The 1200-Calorie-a-Day Menu Cookbook : Quick and Easy Recipes for Delicious Low-fat Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and Desserts Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I am home all day and have lots and lots of experience in cooking all kinds of foods ranging from easy to very difficult. While the recipes in this are not super difficult, this is not a cookbook for most of us.
Personally, I got this book to make dieting EASIER. I wanted a list of things I can throw together for 3 meals a day, and end up with about 1200 calories no matter which I picked from each meal choice. This book, doesn't do that.
For example, for breakfasts: individual fruit platters with hot popovers (huh?) or Fresh Banana-Oat Bread and vanilla yogurt with sliced fresh peaches. Geez! That is a lot of work for BREAKFAST!
Lunches: Curried Tuna and Pecans in Pita Halves with Ambrosia Fruits. Sure Or Wild Rice-Sausage Chowder with fresh tomato
I mean, I have all day, and I'm not making this for lunch. Dinner, maybe.
Dinner: Snapper on a bed of spinach-cheese sauce, basil baked tomatoes and gingered rice. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
If you want NEW and FRESH recipe ideas, this really is a great book, so I gave it three stars. But for most regular joes, this is not a great book,recipes are too complicated and if it's too much effort to just eat every day, folks will drop their diet and eat pasta and chips instead.

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Imagine savoring three delicious, satisfying meals every day without worrying about counting calories or calculating fat grams.Now you can enjoy hundreds of combinations of tempting, flavorful breakfasts, lunches, dinners--even desserts--all for only 1200 calories a day.

Every dinner contains no more than 400 calories per serving. Each breakfast and lunch contains only 350 calories per serving, and every delicious dessert contains just 100 calories per serving. All you have to do is select the meals you want to combine for any particular day.
Choose from such low-calorie offerings as:
Buttermilk pancakes with blueberry sauce, canadian bacon, and sliced oranges
Roast beef salad with blue cheese in pitas and fresh apple slices
Sliced turkey with mushroom gravy, whipped potatoes, peppered peas, and apricot halves
Raspberry-kissed pears in phyllo nests

Each low-calorie, low-fat recipe includes easy-tofollow instruction and fat grams per serving. Many recipes can be prepared in 15 minutes or less.

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Betty Crocker The 300 Calorie Cookbook: 300 tasty meals for eating healthy every day (Betty Crocker Books) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Everytime I swear I won't cram another cookbook onto my bookshelf I leaf through something that seems to stand out among the other cookbooks I have, or is complete enough that it allows me to give away several cookbooks so that one can take its place.
This is one such cookbook.
Very extensive cookbook with around 300 recipes, it's divided into the following categories:
Center of the Plate
Savory Skillet Meals
Casseroles and Pot Pies
Meatless Main Dishes
Sandwiches, Salads, and Pizzas
Soups, Stews, and Chilies
Slow Cooker Suppers
Grilling Good and Easy
30 Min or Less
Cooking for Two
Which is why I say it's like having several cookbooks...if I'm in the mood to grill, I can pull this out and do it with fewer calories, if I have limited time, it still has recipes for me, if I don't want leftovers I use the cooking for two section, and I love the slow cooker suppers for those days when I want to throw some things into a pot in the morning and come home to a hot cooked meal, making me feel like my private chef slaved all day to have dinner ready and waiting! :-)
Here are a few examples of some of the recipes. I've found them to include easy-to-locate ingredients and be family pleasers so that the rest of the house doesn't even have to know it's "diet" food since they tend to be good comfort foods:
Honey Glazed chicken breasts
Baked Oregano Chicken (this is a great one at only 180 calories)
Smothered Cajun Pork Chops
Beef and Peppers with Biscuits
Cheese Enchiladas
Philly Steak Casserole
Cheese Filled Tortellini Soup
Black Bean Taco Salad
Baked Chicken and Rice with Autumn Veggies
Country French Beef Stew
Chicken and Dumplings
Creamy Crabmeat Au Gratin
Tex Mex Scrambled Eggs
Cajun Oven Fried Trout
Grilled Pizza
Tex Mex Meat Loaf
There are also lots of ethnic dishes thrown in if you, for example, are in the mood for Chinese food, Indian food, etc. And the meatless maindishes will make even a hearty carnivore forget what's missing.
This book, unlike most of my diet cookbooks, contains FULL nutritionals, even the protein, sodium etc. If you are following Weight Watchers you'll know the fat and fiber of every dish going in.
The instructions are super simple. I cook all the time but even if you have only made Kraft mac and cheese up til now, you'll not skip a beat.
NEGATIVES: I try to leave negatives on any review even if I love something since nothing is perfect but this book is jam packed with recipes, many with calories even in the one hundreds and they are easy to prepare, healthy, and tasty and have full nutritionals. That's an A+ cookbook for me. I'f I had to say something others might not like, I might say it doesn't contain photos for all recipes (it does have several photos, just not for all) but bear in mind the book is already at almost 400 pages with its tips and recipes so you might not fit it into your cookbook holder if got any bigger. :-)
I love this one. It's both rare and well-done.
p.s. My calorie goal when I am dieting is 1250 calories per day. (This was scientifically figured out for me with a bodybugg. I'm a weight loss coach.) I burn 1950 calories per day usually in just normal activities so this deficit enables me to lose well if I also increase my activity( a little over 2 lbs per week) since a deficit of 3,500 calories equals a loss of one pound. (Your body uses fat stores for energy when it has a deficit.) Your calorie needs will vary of course based upon your height and weight and activity but there are several places online that you can get an estimate of what your body uses in order to figure out the deficit needed for weight loss even without a bodybugg. (All weight loss is, afterall, is taking in less calories than you burn.) This is great if you want to eat fresh food yet measure exactly what you are taking in as well.
But I'm not always on a diet. And to be honest, I use this book even when I am not on a diet. I like the recipes. I just get to eat more!
This keeps me satisfied and it's more of a food change than a diet.

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