Susana Stoica, PhD, has released the third cookbook in her series, Cooking after Brain Injury: Easy Cooking for Recovery, targeted toward people who have experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) but may have difficulties in their ability to focus, taste what they cook, and follow directions.
She used the cooking method in these books and other healing techniques during her 15-year recovery from experiencing two slip-and-fall TBI injuries an hour apart on the same day.
“Cooking was virtually impossible because I could not follow a recipe or remember my old recipes,” she says, in a media release.
“If I started to cook the simplest dish and somebody would talk to me, I would end up over-salting, skipping steps, or forgetting the pot on the burner. I nearly burnt down the house twice because I forgot I was cooking and I went out shopping. In my effort to find workarounds for ‘normal activities,’ I ended up devising my own new way of cooking, which I refined again and again, till I got to what is contained in these books.”
The three Cooking after Brain Injury books contain recipes of increasing complexity accompanied by colorful illustrations. The recipes are rated for ease of cooking, relative calorie count, if they are vegetarian or with meat, the relative glycemic index, and if they are free of the most common allergens: gluten, corn, soy, milk, and eggs, and are easy to make and delicious.
For example, these books contain detailed instructions for cauliflower soufflé, mashed potato with eggs, cream of mushroom soup, and apple pie. As shopping for the ingredients is also a challenge for people with brain trauma, the author provides shopping lists and labels for each dish, as well as instructions on how to use them to avoid cooking mistakes, the release explains.
Stoica is also the author of Heal Your Brain, Reclaim Your Life: How to Recover and Thrive after a Concussion.
[Source(s): Susana Stoica, PR Newswire]
