The Dancing Gourmet: a ballerina’s healthy recipes for fitness

Author: Hymes, Linda
Title: The Dancing Gourmet: Recipes to Keep You on Your Toes!
Publisher: Lindergaff Books, 2002
ISBN: 0971978204

Linda Hymes shares a full repertory of delicious, healthy recipes that are fit for dancers and non-dancers alike. Heck, these are recipes to keep you fit. Hymes knows the secrets of preparing tantalizing dishes that won’t add to your waistline- she trained at the prestigious School of American Ballet in New York City before becoming a professional ballerina for fifteen years. After she retired, she pursued her greatest passion- food- and attended the world-renowned Le Cordon Bleu in London.

The Dancing Gourmet is a perfect marriage of gourmet food and elegant aesthetic. Anyone who loves ballet or who wishes to look like a dancer by eating right will enjoy the mouth-watering, colorful photos of food and Hymes during some of her finest dancing moments- both seem to jump right off the page. The Dancing Gourmet is flavored with humor throughout it pages: the recipes are categorized by ballet’s positions of the feet, from first position (appetizers and small plates) through fifth position(entrees). The final section involves the prerequisite visit to the Land Of the Sweets (a reference from the second act of the much-beloved Nutcracker) which no ballet career or gourmet dining experience should be without.

Eating right doesn’t have to be a punishment. In fact, it can be quite pleasurable. Choices from the third category of salads (not just rabbit food!, according to Hymes) such as the grilled chicken salad with spicy blackberry dressing, thai eggplant salad with pickled garlic, and sole and salmon twirls with maple glaze are appealing, or curried banana balls with masoor daal and cold sesame soba with tofu for the vegetarian crowd. Top it all off with a cup of fresh-brewed chai and a slice of pavlova cake. Brava!