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Summary: This cook-book is an excellent gift for the ultimate hostess
Review: Absolutely beautiful dishes you can't believe you made yourself in a fairly short time frame! The best part is eating healthy and it tastes great.I've made recipes from this book for two weeks now and haven't missed meat at all. Just bought one for my mother and she bought one for a friend. Highly recommended especially for the host or hostess that likes to make an excellent presentation and impression!
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Summary: A fabulous book. Everything tastes good, and is very healthy
Review: As a fan of healthy eatting, I have discovered that there are not that many cookbooks that have healthy selctions that are truely wonderful. They generally tend to be the same old thing with a new herb or something! This book has been wonderful. Everything I have made in it has been great, and different.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: Everything I have tried in this cookbook is terrible. From fish to chicken, soup to breakfast. Poor, bland flavoer. All of the recipes are a LOT more trouble than they are worth. MANY other healthy cookbooks out there with MUCH tastier recipes.
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Summary: Bland and Blander
Review: Having been told I needed to get my cholesterol levels down, and finding little comfort in my favorite, well-worn cookbooks, when I saw this I thought "Aha, here it is. Healthful food that tastes good." Wrong. Healthful it may be, but tasty it ain't. We've tried two dishes in a row and both would put your tongue to sleep. I finally turned the second dish into something we could eat by grabbing my wok and stir-frying the pork - in olive oil, mind you - along with some soy sauce and sesame oil. And that gave me inspiration - to put this book on the shelf and grab my for-too-long-unused Chinese cookbooks. (One other lesson you learn from this cookbook - food phtotgraphers are a tricky bunch.)
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Summary: Odd combinations featuring unpopular vegetables
Review: I collect cookbooks, and have enjoyed other Williams-Sonoma cookbooks, so I ordered a copy of this one sight unseen from Book of the Month Club. It remains the only book I have returned to them. Thumbing through it, I could only marvel that they had managed to combine such a vast collection of unappealing recipes. The reason I found them unappealing rests mainly on the ingredients (more recipes for beets and brussel sprouts than I ever hope to see again - how about "brussel sprout chestnut compote" or a casserole of beets and shredded carrots?). If you like all vegetables, even the unpopular ones, and you like the pairing of unusual tastes that is the hallmark of California Cuisine, this may be the cookbook of your dreams. If you are looking for a cookbook that features recipes that fit easily into a more typical American diet, I don't think you will find it here. I can't recommend too highly that you look at a copy of this cookbook before you order it.
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Summary: How much lemon zest can a person eat?
Review: I use this book when I need a quick side dish or a simple entree. But the most of the recipes are pretty boring and bland. My other "healthy cooking" books make wholesome food delicious by using creative seasonings. The Mayo Clinic puts the grated zest of a citrus fruit in every other recipe and leaves it at that. Haven't they ever heard of herbs and spices?
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Summary: Great pictures, disappointing results
Review: I've had this cookbook for ten months now, and for the most part it now sits on the shelf, gathering dust. Why? Although the recipes are unique and creative and the pictures look great, the results for almost all of the recipes I've tried are a great disappointment. I believe that healthy, fat free, low sodium cooking doesn't have to be bland, but that's what the majority of these recipes are. And while other readers have found the recipes to be quick, I found them to be quite time-consuming. There are a few recipes in the book that I like and frequently return to, but too few to justify owning the book.
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Summary: Fabulous tasting, healthy meals that anyone can prepare
Review: In less than one week this has become my favorite cookbook in an already extensive collection. Full-color, glossy photos accompany each recipe. Every recipe is easy to prepare, healthy and flavorful. I served a five-course meal to guests on a weeknight after work. They raved about the entire meal and told others, who have been sending e-mails asking for the name of the cookbook. My step-daughter, who does not cook frequently, prepared a fabulous soup and an exquisite vegetarian entry while caring for a three-month old child. In other words, the recipes are simple to prepare and practical for working people. As a graduate of the Mayo Medical School and a practicing Family Physician, she also attested to the qualifications of the Mayo co-author and to the nutritional content of the recipes. If you want to eat healthy meals, but think that means giving up great tasting food, the recipes in this cookbook will convince you otherwise. Most items can be found even in small-town grocery stores, though a few may require a broader search. Any urban or suburban market will carry all of the ingredients required. I am buying this as a holiday gift for everyone on my list.
Rating:
Summary: A great collection of bland recipes
Review: The photography is the best part of this book. The pictures make the dishes look extremely appealing, but unfortunately the taste doesn't follow through. For example, none of the recipes include salt in the ingredient list. This allows the nutrion list to look nice in the sodium category, but who cooks with NO salt? I do find the book useful for ideas; for example, there's a recipe for black bean chili over polenta. That's a nice combination which I would never have considered. But I followed the recipe for the chili, and it was tasteless! The addition of some imaginative spicing turned the chili into something which had taste. This book strikes me as the ultimate in health books which make people think that healthy food has to be tasteless and a chore to eat. It's not that way at all! There are many other cookbooks available which describe dishes which are both healthy and delicious.
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Summary: Non-fat fads - is there an end to it?
Review: There are lots of wonderful recipes in this beautifully edited book, my only concern is the use of non-stick sprays instead of real and HEALTHY fats. I just wonder when this whole fat scare will end - are we to believe that using artificial but low - fat products is going to make us healthy? Otherwise, a very enjoyable cookbook....
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