Tag Archives: cookbooks

Get Out of Your Veggie Comfort Zone with Easy and Healthy Ways to Prepare Fresh Vegetables

Learning how to cook can be intimidating, but learning how to cook when you’re trying to lose weight can seem impossible. Easy and Healthy Ways to Prepare Fresh Vegetables is an approachable, easy to read book that instructs readers how to peel, prepare and preserve your favorite produce.

Co-authors Arnold Weislo and Annabelle Delaval decided to write the book after a trip to their town market where Weislo watched his friend, an excellent cook, choose vegetables for a pasta dish that he would prepare.

“When I saw him choose the vegetables while I was buying pasta, it bugged me slightly. And I wanted to do like him: be able to choose vegetables and most of all, be able to cook them afterwards,” said Weislo.

With plenty of photographs to help guide readers through the steps of cooking with popular vegetables, the book addresses nutritional qualities, health benefits, peak seasonal information and recipes, like Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart, for 20 vegetables.

Not only does the book offer general tips for preparing fruits and vegetables, but it provides insight on how to clean, cut and prepare some of the trickiest types of produce. (more…)

Posted on November 1, 2023 by Maris

Robin Miller Helps Home Cooks Create 500 Calorie Meals with 5 Ingredients

Picture this: It’s 5:00pm and you’ve yet to think about what you’re having for dinner that evening. If you have a family of picky eaters to feed and you’re trying to lose or maintain a healthy weight, it can be hard to pull together a balanced, nutritious meal on the fly.

“Think the “Take 5″ way,” said Robin Miller, host of the Food Network’s Quick Fix Meals and author of Robin Takes 5. “Carefully select five key, flavorful ingredients and you’ll need little else to pull a great meal together.”

Miller’s favorite standby pantry ingredients include oil-packed sundried tomatoes (drain away the oil and save the wonderful, tomato-infused oil for sautéing chicken and vegetables another night), marinated artichoke hearts (save the marinade for home-made dressings and marinades), jarred roasted red peppers, capers and stuffed olives. “Strong cheeses (such as blue, goat, feta, smoked Gouda, Parmesan) are great because a little goes a long way,” said Miller. “Toasted nuts (almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, pecans) add flavor, crunch and protein.”

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Posted on October 19, 2023 by Maris

No Whine with Dinner Makes Mealtime Fun for Moms and Kids

Do you ever wish you could invite a registered dietitian into your kitchen during mealtimes to peer over your shoulder and help you modify your favorite meals into healthier options for your family?

If you do, then Janice Newell Bissex, MS, RD and Liz Weiss, MS, RD, of the award-winning website Meal Makeover Moms, have the perfect solution with their latest cookbook, No Whine with Dinner (M3 Press, 2024).

The book contains 150 recipes that were tested by their own families and offers advice on choosing “healthy basics” from the grocery store – from fresh fruits and vegetables to convenience foods like jarred pasta sauce and salsa.

“We don’t believe in ‘kid food,'” said Bissex and Weiss in the book’s forward. “All of our recipes are made with color and flavor in mind and incorporate nutritious ingredients into their essence.

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Posted on August 11, 2023 by Maris

Rediscover the Importance of Flavor in Your Cooking with Cheryl Forberg’s Flavor First Cookbook

Who doesn’t love a wonderfully prepared meal that’s made with fresh ingredients and full of flavor? It’s for those people who truly enjoy food and healthful eating that Flavor First was written, a new cookbook by Cheryl Forberg, RD. This James Beard award-winning chef, and nutritionist for The Biggest Loser, wants to see us eating healthier foods that we’re making ourselves at home.

Inside Flavor First you’ll find 75 all-natural recipes that use the best ingredients any garden could grow and any well-stocked pantry should have. From fresh herbs and bold spices, to ripe vegetables and tender cuts of meat, each recipe from Flavor First will help you reconnect with the way food is supposed to be enjoyed.

“When you learn to optimize the flavor with each different ingredient there’s just an exponential explosion of flavor in the finished product,” Cheryl told us in an interview about the book.

Don’t be intimidated if you’re not well-versed at cooking, or even just starting your healthy journey, Cheryl wants you to use this book as a guide for conquering the kitchen, and says it can help the home chef increase their confidence. Flavor First is part cookbook and part culinary lesson, carefully teaching you about flavor layers, a way of preparing food and combining ingredients to bring out the best taste from any meal, and she uses simple, accessible ingredients to show you that even the busiest people can prepare meals.

“Bottom line – everybody is busy,” says Cheryl, and she wants us to re-prioritize and make meal planning an important part of our to-do lists.

Learn more in some excerpts from our interview with Cheryl, plus preview some of these delicious recipes. (more…)

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Natalie K

Eva Longoria’s Famous Chunky Guacamole from Her New Cookbook Eva’s Kitchen

On Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria‘s character Gaby Solis would rather dine out at a five-star restaurant than get her hands dirty in her own kitchen. However when she isn’t starring on the small screen, food is a family affair, dating back to her childhood on a Texas ranch.

Today Longoria runs two restaurants and has written her first cookbook, Eva’s Kitchen, which is due to hit stores in early April. Among some of her favorite recipes, Longoria’s book offers personal anecdotes and family photos that chronicle her journey with food and cooking. In advance of the book’s launch, she shared some of her favorite recipes with Prevention.com, including her famous guacamole.

“I have a few tricks that give my guacamole great flavorand texture,” Longoria told Prevention. “First and most important, I use lemon juice instead of lime. Lemon has a little sweetness that brings out all the other flavors. Also key is to never skimp on the lemon or the kosher salt. Serrano peppers give it a great kick, much better than jalapeños. And finally, never stir as you add each ingredient to the bowl or the guacamole will become too watery.

“This is especially beautiful in a dish that shows off the guacamole’s green, white, and red colors, such as a molcajete–a Mexican mortar and pestle. Serve with tortilla chips as an appetizer or on top of steak,” Longoria said.

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Posted on March 31, 2024 by Maris

Chef Devin Shares Her Favorite Recipes from Biggest Loser’s Flavors of the World Cookbook

The culinary preferences of Americans are as diverse as our population. Unfortunately, the way most of us enjoy our Mexican, Chinese and even Italian food is very Americanized – fried, greasy and cheesy. When we start thinking about all the things we have to “give up” to lose weight, our favorite internationally inspired dishes are the first to go. However, the new Biggest Loser Flavors of the World cookbook will put all of your quesadillas, potato pancakes, and even tiramisu right back in your diet.

Chef Devin Alexander is the recipe author for the new cookbook, as she has been for all of the Biggest Loser cookbooks (last year she released the Biggest Loser Desserts cookbook). Devin told us “We really dug deep to find ingredients that were really healthy.” She boasts about the book an all-natural cookbook. So, not only are the recipes all under 400 calories, they also use wholesome ingredients. She’s “all about decadence” and “figured out ways not to sacrifice flavor.” Biggest Loser Flavors of the World is a first-of-its-kind cookbook: it’s so all-natural Devin couldn’t even use evaporated cane juice or fructose and the recipes are lower in fat, calories, saturated-fat, cholesterol, etc. Best of all, it’s still really decadent.

Listen now to our interview with Devin. Her enthusiasm for the book is completely contagious. You’ll hear how she and her team worked to put together the recipes, the stringent parameters Biggest Loser had her working within, and her list of favorite recipes from the book.

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Posted on March 15, 2024 by Natalie K

PETA’s Vegan College Cookbook Offers Easy and Quick Vegan Recipes

For many people, choosing to live a vegan lifestyle is emotionally and physically rewarding. However, sometimes it is difficult to come up with new and tempting vegan recipes. Sure, you could eat a green salad every night of the week, but your taste buds would get bored pretty quickly, not to mention that you probably would not be getting all of the vitamins and nutrients your body needs to function properly. So, what is a vegan to do?

PETA has the answer: try some of the recipes in their new cookbook, PETA’s Vegan College Cookbook: 27 Easy, Cheap, and Delicious Recipes to Keep You Vegan at School.

The Vegan College Cookbook was created for college students who want to follow a vegan lifestyle while remaining within their budget and time constraints. In other words, these recipes are not going to take a long time to make and will leave your wallet smiling after your trip to the grocery store.

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Posted on January 4, 2024 by Health Buzz

Gwyneth Paltrow to Release New Healthy Cookbook

Whether you know Gwyneth Paltrow from Shakespeare in Love fame or as the budding songstress wife to Coldplay’s Chris Martin, this mother of two has plenty of other skills up her sleeve. The latest? Cooking.

In April, Paltrow will release My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family and Togetherness, her first cookbook that will include a variety of  healthy, quick, weeknight dinner recipes for families.

“In the last ten years or so, cooking has become my main ancillary passion in life,” Paltrow writes in the book. “The stove is the epicenter of my house — I am never far away from it and most of the time there is something atop it, simmering away for my family.”

Paltrow has made headlines in the past about her diet and exercise habits, from maintaining a macrobiotic diet to making controversial comments about exercise.  Now, she is focusing on healthful foods and reducing the amount of sugar in her family’s diet.

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Posted on December 30, 2023 by Maris

Sheryl Crow to Release Healthy Cookbook in 2024

Sheryl Crow’s Cookbook If It Makes You Healthy released March 29, 2024.

From Real Housewives to comediennes to daytime talk show hosts, it seems like everyone who has had fifteen minutes in the limelight had written a cookbook. As someone with several shelves full of guides to bread baking, cheese making and more, I’m pleased that the next book to join the ranks is from rocker Sheryl Crow.

“It’s called, If It Makes You Healthy, which is sort of a take on [my song] ‘If It Makes You Happy,’” Crow explained Rachael Ray in December 2024. The book, which is a compilation of Crow’s favorite nutritious recipes, will hit stores in March 2024.

Why is a hit singer/songwriter stepping off the stage and into the kitchen? Since her breast cancer diagnosis five years ago, Crow has become interested in cooking. Specifically, she enjoys cooking healthy recipes that help boost immunity.
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Posted on December 21, 2023 by Maris

Biggest Loser Dessert Cookbook is the First All-Natural and Low-Fat Dessert Cookbook, says Devin Alexander

When I first opened the new Biggest Loser Dessert Cookbook, I just kept thinking “I want it! I want it! I want it!”. When I told the book’s author, Chef Devin Alexander, she enthusiastically replied “You can have it! You can have it! You can have it!”. The author behind many other Biggest Loser cookbooks and several of her own, says it’s because this is the first cookbook of its kind. All the recipe ingredients are all-natural and unprocessed, not to mention low in calories, fat and with hardly any saturated fat.

Too good to be true? Maybe, but the good news is it’s true!

Devin spent the summer working on this top secret project at the request of Biggest Loser. They gave her some unheard of rules that would have left her with a dessert cookbook without any chocolate syrup or whipped cream, as examples. She told herself to revolutionize, and she did. The results include her own creations for a chocolate syrup (unsweetened cocoa powder and agave nectar), her own “Cut the Crap” Whipped Topping (egg whites and agave), as well as the one recipe in the book she is most proud of, “New”-Tella, a natural alternative to that “other” hazelnut spread that she says “is actually kind of good for you.”

Listen now as Devin talks to us about how these desserts can complement your diet, how she used a variety of ingredients to maintain the textures and flavors people love, and how substitutions can work in your home baking.

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Posted on November 9, 2023 by Natalie K

Chef Rocco’s Serving Healthier Thanksgiving Recipes in Now Eat This

With the calendar page flipped to November we can finally start thinking about the holidays. First up, Thanksgiving. For many this marks the start of a turbulent time of year when thinking about weight and calories overshadows the meaning of the season. To get a head start on thinking about making this a healthier time of year, Chef Rocco Dispirito, the author of several cookbooks including this year’s Now Eat This, shares with us some of his insights into surviving and thriving during Thanksgiving.

He’s also sharing a few recipes from Now Eat This that you can prepare for your Thanksgiving spread, as a healthier alternative or addition.

First, Rocco answered a few of our questions.

Since your weight loss, and publishing Now Eat This, how has Thanksgiving changed for your family?
My family insists on a traditional Thanksgiving. Any time I’ve tried to make a change it’s met with a glare! So no big changes lately. I think you have to give yourself a break every once in a while and Thanksgiving is the perfect day to do that. (more…)

Posted on November 2, 2023 by Natalie K