Save 34% Off: Healthy Helpings Review & Ratings

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Healthy Helpings Review

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This cookbook by Norene Gilletz excites me so much that I don't know where to start in sharing a review with you. If you don't have it, get it. ...as fast as you can!
The cookbook covers so much that everyone is sure to find something that satisfies within the 411 pages of recipes -- 800 recipes no less! Did you see that? 800 recipes are included in the easy to read, colorful to look at, several recipes with photos of several dishes in each photo. The photos are all in one place and I think I like that very much.The title reads "800 Fast and Fabulous Recipes for the Kosher (or Not) Cook". I am not a Kosher cook but I have found so many recipes that I know I will use over and over again. But for those who ARE Kosher cooks, you will be very happy with this cookbook also. There is a whole section on holidays and celebrations that I'm sure will be helpful to you.
You can tell Norene Gilletz knew what she was doing in designing this cookbook. In the beginning she acknowledges all those who have helped her with ideas or tested recipes. She credits her Mother as one of several who inspired and taught her, or encouraged and advised her. She had willing taste testers and even had a focus group to keep her apprised of what people want and "need to know in today's kitchen".
"Healthy Helpings" is a healthy cookbook so for those who look for the nutritional analysis, you will be happy to know it is included with each recipe. There is a whole page of guidelines Norene used to analyze her recipes. I personally found it very helpful to know things like "4 to 6 servings" was analyzed for 4 servings or "optional ingredients and garnishes in unspecified amounts were not calculated". These are the questions that sometimes puzzle those who are trying hard to figure closely all the nutritional analysis.
As any thorough cookbook author would include, there is a list of staples for a healthy kitchen and it includes oils/vinegars, mayonnaise/salad dressings, dried legumes, tomato products, canned vegetables/legumes/fruits/fish/soups, pastas/grains/cereals, snack foods/cookies/crackers, breads/bread crumbs, beverages/juices/miscellaneous, and dried herbs & spices, baking supplies. There is also a section on perishables, frozen foods and herbs. There is so much information under each of the staple items and so much "healthy" information listed before you even get to the first recipe! I really like this in a cookbook!
The format of "Healthy Helpings" recipes is done in a single list of ingredients with directions below. There are two columns on each page, which seems to afford extra room to get more recipes per page. The print is large enough to read and is a nice feature without a feeling of paper wasting as in some of the other cookbooks I've bought lately -- the kind with large fonts and only one recipe per page and an obvious waste of paper. But not "Healthy Helpings"! I have the feeling that there was so much information to include that Norene and her publisher, Woodland Publishing, figured out the best way to get the most print on a page without it looking too crowded, etc.
Almost all of the recipes have the little friendly paragraph at the beginning of a recipe that we all love to read -- the little hint of origin or inspiration for that particular recipe. That feature means a lot to those who like to read cookbooks like they read novels (I'm one of them!).
I collect cookbooks and have thousands of them, but this is one that we will use over and over. In fact, I have made several of the recipes already and some even twice and I've only had the cookbook just a few weeks! My favorites so far are:
Chunky Monkey
Grilled Orange Teriyaki Chicken
Teriyaki Asparagus
Israeli Salad
Rainbow Rice Pilaf (the first recipe I tried from Healthy Helpings)
There are many other recipes I have marked to try so I already know this cookbook is going to take a prominent place on the cookbook shelves near the kitchen, probably next to Norene's "Food Processor Bible", which we use a lot also. In fact, I have loaded this cookbook with bookmarks and post-it flags to help me find the next recipe I want to try.
Another good thing -- the recipes call for ingredients that most of us already have in our cupboards. When I feel inspired to try a new recipe I can reach for "Healthy Helpings" and know I will most likely have all the ingredients on hand to make a healthy and satisfying dish.
I highly recommend "Healthy Helpings" as an addition to your cookbook shelf. At $19.99 it's affordable and makes a nice gift for yourself or to someone you'd like to help on their way to a more healthy lifestyle. I'm including the recipe for "Israeli Salad" below. Not only is it delicious and healthy, but it is also a very pretty dish to have on your dinner table.
Israeli Salad
1 head of Romaine or iceberg lettuce
4 green onions
1 medium onion
2 green peppers
1 red pepper
1 English cucumber, peeled
8 firm, ripe tomatoes (preferably Israeli)
4 Tablespoons olive oil (preferably extra-virgin)
4 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon sale (or to taste)
Freshly ground pepper, optional
Wash and dry vegetables well. Dice them neatly into 1/2-inch pieces and combine in a large bowl. Sprinkle with olive oil and lemon juice. Add seasonings; mix again. Adjust seasonings to taste.
Yield: 8 servings. Salad tastes best eaten the same day it is made, but leftovers will keep for a day in the refrigerator. Drain off excess liquid in the bottom of the bowl before serving.
Note: This recipe makes quite a lot so either halve the recipe or invite someone over to help eat it.
Reviewed and posted to CookbooksEtCetera@yahoogroups and Amazon.com by Monita Olive on February 24, 2004.

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American Heart Association One-Dish Meals: Over 200 All-New, All-in-One Recipes Review & Ratings

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American Heart Association One-Dish Meals: Over 200 All-New, All-in-One Recipes Review

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My partner and I cook real home cooked meals every night, but we don't always have tons of time to do it. Plus, since I've been working to lose weight, we've been looking for recipes with reasonable portion sizes, with more vegetables, which are lower in calories. We're only in our 30s and don't have any heart problems, but bought this cookbook for more general health-conscious reasons. We own over a hundred cookbooks, and this is our new favorite. We've had it for about four months now, and cooked a few dozen recipes from it, a number of them multiple times. Most of them have received either excellent or good reviews from both of us. Only a handful haven't worked well, and even those weren't bombs -- we think that they only needed minor tweaking to match our personal tastes better.
We're the kind of people who sit down once a week and choose recipes to cook that week before making up the grocery list. We put sticky notes on the top of the page to mark the selected recipes and then move the notes to the side to mark ones we've tried and liked well enough to note for later. Well, this book looks like a *forest* of sticky notes. Some weeks, we cook every night from this single cookbook. I love the variety of recipes, the detailed nutritional information, and the fact that most (maybe all?) of them only use one pot (a lot of other "one dish" or "one pot" cookbooks have you make pasta or rice separately). He loves the fact that he doesn't have to keep asking, "Honey, is this one on your diet?" Because everything in this book is fair game -- which is strangely not true of a lot of the other supposedly healthy cookbooks I have, once you look more closely at the recipes. We both love the results: not too fancy, just good, solid food for a weekday evening that's interesting but doesn't take too much time or effort. And the dishes never taste "diet."
This cookbook is great for people who want to make just a single dish, and maybe supplement it with a simple salad or a piece of good bread. If you (or someone in your family) won't be satisfied without separate meat, vegetable and starch courses on your plate, this isn't the cookbook for you. If you're happy with one bowl that has the vegetables, starches, beans, meat (or not), etc. all mixed together, dig in.
A fair number of the recipes use frozen vegetables and/or canned tomatoes, which is helpful for busy cooks who like to use lots of vegetables but only shop once a week and worry about the veggies going bad by the end of the week. At the same time, the recipes don't depend on using prepared foods (like mixes) as short-cuts, which is a pet peeve of mine with the fast-preparation books (the exception: an occasional can of cream of something soup). They assume you have spices in your cupboard and can get fresh herbs, but most recipes don't require hard-to-find ingredients.
The recipes do not include time estimates, which is a minus. Still, they are pretty consistent about giving good estimates for each step, so you can add up the cooking times yourself (not like a lot of books, that have steps you have to guess at, like, "simmer until just tender" and "while X is cooking, chop Y and then add it"). The recipes range widely in cooking/prep times, with some very fast (~20 minutes), many in the 30-50 minute range (including periods of simmering when you don't have to watch the pot and can be cleaning up the kitchen), and some that involve roasting for an hour or more or slow cooking for even longer.
No, there are no pictures in the book. But you get over it. The directions are clear (hooray!), and you can picture well enough what you should end up with.
Some of the dishes that we've tried so far and liked: lentils bourguignon; creamy turkey and wild rice soup; chicken ravioli Italiano; salmon and pasta with baby spinach; chicken and double mushroom stew; poblano chicken with rice; beef and barley stew; chipotle pork posole; fennel braised with red lentils; cassoulet with zesty tomato sauce... etc. If you have a hundred cookbooks, you're not going to find a lot of brand-new things that you've never seen before. However, these recipes have already been tweaked to make them healthier, so we don't have to guess about making substitutions. And they've clearly been tested more throughly than most, because they (almost always) work right the first time, which is more than I can say for most cookbooks!
All in all, this is a great find, and I highly recommend it.

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Save 33% Off: Vegan on the Cheap: Great Recipes and Simple Strategies that Save You Time and Money Review & Ratings

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Vegan on the Cheap: Great Recipes and Simple Strategies that Save You Time and Money Review

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The recipes in this book really are inexpensive to make. The book starts with about 28 pages of advice on ways to save money on food, and the rest of the book is devoted to recipes. I have tried the following so far, and thought they were great:
Cheezee sauce (excellent!)
Comfort loaf (Best vegan 'meatloaf' I've ever had)
Baked ziti (Delicious; I was amazed at how well the tofu worked in this dish)
Mexican rice and bean bake (Today's dinner - also outstanding)
The one caveat I have about the book is that some of the directions appear to be incomplete. This is okay for experienced cooks that can just figure out how to make it work. But someone with less experience and know-how could possibly end up wasting money by trying recipes that won't work.
For example, the Cheezee sauce recipe tells you to combine some ingredients in a saucepan. Then it says, "Turn the heat on medium and whisk in the soy milk. Cook, stirring, until the sauce thickens, about 1 minute." This makes it sound like you are supposed to just turn on the heat and have the pot on the stove for 1 minute. What you have to do is bring the mixture to boiling and then cook it for about 1 minute longer. So, the author forgot to mention the part about bringing the mixture to boiling. If you've never made a sauce this way before, you might throw it out if you follow the directions, because it's not useful in that watery state.
In the Mexican rice and bean bake, the recipe involves partially cooking some rice on the stovetop, and then putting it in the oven to cook the rest of the way. I think that there is something missing from the directions there as well, because I cooked and baked as directed, and had to double my baking time to cook the rice completely. (And, no, there is nothing wrong with my oven.) I presume that it was supposed to be cooked a little longer on the stovetop first, but again, the directions just indicated that you were to return the stovetop mixture to boiling, and then dump it in the pan to go into the oven. I suspect you were supposed to boil it for a little while on the stovetop first.
The food tastes great. She really does a lot with inexpensive ingredients. (One of the things I liked about this cookbook was that she only asks you to have a few non-standard ingredients on hand, unlike most vegan cookbooks, which expect that you are secretly running an international grocery store in your kitchen.) But considering I tried 4 recipes so far, and 2 of them had inaccurate directions, I'm a little concerned about the rest of the book. I'll just have to remember to be more vigilant when making these recipes.
I think this is particularly important for this book, because I am sure that this book was geared, in part, to the 'starving students' and other new vegans who want to eat vegan on a budget. In general, younger people have less cooking experience and therefore will be less likely to know how to 'fix' these recipes. Also, I have a few of Robertson's other cookbooks, and haven't ever come across this problem so far. So, I'm disappointed for that reason, too.
But, man, that Mexican rice and bean bake is REALLY good.

Vegan on the Cheap: Great Recipes and Simple Strategies that Save You Time and Money Overview

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Meal*lean*iumm: 800 Fast, Fabulous & Healthy Recipes for the Kosher (or Not) Cook Review & Ratings

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Meal*lean*iumm: 800 Fast, Fabulous & Healthy Recipes for the Kosher (or Not) Cook Review

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I recently received this cookbook as a gift. I have two other Norene Gilletz cookbooks. Although I have 30-40 cookbooks on my shelf, I have to say that this cookbook is something special. The recipes are a combination of traditional Jewish with more modern, almost California-style tastes. What makes the book special is its presentation. Each recipe is not only explained very clearly, there is an descriptive introduction to each one (e.g. says it's a favorite of her students/caterees), there are a number of notes offering tips, or replacement items. Also, she tells us which recipe can be frozen. Most importantly, the tips allow a nonprofessional cook to gradually learn how to be flexible in her/his cooking abilities, experimenting with different forms of the same recipe.

Meal*lean*iumm: 800 Fast, Fabulous & Healthy Recipes for the Kosher (or Not) Cook Overview

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Cooking ala Heart Cookbook : Delicious Heart Healthy Recipes to Reduce the Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke Review & Ratings

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Cooking ala Heart Cookbook : Delicious Heart Healthy Recipes to Reduce the Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke Review

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My husband had a heart attack so I bought this book to cook foods for him that I thought would be more healthy for him to eat. I don't know that much about nutrition, but I do know that these are some of the best tasting recipes that I have ever cooked...from any cookbook of any kind...and I have been cooking for a long time! I would recommend this book to anyone, heart problem or not!

Cooking ala Heart Cookbook : Delicious Heart Healthy Recipes to Reduce the Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke Overview

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Save 32% Off: The New American Heart Association Cookbook, 7th Edition Review & Ratings

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The New American Heart Association Cookbook, 7th Edition Review

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Last February 1999 I was hospitalized for several weeks with a heart problem. After I was discharged I knew I had to do something about my weight. I purchased the New American Heart Association Cookbook and changed my eating habits. Using the recipes from this cookbook, along with an excellent walking program, I have lost almost 50 pounds between the end of February 1999 and August 1999. There are way too many good recipes for me to list, but several of my favorites are: Chicken Fajitas (I use the low-fat tortilla wrappers that you can find in any store), Crispy Baked Chicken, Asian Grilled Chicken and Vegetarian Chili. The best recommendation I can make for this book is to tell you that my doctor now tells me that I have a very healthy heart and I sincerely believe that I owe it to my walking program and the excellent recipes from The New American Heart Association Cookbook.

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Healthy Jewish Cooking Review & Ratings

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Healthy Jewish Cooking Review

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Who knew that Jewish cooking can have a light touch? Raichlen, like many reformed Jews growing up in Pikesville/Baltimore in the 1950's, lived his Judaism through his foods - soups, mandelech, pirogis, briskets, desserts, flanken, knaidlach, tsimmis, and baklava. But, today, these foods can be done lite. His techniques include bake-frying and grilling, focusing on naturally low fat foods, using egg substitutes, using chicken broth instead of schmaltz, increasing the ratio of vegetables to meats, sauteing with non stick pans, and roasting. His 175 recipes include mock schmaltz made from canola oil, a breakfast sangria (for a Yom Kippur Break Fast) from the Caribbean, Curacaoan hot cocoa, quick bake-fried kreplach, sweet cheese kreplach, sephardic empanadas, baltic pirogi, veggie chopped liver, lowfat chopped chicken liver, a low fat chicken soup, matzo ball soup, hot borscht, Greek egg-lemon matzo soup, sauerkraut soup, salonikan soup, and sorrel schav soup. He includes eleven salads including a two-egg-salad made from eggs and eggplants. Speaking of vegetable dishes, there are fourteen, including a tropical tsimmis, a Jewish Romanian polenta (mamaliga) made with garlic and cinnamon; a basil marinated zucchini dish, and Pesach Spanekopita. Several breads are described, including a honey VANILLA challah, Passover rolls, onion rolls, matzo muffins, and Bukharan steamed buns with cilantro and chives. A Sephardic style scrambled eggs with garlic, paprika, cumin and bell peppers (strapatsata or Tunisian chakchouka) is a standout. In terms of meats, recipes include low fat Israeli spiced turkey cutlets, chicken cutlets with a mushroom stuffing, Syrian style Chicken with eggplant (a new Shepherds Pie); a sweet and sour turkey stuffed cabbage roll; holiday brisket with raisins, grape wine, prunes, and apricots; a Napa Valley style brisket; lamb tagine, and a Three-B's cholent. Five kugel recipes include a carrot apple kugel, and a zucchini kugel. Desserts include zvingous, or Greek Hanukkah fritters that are baked. They became a sensation after being mentioned in 1999 in a NYT Hanukkah recipe. A strudel recipe includes a Greek-Sephardic Pumpkin strudel that is usually eaten at Sukkot (Rodanchas de la Calabaza). Finally, let me add a word on Greg Schneider's photography... great. His picture of assorted low fat blintzes lying atop Hebrew newspapers, corralled by a set of tefillin is worthy of individual sale as a lithograph.

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200 Healthy Recipes in 30 Minutes-or Less Review & Ratings

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200 Healthy Recipes in 30 Minutes-or Less Review

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Snippets from Foreward Magazine (Book Review) -
Despite its title, Webb's newest cookbook is more than just a compilation of recipes: she delves into the whole process of organizing a kitchen, stocking a pantry, preparing weekly meal plans, and building shopping lists around those meal plans, including shopping monthly for staples.
Advance preparation is one of Webb's keys, and her tips for storing already-chopped onions and garlic in freezer bags, making double batches of marinades and salad dressings in advance, and freezing portions of fresh herbs and broth in ice cube trays, ready to pop into soups and stews, are great for cutting precious minutes off the nightly meal preparation.
Webb devotes one useful section of her book to what she calls "Quick Fixes." Here, she incorporates five staples -canned beans, canned broth, pasta, rice, and canned fish-into quick and easy ideas for those times when there seems to be "nothing to eat at home." She offers five recipes for each staple; tasty sounding examples are the Clear Asian Soup, Hungarian Noodles, and Salmon Niçoise.
In the last section, the author offers complete menus for myriad special occasions, including an Italian dinner featuring Chicken Rigatoni and Parmesan Zucchini, an Andalusian Supper with Shrimp Gazpacho and Roasted Vegetable Burritos, and a Dixieland dinner highlighted by Pork in Bourbon Maple Marinade. This engaging cookbook enables her to bring her techniques to an even wider audience. ~ Deborah Donovan

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