipe section is the section on Sauces.   My pre-Paleo cooking relied heavily on prepared sauces to add variety.  When I started eating the Paleo diet and eliminating processed foods, I found that many of my go to sauces had ingredients that I no longer wanted to ingest.  I was able to come up with some acceptable substitutes, but there were still some things I missed.  The sauce section of this book solves this issue and then some.  It is filled with fabulous, tasty sauces made from fresh whole foods.  The Cave Ketchup tases the way Ketchup should taste, but never did.

The Index to this book includes both ingredients and recipe names.  I find it really helps when the index also has the recipe names.  I find myself needing to flip through cookbooks that don’t list the recipe names in the index in order to find things.

I recommend this cookbook to everyone, not just to people following a Paleo Diet.  It’s a cookbook that includes recipes for healthy, tasty dishes prepared with real, whole foods.  All the recipes are gluten-free.  This cookbook is quickly becoming a staple in our household.