Jeremy and I walked over to the library on Saturday to check out a few cookbooks for my dad. He's not doing well (to say the least) and one of his trillion doctors suggested he just start 'eating clean'. You know- fruits, veggies, healthy organic meats... REAL food. Food that will rot, that doesn't come in a box.
Considering my dad has been eating downright terrible (but tasty!) food for the past 70 years, I was specifically looking for cookbooks with recipes that were 1) easy to make with less than 10 ingredients 2) affordable 3) healthy 4) tasty. Tasty being the most important, cause if it doesn't at least taste salty or fried, dad won't eat it.
The one I ended up really liking was the Fat Belly Diet by the editors of Prevention Magazine. Now, I'm not really a fan of any diet. I think every plan has its ups and downs, but this cookbook is really good, regardless of following the plan or not. I am a fan of order, so I love the way it's laid out (see photos below). However, as far as a diet goes, this one seems to be fairly smart. Allowing you four meals a day, all around 400 calories each, and adding things that we all like to eat such as nuts, olive oil, peanut butter, chocolate.
So far I made a few of the recipes to see if they're Sloan Powell friendly, and I've been really impressed! Here are a couple of the recipes I've made that I recommend-
Greek Grilled Chicken Breast - This was SO GOOD! Some changes I made: added 2 Tbls of Olive Oil, 1 good squeeze of a lemon, and an extra clove of garlic. I also blended the yogurt sauce instead of just stirring. This is meeting my craving for Chicago Style Gyro in Inglewood, but not resolving it. I miss my old neighborhood sometimes. :(
Korean Beef in Lettuce Leaves - Also so good! A little on the spicy side for me, but only because I listened to a review that said to add a heaping tablespoon of Chili sauce. If you like a medium to hot dish, add it. If not, stay away. Or, just add to taste. I added a can of sliced water chestnuts (and sliced them even more), used a mango chutney instead of orange marmalade because I couldn't find a jar that didn't have high fructose corn syrup, but then again I was at Albertsons, not Whole Foods.
I would recommend checking this cookbook out at the library and copying a few recipes for your collection. Lots of good items. Speaking of- did everyone but me realize that libraries let you check out just about everything? Cookbooks, movies, new books, old books, magazines - I'm so ashamed for my lack of knowledge about this!
I love that it's easy to read and designed well (geeeek) - Title of the recipe, brief description, ingredient list, directions and then to the far right, all the nutritional information. At the bottom, it allows you to "add" items to make it a complete meal and a reference to another recipe in the book.
Here's the "make it a meal" section:
