The Mayo Clinic Williams-Sonoma Cookbook: Simple Solutions for Eating Well

Rating:
Summary: Overall excellent...minor design issues
Review: First, this cookbook won a julia child cookbook award. That is always a good sign. The book is a large book with glossy wipe-able pages (something I love in cookbooks). It lies fairly flat altho with its paperback binding I am sure after lying flat a number of times on the same page, its bound to crack. It lies fairly flat towards the middle of the book altho at either end, its more of a challenge.

The beginning is a guide to healthful eating with a focus on fresh ingredients, moderate to low fat and lower sodium. Some dishes would be very hard to fit into a low carb life style as that isnt the focus..altho if you were low carbing with more of a focus on watching your glycemic index this book would work out much better.

There are many color pictures of the dishes. Most full page and opposite the recipes. There is a bit of an intro prior to the recipe. Sometimes about why a cooking method was chosen or about an unusual ingredient. Along the side of the pages are snipits called *cooking clinic* about how to choose produce, or how to preform a technique etc...or a *nutrition note* about a specific ingredient.

The layout of recipes is ingredients down one side and cooking method down the other. I prefer ingredients on top and cooking at the bottom. I find it less confusing but it is a personal preference. The recipes take up the whole page so the size of the font and layout puzzles me a bit. It could have been much bigger and easier to read...there is half a page of blank space on a considerable number of pages. When Im cooking I dont want to be switching back and forth with my reading glasses all the time......That said, they are fairly easy to read.

I have tried an enjoyed several soups. Chicken and orzo, lentil, and split pea. They were all very good! Most people, I think would be used to more salt and could add it if necessary. The roasted pepper sauce is very good. There is a recipe for lime scallops with orzo that I made with shrimp instead. It was really very good also.. Its quite low in sodium but the tang of the lime dims your need for the salty flavor. I didnt miss it with this one.

There is a section on what they call finishes... and they classify them as breakast-y, brunch-y...even a dessert. But they really have more of an appeal as a breakfast item. Whole wheat popovers with prune puree wont float the boat of many of my guests, frankly. Other more reasonable dessert choices woule be some of their fruit options.

Over all a very good book, with some minor design flaws. I can see this book fitting in to a number of popular diet plans as well as for the person who would just like to add a few more halthful items to their menus

Rating:
Summary: Overall excellent...minor design issues
Review: First, this cookbook won a julia child cookbook award. That is always a good sign. The book is a large book with glossy wipe-able pages (something I love in cookbooks). It lies fairly flat altho with its paperback binding I am sure after lying flat a number of times on the same page, its bound to crack. It lies fairly flat towards the middle of the book altho at either end, its more of a challenge.

The beginning is a guide to healthful eating with a focus on fresh ingredients, moderate to low fat and lower sodium. Some dishes would be very hard to fit into a low carb life style as that isnt the focus..altho if you were low carbing with more of a focus on watching your glycemic index this book would work out much better.

There are many color pictures of the dishes. Most full page and opposite the recipes. There is a bit of an intro prior to the recipe. Sometimes about why a cooking method was chosen or about an unusual ingredient. Along the side of the pages are snipits called *cooking clinic* about how to choose produce, or how to preform a technique etc...or a *nutrition note* about a specific ingredient.

The layout of recipes is ingredients down one side and cooking method down the other. I prefer ingredients on top and cooking at the bottom. I find it less confusing but it is a personal preference. The recipes take up the whole page so the size of the font and layout puzzles me a bit. It could have been much bigger and easier to read...there is half a page of blank space on a considerable number of pages. When Im cooking I dont want to be switching back and forth with my reading glasses all the time......That said, they are fairly easy to read.

I have tried an enjoyed several soups. Chicken and orzo, lentil, and split pea. They were all very good! Most people, I think would be used to more salt and could add it if necessary. The roasted pepper sauce is very good. There is a recipe for lime scallops with orzo that I made with shrimp instead. It was really very good also.. Its quite low in sodium but the tang of the lime dims your need for the salty flavor. I didnt miss it with this one.

There is a section on what they call finishes... and they classify them as breakast-y, brunch-y...even a dessert. But they really have more of an appeal as a breakfast item. Whole wheat popovers with prune puree wont float the boat of many of my guests, frankly. Other more reasonable dessert choices woule be some of their fruit options.

Over all a very good book, with some minor design flaws. I can see this book fitting in to a number of popular diet plans as well as for the person who would just like to add a few more halthful items to their menus

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: I accidentally got this book through a book club. I dreaded a "healthy" cookbook. As I flipped through, every full color photo looked more delicious than the last. I have made more than 15 or 20 of the recipies in this book. I have only made one thing that I didn't throughly enjoy! The sidebars of helpful tips and informtion about foods you thought you knew are excellent! The vegetarian dishes are also loved by my hard-to-please vegetarian sister! Nothing is bland as you would fear. Everyone always wants to know "what smells SO good" when I cook using these recipies. My book is falling apart from use, and it is not even a year old, yet! Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Not for the beginner cook
Review: I first viewed this book in-store and fell in love with the pictures and the luscious sounding food. A few weeks later I ordered a copy and immediately began using it. With a couple of exceptions, everything I've made from this cookbook has been a little off, flavor-wise. Although I still love this cookbook, I use it as more of a guide, since I know I will have to make some modifications in order for the food not to be bland. I do not recommend this book for anyone who is somewhat uncomfortable in the kitchen or just learning to cook. With the blandness that I've found in many of the recipes, an inexperienced cook may believe they've done something wrong or be afraid to experiment. But if you love having a basic recipe and then making it your own, I would recommend this, as it has definitely helped me cook more healthy foods.

Rating:
Summary: Exciting Food to Cook and Eat!
Review: I have been cooking vegetarian for 20 years and here is a new book to excite me with not only new recipes but easy to prepare, delicious, and healthy recipes. Easy, because they use familiar ingredients and keep them to a minimum. Delicious, because the flavors are intense and exciting - and all without adding any salt! Healthy, because they feature vegetables, fruits, and grains and give all nutritional information for each recipe. Also, I love having a full color picture of every recipe and this book provides that. It was enough for me to browse through the pages to decide that this was a book which was going to enlighten me. I am not disappointed. After trying 5 recipes so far and my husband and I relishing each one of them, I feel I have purchased a book worth its price. There are chapters which use meat and fish, but they are mostly set aside in their own sections from the vegetable and grain dishes so a vegetarian can call this book her own. I reccommend it to everyone and am now purchasing one for my mother as a gift.

Rating:
Summary: Exciting Food to Cook and Eat!
Review: I have been cooking vegetarian for 20 years and here is a new book to excite me with not only new recipes but easy to prepare, delicious, and healthy recipes. Easy, because they use familiar ingredients and keep them to a minimum. Delicious, because the flavors are intense and exciting - and all without adding any salt! Healthy, because they feature vegetables, fruits, and grains and give all nutritional information for each recipe. Also, I love having a full color picture of every recipe and this book provides that. It was enough for me to browse through the pages to decide that this was a book which was going to enlighten me. I am not disappointed. After trying 5 recipes so far and my husband and I relishing each one of them, I feel I have purchased a book worth its price. There are chapters which use meat and fish, but they are mostly set aside in their own sections from the vegetable and grain dishes so a vegetarian can call this book her own. I reccommend it to everyone and am now purchasing one for my mother as a gift.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the beginner cook
Review: The Mayo Clinic Cookbook was given to me as a gift from a friend who also loved it. The recipes have comprehensive nutrition analyses, and a color picture of every dish showing the individual portion size. This is very helpful, you can browse through and see what you're in the mood for. Their preparation times don't seem to correspond to a home kitchen, I wouldn't rely on them. The recipes are all very tasty, but I have found that the assortment of spices they use are very limited. They use black pepper to an extreme. I no longer use a recipe straight from the book without analysing the spices they suggest first. Changing the flavoring with different spices does not affect the nutritional value of the recipe, it just allows you to adapt the flavor to your individual palate. I have been able to control my blood pressure, reduce my blood cholesterol, lose weight, and save money, all by using this cookbook exclusively for three months. Try it. I'm back here to buy three more to give to friends this Christmas!

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic healthy recipes...but watch that pepper!
Review: The Mayo Clinic Cookbook was given to me as a gift from a friend who also loved it. The recipes have comprehensive nutrition analyses, and a color picture of every dish showing the individual portion size. This is very helpful, you can browse through and see what you're in the mood for. Their preparation times don't seem to correspond to a home kitchen, I wouldn't rely on them. The recipes are all very tasty, but I have found that the assortment of spices they use are very limited. They use black pepper to an extreme. I no longer use a recipe straight from the book without analysing the spices they suggest first. Changing the flavoring with different spices does not affect the nutritional value of the recipe, it just allows you to adapt the flavor to your individual palate. I have been able to control my blood pressure, reduce my blood cholesterol, lose weight, and save money, all by using this cookbook exclusively for three months. Try it. I'm back here to buy three more to give to friends this Christmas!

Rating:
Summary: The Mayo Clinic Williams-Sonoma Cookbook
Review: This became my 84th cookbook two months ago and is already my most used one. I picked it up in a store and could not put it down. The full color photographs of each recipe are very appealing, and each recipe I have tried has turned out delicious and looks exactly like the picture. The recipes are fairly quick and uncomplicated to prepare. The directions are clear and easy to follow. There are Cooking Clinic and Nutrition Note sidebars to help one learn as you go. My husband (a meat and potato man) and I are learning to eat healthier and this book makes it very easy with fabulous recipes like Mustard greens and macaroni, Provencal chicken and fennel, Rosemary lamb and white beans, and Teriyaki vegetable and beef kabobs. We have also loved the vegetable dishes we have tried; Herbed carrot and beet salad, Tender spring peas and asparagus, and Sweet potato casserole. There is even a recipe for Chocolate pudding pie, so eating well is easy with this cookbook!