Daphne Oz’s ‘Relish’ is Like a Guide to Happiness
Relish: An Adventure in Food, Style, and Everyday Fun, by Daphne Oz, is the sort of book you love to hate, but secretly love to love. It’s a comprehensive guide to living a gorgeous life, with a lot of gorgeous recipes and tips on how to be gorgeous. The photography is gorgeous. Daphne is gorgeous, and if you could just live life according this guide you could be too! The grand thing is that Daphne doesn’t preach perfection so much as how to get the maximum pleasure out of life. How to, dare we say, relish life?
Really, it’ll tell you how to be ultra-fab in mind, body, and soul. Step one is to have an ultra-fab dad, methinks. Daphne’s pops is Dr. Oz, of Oprah fame, but I dug a bit deeper and found out that Daphne is no slouch. She is author of a couple of books now, and a co-host on “The Chew” as well as being a Princeton graduate, and co-founder of the non-profit HealthCorps which helps provide kids with nutrition, exercise and stress management. She’s relishing the heck out of life.
In terms of structure, Relish follows how we eat throughout the day. It starts with a chapter on breakfast, then follows with chapters on cooking and nutrition. The basics! The chapter “Head in the Game” is filled with gems about meditating and figuring out your purpose in life. But then we get “All Done Up” which is the chapter on things like make-up and how to curate your closet.
Lemme just tell you. I recently learned transcendental meditation and I curate the crap out of my patterned tights collection, and both are pertinent to my way of life. So Daphne is in the right on these chapters.
Relish continues in its journey through dinner, drinks (thank god) and dessert, interspersed with chapters on things like home design, party-throwing, travel tips and finding your soul mate. There is a bit of advise on everything under the sun in this one: hobbies, weddings, even spackling all get the fabulous Daphne treatment.
But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Let us instead fortify ourselves with a proper breakfast. Then we can tackle world peace and how to organize our candle collection.
I decided to share the recipe for a breakfast pudding. It is a nutritious one, made with fruit and chia seeds, Oh! Did I forget to mention that Relish is a very healthful cookbook? It is. Enjoy! No—wait for it—relish!
Chai-Raspberry Chia Seed Pudding adapted from Daphne Oz’s Relish
- 2 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut or almond milk (I used almond)
- 2 chai tea bags (I used Twinings)
- 4 Tbsp. maple syrup + more to serve
- 1/2 cup chia seeds (It don’t matter if they’re black or white-I’ve tried both)
- 1/2 tsp ground cardamom (I omitted because I am not a fan)
- 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (I doubled it)
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut, shredded (I omitted, as I hate coconut)
- 1 cup fresh raspberries
Put a small saucepan over medium-low heat and heat the milk until scalding, which means small bubbles are starting to form at the edges but it should be nowhere near boiling. Take off the heat and add the tea bags. Cover and steep for five minutes. Allow to cool and remove the bags. Add the milk, syrup, seeds, cardamom, cinnamon and vanilla to something glass. I used a pyrex measuring cup, though Daphne calls for putting them in a glass jar. If in a glass jar, put the lid on securely and shake vigorously for about 30 seconds. If in the measuring cup, whisk the heck out of it. No matter what the vessel is, put it in the fridge and allow at least four hours to get thick. Stir about every 30 minutes.
When the pudding is thick, toast your coconut in a small skillet over medium heat, shaking the pan until the coconut is lightly browned and crispy. Puree half of the berries and stir it into the pudding. Top with the remaining berries and coconut. Drizzle in some more maple syrup if ya like. I like.
