Author: Biz India

Authors:  Jack Norris, RD and Virginia Messina, RD, MPH Publisher:  Da Capo – Lifelong Press – 283 pages Book Review by:  Laxmi Chaandi Vegetarians avoid meats and sometimes seafood. Most do not eat eggs, but some do. Vegans go a few or a lot of steps further by not only avoiding all  meats, seafood and eggs but also milk, cheese, butter and all  products that contain anything from animals, such as  biscuits using eggs as ingredients. Some vegans also do not wear clothing and footwear made of leather, silk, wool and other materials that were parts of animals once. This book states that veganism began in the Western world in 1944 in England. In the east however, as is well-known, most Hindus are vegetarians. But it is not known among the 1.2 billion people in India how many are vegans. Vegans outside India, especially non-Hindus, have the desire to improve their health as the basis for eating plant-based food. Recent books, such as importantly, The China Study provide scientific proof that consumption of meats, is not only linked to, but is the cause of deadly ailments such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other maladies. Vegan for Life, written by nutrition experts Jack Norris and Virginia Messina, provides much value to those considering on turning to vegan foods and have questions on many topics, as well as to veteran...

Authors: Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero Publisher: Da Capo Press–Lifelong Books (Member of Perseus Books Group), 168 pages Book Review by Laxmi Chaandi Like their other book Vegan Pie in the Sky, Moskowitz and Romero have scored another big win with this one also, which has 75 yummy recipes for all of you vegans or vegetarians (and non-veg people too) out there. This book also has amazing close-up, crisp and clear photos of numerous delights. All the ingredients needed to make these cupcakes are commonly available and the directions are very easy to follow. For example, in the list of ingredients for the “dulce sin leche” cupcakes, even if you do not understand Spanish, all the items you need to make a batch of 12 of these cupcakes are easily obtainable from supermarkets. With my knowledge of Spanish, I understand that “dulce” means sweet, and “sin leche” means without milk. So coconut milk is being used instead. This is for those people who have trouble digesting foods containing milk. The book is simply organized into recipes for basic, classic, fancy and “frostins and fillins” cupcakes. But before it gets you into the collection and mixing of the ingredients, the book presents to you a very important page with metric conversions, so you don’t end up using too much or too little of any ingredient. It also prepares...

Authors: Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero Publisher: Da Capo Press–Lifelong Books (Member of Perseus Books Group), 245 pages Book Review by Laxmi Chaandi The authors of this book demonstrate their baking creativity in a hundred ways in this book that I could hardly wait to browse through. Being a cookie and biscuit lover, I first looked at the back cover, found six photos and began to search of recipes for those six batches of cookies featured. The top left photo of cream-colored cookies with nuts topped on them caught my eye first and looked for the page that had those. These are Pignoli almond cookies, a holiday favorite at most Italian bakeries. The cookies require almond paste, almond milk and a bit of almond extract as core ingredients. The cookies are topped with Pinole or pine nuts. This book is divided into five sections and there are recipes for making regular, hard or chewy cookies, brownies or softies or others in between. The five sections contain recipes for drop cookies, wholesome cookies, bar cookies, fancy cookies, and sliced cookies. The drop cookies section has recipes for making basic cookies that use almond paste, chocolate, oatmeal, peanut butter and other items as main ingredients. Then, a variety of with fillings and /or toppings are used to make great cookies. These are combinations of fruits such as apricots, bananas,...

Author: Ron Volper, PhD Publisher: Career Press, 224 pages Book Review by Paiso Jamakar There have been countless books written in recent years on how to increase sales, but only those who are in the battlefield of sales struggling to sell in this, the toughest recessionary economic environment since the US Great Depression of the 1930s really know how tough it really is, now. A business owner friend of mine said to me recently: “Nowadays, I work twice as hard but do only half as much sales – even with much reduced prices and faster delivery – as I used to before the economy went south….does that mean I can do just as much sales as before by contacting and seeing four times as many customers? Nope, don’t bet on it. It’s totally unpredictable. There’s no guarantee. It depends on whether there is good or bad (economic) news coming out that day…did more people lose jobs…by what percent did house prices decrease…by how many points did the Dow go down? So this book addresses the question of how to increase your sales in a down market. It presents twenty strategies to do that. Have they worked for readers? One of people whose comments have been posted on its back cover writes: “His recommendations to increase sales are thoughtful and creative, but more importantly, they work. They worked for me...

Author: Bob Ehrlich Publisher: Ben Bella Books – 241 pages Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar Bob Ehrlich has been a state legislator, a congressman representing the 2nd district of Maryland in the U.S. Congress from 1994 to 2001, and governor of that state from 2003 to 2007. He ran for governor again in 2010 but lost to the incumbent governor, Democrat Martin O’Malley.  He is currently Maryland campaign chairman for the election of Republican Mitt Romney as the next president of the United States. As governor of Maryland, Ehrlich focused on improvements in five areas: commerce, education, fiscal responsibility, health and the environment, and public safety. He had many accomplishments during his term. The unemployment rate in that state dropped from 4.5 percent in 2003 to 3.9 percent in 2006, and about 98,000 private-sector jobs were added. In his four years at the helm, Maryland’s jobless rate was about half a percent or more lower than the national unemployment rate. Gov. Ehrlich’s education programs gave money to schools in poor areas and those where cost of living was higher. The first-ever public charter school was also established with his efforts. Funding for education during his term included the construction of 45 new schools and improvement of an additional 52existing schools. He was opposed to raising taxes which would have negatively impacted companies. The firms were need as a source...