You're considering nut milk and raw foods because you're ready to change your habits one step at a time, one day at a time, and slowly move up the food continuum to a more healthy lifestyle, right? Then you are in the right place, and welcome.

This book sets out to answer two questions I am often asked:

Four ingredient story

I'd like to begin by making a confession. I don't consider myself a chef. Yes, I have a certificate which says I am a "Raw Food Chef Instructor" and I do know a thing or two about healthy foods, raw food cuisine in particular. I pay special attention to flavor balancing and the importance of making things look good and taste good while boosting energy with living ingredients that boost immune systems and give my guests that all-over glow of radiant health.

I believe with all my heart that you can learn – that's why I teach. I also know that some of the qualities that make a fabulous chef are inborn.

I didn't start out as a chef. I didn't like being in the kitchen with my Mom, and as hard as she tried through the years to help my sister and me learn how to come up with something for dinner, cooking never appealed to me. Mom had Sis and me prepare one meal a week, one night a week – we had taco salad and tuna boats a lot – so my culinary prowess did not develop early on. However, I decided at an early age that cookbooks should be easy, explicit, and complete so I could share the author's success. At the time, oh maybe 30 years ago, I never found an easy cookbook. The Joy of Cooking was just too big and way too complicated for my world. I remember joking with friends that I was going to write The Four Ingredient Cook Book. I never dreamed that I was setting into motion a set of events that would shape my life towards the present day, and the book you hold in your hands. Admittedly, these recipes have more than four ingredients – but not many more! And remembering that little girl struggling in the kitchen with obscure and incomplete recipes, I have tried hard to keep these easy, nutritious and great tasting.

This collection's several sections build from one to the next. My intention is to guide you, with easy, straight-forward recipes, through a series of successes in your kitchen. My goal: to give you skills to create authentic, tasty, healthy food choices for every day. I kept these recipes simple, but they're meant to appeal to gourmets.

Recipe Development

Here's how I approach a new recipe. The first time, I make it as the author or chef intended, along the way making notes of what to change so the recipe becomes my own. Recipe development and gradual refinement is a big part of your successful food adventure. When Meagan and I set out to assemble this collection, we worked through several iterations of each recipe, making careful notes each time of what we did and how it turned out, again noting adjustments we wanted to make for the next time. You, too, may find this conscious development process rewarding.

Our recipe format

When I cook, especially something unfamiliar, I like to read the recipe, gather all my ingredients, prepare them, sometimes read the recipe again . . . then begin to put things together. With this method in mind, complex recipes are usually broken into steps, with ingredients first, then directions for completing that step. On these complex recipes, please read through and make sure you have all the needed ingredients before launching into full preparation. You will notice that ingredients and recipes in this collection connect in unexpected ways: soup morphs into pizza crust, juice produces crackers, nuts give milk . . . add a little of your own magic, and you will find a world of possibilities in these simple ingredients and techniques.

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