With today’s busy lifestyles, we all find it difficult to put together meals that are both nutritious and tasty. Who wouldn’t want to literally add some spice to everyday meals and special ones?

Ann Powers made dietary changes to try turning around a puzzling set of health problems, and in the twenty-eight years since making those changes, she’s studied a wide variety of cuisines that have a focus on the often mysterious key ingredients of herbs and spices. Now she shares that wealth of information in Herbs in My Kitchen: Reference Guide for Everyday Cooking, a tremendously user friendly reference guide that allows even the busiest among us to make healthy and tasty meals, taking ingredients on hand and using spices and herbs to make the everyday something special.

If you’ve got nagging health problems that could very well be related to your diet, are a fan of a particular cuisine you find it hard to recreate at home, or want to learn how to make eating healthy less boring, Herbs in My Kitchen will help you easily create an impressive Indian dish, spicy Cajun creation, or exotic Caribbean meal. It’s easy with this handy four-part reference guide.

Focused on eight distinct world cuisines with one thing in common—centering around local fruits and vegetables, with meat as a judicious addition instead of the primary focus of the meal—the book first looks at each of cuisine, providing handy lists of typical ingredients laid out by category such as fruits and vegetables, meats, seafood, and herbs.

That’s followed by an alphabetical reference guide to herbs and spices, with enlightening information about the origin of each along with the typical best uses of that herb or spice. Each one is accompanied by gorgeous mouth-watering photos taken by the author that will get you eager to give that spice a try.

The third section provides another easy reference, this time to ingredients you might have on hand and listing the spices to use with that ingredient for the various types of cuisine.

Finally, Powers provides a quick and easy to read primer clearly demonstrating that healthy eating doesn’t have to mean boring. She helps make preparing meals fun and tasty!