Hi all,

I'm looking for a recipe book that includes healthy, cheap and easy-to-make meals. For some reason, I can't seem to find a good one that includes all three - either they're healthy, but not cheap or easy-to-make, but not healthy... I need to be able to make good food to take to work to avoid the constant temptation of the office goodies, but I'm poor and don't have hours to spend in the kitchen!

Thanks in advance!

I really like Terry Golson's "1,000 Lowfat Recipes." It's low calorie, as well as lowfat, so it focuses on veggies, turkey, low-fat substitutions for traditional recipes, stuff like that, and she gives nutritional info for all the dishes. I find it to be a good starting point for dinner ideas (although I add more seasonings to my cooking). I've bought several calorie-conscious cookbooks, but this is the only one I actually use.

Cooking Light--and if you don't want to spend any money (other than paper and ink) you can visit their website and browse through hundreds of recipes. I often do this--especially when I am craving a certain type of food. I'll choose, say Mexican, and go down the pages, picking what I sounds good, opening them in a new tab or page, and then I look at each recipe and if it sounds good and easy, I'll print it. Sometimes I'll print 10 or so new recipes to try. My kids really appreciate that I'm making new things--we were kind of stuck in a rut of grilled chicken with veggies and brown rice......it's nice to mix it up a bit!

I second alinnell's recommendate of Cooking Light. I often use them when I am looking for a lighter version of a recipe that I used to make. For example, I recently wanted a lower calorie version of pesto sauce. I looked it up on Cooking Light and they had probably 10 different recipes for it, all low calorie. But in terms of easy and cheap, it's hit or miss.

One cookbook you might try is the American Heart Association Quick & Easy Cookbook. Every recipe in it is easy peasy and I would expect that most are inexpensive as well. Sometimes the portions are little small, but the calories on everything are so low you can easily increase each recipe (by 1.5 to 2 times) to make a little more and not blow your calorie budget.

I subscribe to Taste of Home's Light & Tasty. It's the best! No ads, has cut-out recipes and all of them (all of the ones I've tried) are wonderful.

I'm personally not a Cooking Light fan. I paid for a subscription to that magazine and I rarely look at them anymore. Cooking Light is great for lots of health and fitness information, but I wouldn't really consider it to be a "recipe" book. That and it's full of ads, which is a little annoying. Every time I thumb through one of them, I'm like "OK, where's the food?!!?!"

LOL

LLV, I'm not really a fan of the magazine. I prefer their cookbooks and their online recipe finder--they're great!

Definitely the cookbooks would be better

That magazine is pure rubbish, LOL. I bought a subscription thinking it was going to be this bounty of wonderful light recipes every month, but instead I have to surf through a ton of ads and other things I DIDN'T buy the magazine for to find what few recipes they have stuck in there.

Oh and thanks for mentioning their website, I've never checked it out!

Thanks for the recommendations! I'm trying a new tilapia recipe off of Cooking Light tonight - I'll let you know how it goes

Try the epicurious website, too! I am teaching myself how to cook and have found many great recipes there. You can read and post recipe reviews- often people include how they have modified the recipe for diffrerent tastes, etc. Next up on my list of recipes to try is a tilapia with prosciutto and sage...

I like epicurious also, but I get miffed when they don't include the calories/fat/protein/carbs for each serving. It takes extra time for me to figure all that out. Also, many of their recipes are much more time consuming.