Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I ordered this cookbook because of its title. What I found was that it was a little deceiving. Having purchased other cookbooks with similar claims I figuered this one wouldn't be that different, just more recipes. Yes, some of the recipes were good, but they are not as quick and easy as I had hoped they would be. Maybe my definition of what quick and easy are is different than the authors. I didn't expect breakfast to be as involved as it was, especially when I have to make my lunch at the same time. It should have also mentioned that you would need to go grocery shopping on pretty much a daily basis. On the whole, it was a good idea, but I have better cookbooks that cost a lot less and are better suited for my time constraints.

If you're looking for basics, this probably isn't the cookbook for you. But the recipes are so incredibly good that this is the perfect place to look for the special meal. Who can resist blintzes with cheesecake sauce and raspberries? Or (my favorite) shrimp and cheese chowder? Probably not for the basic in-a-hurry dieters, but a must for the gourmands out there (whether you're cutting calories or not!)

I was told by my doctor that I need to restrict my diet to 1200 calories a day or else I have a high risk of adult onset diabetes (my mother is diabetic and I am overweight). I have found the cookbook to be very helpful in helping me manage my day. I scan the cookbook at the beginning of the week and decide what I will be having the rest of the week so that on no given day do I have to stare at the fridge wondering what I will make. I've found the meals to be very satisfying portion wise and quite flavorful. You won't starve by any means and some of my favorites are the simplest to make. My favorite breakfasts are the fruit and cereal and the peaches and shortcake recipe. The vanilla cream when it congeals is like vanilla pudding. The only meals I haven't been tempted to try were the dinners, none of them really struck my fancy, I rely on another low fat cookbook for that. The desserts didn't interest me much either. I tend to prefer just a small bit of chocolate or else have vanilla yogurt and fruit for dessert. I love the way the day is broken down though. When the doctor told me to cut my calories so drastically I never knew that I would be eating so much and losing weight so easily. I don't regret buying it and plan to memorize several of the favorites that I've tried so far.

I've tried recipes from a number of low cal/low fat cookbooks and many of them are so bland and tasteless my husband has begged me to never cook them again. Everything I've tried from this book has won rave reviews (especially the cajun chicken and beef stir fry). I also found them to be easy to adjust to personal taste preferences. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is trying to stay low cal without giving up taste.

If you only like eggs, bacon and ham for breakfast then these recipes are for you. While noting calories and fat Hughes leaves out sodium, cholesterol, protein, and all other nutritional information. If I wanted to raise my cholesterol and sodium intake then I'd eat eggs and ham every day for breakfast. In addition, she adds some variation of fruit to each breakfast. I could of thought of that on my own. I admit that I did not buy this cookbook for the lunch recipes, so my input in that section of the book may not be relevant. However, if I had purchased it for the lunch recipes I would have been very disappointed; no one has time to make these lunches on a daily basis unless they are at home all day and have nothing to do. I hardly have time to make breakfast and dinner! There were only a handful of dinner recipes that even seemed appealing to me and were good...however, would I have purchased this book knowing there would only be a handful of recipes I'd use? No. The desserts aren't worth bothering with unless you want to spend time preparing a variety of fruit and spice combinations. Not very exciting. Fortunately I only paid $8 or else I'd be a lot more unhappy. Also, there are no pictures and that makes it difficult to get excited about as well. If you're looking for a diet book look somewhere else. If you're looking for low calorie recipe ideas, look somewhere else. There is nothing special or exciting about these recipes.

I do a lot of cooking and a lot of dieting. This book has been a great help in getting a health menu together with 1200 calories a day. And you feel like you ate something when you are done. Every recipe I have tried is a real winner. My husband keeps asking me why this cookbook author is not a celebrity chef -- because everything is so good and low calorie too. This is a cooks book -- if you don't want to take the time to cook each meal yourself, it may not be for you. For me, it is worth the effort if the alternative is frozen or packaged "diet food."

Very disappointed!! I am a very busy mom who tries very hard to cook healthy & low cal for the whole family. When I buy a cookbook that claims it's quick & easy, I do not expect the recipes to have an average of 15 to 20 ingredients in them. I don't know what this author considers quick, but I sure don't think there is anything quick about these recipes! No pictures either!