QUICK EASY HEALTHY MEALS
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
Quick & Easy Meals
(Clarkson Potter) ISBN 978-0307407580 0307407586
Healthy meal planning is easy with this quick and easy cookbook filled with time saving tips. More than 200 healthy meal recipes provide fast alternatives to packaged meals and take out meals.
A nutrition analysis accompanies meal assembly instructions, ensuring nutritious meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Planning healthy family meals
The 358-page American Heart Association cookbook begins with family meal planning ideas, including grocery shopping tips and heart smart cooking (e.g., steaming, microwave cooking, roasting) techniques.
Each Quick & Easy Meals chapter begins with a recipe index. Each easy healthy recipe specifies the number of servings, preparation time and cooking time. You can prepare many of these nutritious meals, including 60 main dishes, in less than 30 minutes.
A nutrition analysis notes the number of calories, total fat, saturated, trans, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, fiber, sugars, proteins and dietary exchanges.
Fast healthy dishes
Recipe introductions include time-saving tips (e.g., use prewashed spinach and presliced mushrooms in the Asian pork stir fry recipe).
A Cook's Tip sidebar highlights many heart-healthy meals. In the ultimate steak sandwich recipe, for example, the Cook's Tip recommends smoked paprika as a low sodium flavor enhancer.
Except for two Ben Fink images of fast healthy meals, on the cover jacket, Quick & Easy Meals has no photos.
American Heart Association cooking tips
The American Heart Association cookbook provides cooking substitutes to adapt existing recipes into quick healthy meals. For example, you can substitute fat-free evaporated milk for cream.
The introduction to Quick & Easy Meals gives advice on reading nutrition labels (e.g., 400 calories per serving is high for a 2,000-calorie diet). It also lists high-sodium foods (e.g., salami), foods high in saturated fat (e.g., coconut) and foods high in saturated fat and cholesterol (e.g., cheese).
Some of the healthy family meals are vegetarian dishes, such as mushroom quesadillas.
Sample fast nutritious recipes
Mini vegetable cheese balls. Curried chicken salad in mini phyllo shells. Turkey tortilla soup. Pizza soup. Marinated vegetable salad with poppy seed dressing. Pear and goat cheese salad. Strawberry mango salsa. Island shrimp salad. Thai beef salad. Vegetarian taco salad. Chutney salmon. Citrus sole. Crispy chicken with creamy gravy. Sun dried tomato pesto chicken and pasta. Apricot barbecue chicken chunks. Round steak with sour cream gravy. Grilled sirloin with honey mustard marinade. Flank steak burritos. Orange sesame pork. Avocado veggie wraps. Savory pecan rice. Oven fried zucchini with salsa dip. Cinnamon apple bars. Chocolate zucchini brownies.
Contents
- Introduction
- Eating well: The Basics of a Heart Healthy Diet
- Planning ahead: Meal Organization Strategies
- Shopping smart: Grocery Shopping Strategies
- Getting organized: Kitchen Essentials
- Cooking healthy: Heart Smart Techniques
- Time saving tips: From Our Cooking Experts
- Using this book: About the Recipes
- Recipes
- appetizers, snacks and beverages
- soups
- salads
- seafood
- poultry
- meats
- vegetarian entrees
- vegetables and side dishes
- breads and breakfast dishes
- desserts
- Entrée recipe index
- Equivalents and substitutions
- Index
Author
American Heart Association publishes several heart healthy cookbooks.
More American Heart Association Cookbooks:
Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol Cookbook