Hi all,

I was in the bookstore today and came upon the cookbook Food Light by the Martha Stewart Kitchen. The recipes list the calories per serving, which always fall under 500. I must say I was impressed with the book! Great recipes, great pictures, and great layout! I didn't buy it (knowing that cookbooks are the most purchased and least used of all book categories), but am seriously thinking about it. It's definitely worth a bookstore perusal.

Freelance

My mom gets the Food magazine and I really like it. Even those recipes are usually pretty good calorie-wise, since they mostly are based on fresh vegetables, fruits, proteins. They're also usually not very complicated to prepare, the most elaborate is usually if it tells you to marinate something in the fridge the night before. And there are great pictures of the finished dishes and also often the steps involved, so it would be a great present for someone with not much cooking experience or someone who has to transition to a less-processed food diet for health reasons. (My mom and her sisters are getting to that age where the doctor says they need to either improve their diet habits or do medications.)

But I looked at the book and didn't buy it either for that same reason! I moved a couple years ago and divested a big pile of cookbooks that were mostly unopened. Also because a lot of the recipes in the book are similar to what is in the magazine, and my mom has several years of them stacked up now.