The 1200-Calorie-a-Day Menu Cookbook : Quick and Easy Recipes for Delicious Low-fat Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and Desserts [Paperback]

Nancy Hughes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1994

Imagine savoring three delicious, satisfying meals every day without worrying about counting calories or calculating fat grams. Now you can enjoy hundreds of combinations of tempting, flavorful breakfasts, lunches, dinners--even desserts--all for only 1200 calories a day.

Every dinner contains no more than 400 calories per serving. Each breakfast and lunch contains only 350 calories per serving, and every delicious dessert contains just 100 calories per serving. All you have to do is select the meals you want to combine for any particular day.

Choose from such low-calorie offerings as:

• Buttermilk pancakes with blueberry sauce, canadian bacon, and sliced oranges
• Roast beef salad with blue cheese in pitas and fresh apple slices
• Sliced turkey with mushroom gravy, whipped potatoes, peppered peas, and apricot halves
• Raspberry-kissed pears in phyllo nests

Each low-calorie, low-fat recipe includes easy-tofollow instruction and fat grams per serving. Many recipes can be prepared in 15 minutes or less.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Hughes breaks the 1,200 calories a day into breakfast and lunch recipes that contain no more than 350 calories each, dinner recipes that contain no more than 400 calories, and dessert recipes that contain only 100 calories. The majority of the meals contain 20 percent or less of their total calorie content from fat; all contain less than 30 percent. The totals are listed with each recipe. Hughes, author of three other cookbooks, insists this is not a diet plan but rather a comprehensive collection of recipes that can be used to limit calorie and fat intake. Many of the recipes can be prepared in 15 minutes or less. George Cohen

About the Author

McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809236338
• ISBN-13: 978-0809236336
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,234 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Diet > Low Fat

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

120 of 122 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you have tons of time, money , effort OR are looking for fresh ideas, this is okay, March 8, 2007

By 

Sheri Gill "Check out the books I've written!" (VA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The 1200-Calorie-a-Day Menu Cookbook : Quick and Easy Recipes for Delicious Low-fat Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and Desserts (Paperback)

I am home all day and have lots and lots of experience in cooking all kinds of foods ranging from easy to very difficult. While the recipes in this are not super difficult, this is not a cookbook for most of us.

Personally, I got this book to make dieting EASIER. I wanted a list of things I can throw together for 3 meals a day, and end up with about 1200 calories no matter which I picked from each meal choice. This book, doesn't do that.

For example, for breakfasts: individual fruit platters with hot popovers (huh?) or Fresh Banana-Oat Bread and vanilla yogurt with sliced fresh peaches. Geez! That is a lot of work for BREAKFAST!

Lunches: Curried Tuna and Pecans in Pita Halves with Ambrosia Fruits. Sure Or Wild Rice-Sausage Chowder with fresh tomato
I mean, I have all day, and I'm not making this for lunch. Dinner, maybe.

Dinner: Snapper on a bed of spinach-cheese sauce, basil baked tomatoes and gingered rice. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

If you want NEW and FRESH recipe ideas, this really is a great book, so I gave it three stars. But for most regular joes, this is not a great book,recipes are too complicated and if it's too much effort to just eat every day, folks will drop their diet and eat pasta and chips instead.

89 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious, low-cal meals, November 30, 2002

By 

Louis Gudema (Newton, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The 1200-Calorie-a-Day Menu Cookbook : Quick and Easy Recipes for Delicious Low-fat Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and Desserts (Paperback)

My wife and I have made about a dozen of these recipes and have never been disappointed -- they have been consistently delicious. We also use "Eating Well" magazine and a few other sources of tasty low-cal recipe, in addition to standard cookbooks.

Each recipe tells you the calories (important) and grams of fat (not as important) per serving. As with any cookbook, there are always minor modifications to make to suite your taste (for example, the lemon-mustard chicken with angel hair pasta recipe doesn't create enough sauce for our taste, so we increase those ingredients).

These are not "15-minute recipes," nor do they take hours. You have to want to cook; it's not uncommon for a dinner entree to have a dozen ingredients. But the rewards are worth it.

70 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The 1200-Calorie-A-Day Menu Cookbook : Quick and Easy Recipe, June 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The 1200-Calorie-a-Day Menu Cookbook : Quick and Easy Recipes for Delicious Low-fat Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and Desserts (Paperback)

This book is perfect for me. I want to eat a 1200 calorie a day menu. But I was spending so much time compiling recipes from the various books that I have that I gave up. This book allows you to choose a breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. No strict regimen. No matter which meals you choose, you don't exceed 1200 calories. It's perfect. The recipes are more "gourmet" which is what I like to prepare. All the recipes are based on 4 people but its not that difficult to scale down to one or two, it just takes a smidgen of effort. Best recipe book I have found to date.