Review: The Ultimate Low-Calorie Meals Book from BH&G
As the Autumn cookbook season continues it’s time to take a look at another recent release from the good folks at Better Homes & Garden, The Ultimate Low-Calorie Meals Book. And this one is tailor-made for helping folks drop those Christmas pounds.
New in the Ultimate series, The Ultimate Low-Calorie Meals Book offers hundreds of recipes and ideas that make eating healthy and watching your weight easy and delicious. These recipes are ideal for light and nutritious everyday meals that form the basis of a healthy lifestyle. Filled with dishes the entire family will love, recipes are clearly marked with icons that let you quickly identify recipes that are ready in 30 minutes or less, high in fiber, and low in sodium.
Packed with more than 400 delicious and nutritious low-calorie meals and hundreds of beautiful photos, The Ultimate Low-Calorie Meals Book is a great resource at a great price.
- Features more than 400 flavorful calorie- and fat-conscious recipes, including main dishes, snacks, sandwiches, pizza, desserts, restaurant favorites, and make-ahead meals
- Includes more than 300 gorgeous full-color photographs that make every page inspiring and easy to follow
- Special Healthy Eating Basics chapter
- Special features include substitution charts that help make every meal more calorie-conscious, up-to-date diet and nutrition advice, and much more
A book like The Ultimate Low-Calorie Meals Book is perfect for those who want to start the New Year by eating a little leaner. With hundreds of easy to prepare recipes taking up nearly 500 pages you could conceivably eat something from this book every single day and not repeat a recipe for over a year. That should keep that New Year’s Resolution from burning out in week two.
The book is well organized and chock full of colorful food porn. But hey, why take my word for it?
Ginger-Berry Pie and Vanilla Ice Cream
There are a lot of things growing this time of year to get excited about. Tomatoes, peas, squash, the list goes on. But for me the best thing about spring produce is berries. My favorite fruit on earth is raspberries, one of the few fruits incidentally that does not grow on the Gulf Coast where I grew up. Perhaps that is why I love them so, they are always a treat.
But I also love all spring berries like blackberries, strawberries and blueberries. There are two wild blueberry bushes in my yard and they are loaded with tiny little morsels of yumminess right now. My neighbor picked a bowlful to make her morning pancakes and I have already harvested a delicious pie from them. The best thing about those bushes is that it’s free food. Not exactly manna from heaven but blueberries from heaven are almost as good in this economy.
Now the thing is that pies are not exactly the healthiest things in the world. No fear, I have recently developed a new berry pie recipe that is healthy and good. Not normal healthy food good but good. Additively good. I rely on two of my old favorites, agave nectar to replace the sugar and coconut oil to replace the butter then I make a crust using fat free ginger snaps and now we have a flavor combination that is remarkable. And it’s easy to make, too.
This is for a 1.5 qt. countertop ice cream machine. I specked this out and a 1/2 cup portion has less than 80 calories. My pal Susan Irby (the Bikini Chef) will be so proud.
ToFurkey Is ToFunky
Tofu is not natural. It is a processed food, a highly processed food as a matter of fact. ToFurkey is tofu that is processed over and over and over again. Then it’s processed some more.
Now if you’ll recall I have already exposed to the world that everyone who says they like tofu is lying through their teeth. No person in the history of mankind, from the wheel to the moon has ever actually liked tofu. There is no universe where tofu is appetizing. Those who eat it do so because of peer pressure, insanity or some combination of the two.
Psychologists estimate that 1 person in 10 is completely incapable of recognizing sarcasm. So for those of you in that 10% I’ll take this opportunity to point out that the previous paragraph was a stellar example of sarcastic hyperbolism. It is my favorite way to make a point because, well, it amuses me.
That, by the way, was an example of narcissism.
So back to tofu being a nasty, highly processed food. Most people do not like it’s texture because, well, it’s nasty. In all honesty it is hard to find any fault with its taste because it doesn’t have any. Tofu is like eating Styrofoam, only a less appetizing Styrofoam.
Amy’s, a veg-friendly processed food company probably makes some of the most wholesome mass-produced foods on the market and they process their soy beans nine different ways in order to produce a batch of tofu. You can watch their process HERE. I have a lot of respect for Amy’s but even they get a few things wrong.
In their video they state that they only use organic soy beans which means they are not genetically modified. Genetic modification does not disqualify something from being organic. It should, but it doesn’t. I guess that’s the result of having a President that’s in the pocket of agri-business lobbyists. Or more accurately, four Presidents in a row.
So if Amy’s, a company committed to natural, wholesome food, processes soy beans nine times to make tofu can you imagine how many times less scrupulous companies do it?
Now that you know that tofu is a highly processed food dig this. Recently the History Channel did a segment about how ToFurkey is made. It starts with tofu (which is processed at least nine times) and processes it even more adding tons (literally) of additives and chemicals. You college kids may want to try the Processed Foods Drinking Game – just grab a bottle of Jack and take a swig for each new process. But be forewarned, you may not be around for the end of this video. Check it out and then read on:
After watching that, the pink goo McDonald’s uses to make their McNuggets doesn’t seem quite as gross. An interesting note is that the narrator actually referred to ToFurkey as healthy.
There is an important distinction to make here and it is probably the closest you’ll come to an actual point in this ramble of a post. Thanks to Weight Watcher’s, Jenny Craig, et al along with Hollywood and print media we have confused low-fat/low-calorie with healthy. Low-fat/low-calorie is not pseudonymous with healthy.
Cyanide is low-fat/low-calorie.
Sarin Gas is low-fat/low-calorie.
Weapons-grade Plutonium is low-fat/low-calorie.
E-coli is low-fat/low-calorie.
Herpes is low-fat/low-calorie.
Get it? Low-fat/low-calorie is not the same as healthy. Coconut oil is very high in fat and very high in calories but it is healthier than extra virgin olive oil, canola oil, butter and it is damned sure better for you than margarine. Both the medium chain fatty acids and the calories in coconut oil will ramp up your metabolism helping your body to burn fat cells better than just about anything out there. Coconut oil is a classic example of high-fat/high-calorie being healthy. ToFurkey conversely is a classic example of low-fat/low-calorie being unhealthy. Plus, it just doesn’t taste very good.
So before you start spouting off about how healthy or ethical tofu is I invite you to go ToFurk yourself. We ain’t inner-stead, thank ya.
