78 of 92 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
good herb chart, a few good easy recipes. Diet advice not so much, attitude-tacky, not everything should be "sexy", September 23, 2010
This review is from: Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It - Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too! (Paperback)
I bought this book for 2 reasons, never having watched the TV show. First, diet Italian food, who wouldn't like that? and Second, the wonderful little section on Italian herbs and spices. That alone is worth the price of the book.
The recipes are simple and easy, but far too few to make a good cookbook, let alone a diet cookbook. Everything I've cooked from it, has turned out. That lemon chicken is excellent. But there isn't much there!
The diet advice is sketchy at best. A little on portion control, a good comment on Italian American food as served by such popular joints like the Olive Garden. Basically pointing out that the way food is eaten in Italy is much different, pasta is a side dish, not a main dish, and it isn't usually swimming in cholesterol. BUT as diet advice goes, this isn't enough for most people to lose weight on. As a guide to the reason why Mediterranean diets work for health and weight loss, this is lacking.
However the nutritional analysis; calorie counts, fat, carb and protein grams at the back was EXCELLENT and I wish more cookbooks did that!
Now to my more serious complaints.
I was completely repulsed by Joe's sidebar on the behaviour of some other woman on that TV show. Yes the actions were dreadful, but to stick them in the cookbook? Too much information! The author actually names a dish after this Danielle character, likening her to a prostitute. Again, extremely inappropriate in a cookbook.
I was completely turned off, not on, by the constant references to sex. Even she is a little stumped for explanations when she names a fish dish sexy! It feels like a grade 6 class of little boys who just discovered dirty jokes. Sexual innuendo and references abound as the author blends both food with sex in a crude and very inappropriate manner. I really don't care that she thinks her husband is juicy, nor do I want to know why!
I think this book has some very good recipes, that wonderful herb guide in particular, and could have used more good recipes, perhaps a bit more to explain why each was a "diet" food beyond the nutritional composition at the back of the book. She had a golden opportunity to explain the advantages of a Mediterranean diet, and include a wider variety of recipes.
In the end she wasted a lot of space on personal complaints and attacks, and WAY too much on sexual innuendo. Not everything is about sex all the time and it gets tiresome when her only superlative is whether or not a food is "sexy".
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27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
not a cookbook at all!, August 23, 2011
This review is from: Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It - Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too! (Paperback)
This so-called cookbook has more talking in it about the author's thoughts on "Italian culture" than it did recipes. The Author drones on and on about what "Italian" really is. If you want an Italian cookbook, buy it from Lydia, Mario or Giada! This is just smoke and mirrors.
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127 of 167 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A review from someone who has made a few dishes, August 15, 2010
This review is from: Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It - Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too! (Paperback)
I have actually tried two of the recipies which I think is more important than just basing the book on your personal opinion of Teresa Giudice. I made the Farfalle con Piselli and followed the recipie exactly. It calls for a chopped medium onion and 1/3 cup light cream, which, once put over heat like instructed to, the light cream evaporates and you are left with a pile of barely coated onions that you have to add to pasta. I had to add almost the entire pint of light cream to get it to a consistency that can be added to pasta, then, it was bland so I added nutmeg to give it flavor. Next up, Old World Pizza Dough. Not too bad, but tasted EXACTLY like what you can buy in the grocery store. No point in buying the ingredients for the dough when you can buy a $2 bag and it tastes and bakes the same. The next day, I was at my dad's and my stepmom was making pizza dough and using the recipie that comes with the Cuisinart food processor, which I just got. Her dough looked great, so I went home and made it and it was so much better than Teresa's! Not only did it taste better, but this book that is supposed you help you get into your skinny jeans calls for 1/4 cup olive oil compared the the Cuisinart one which calls for 3 teaspoons! Pasta Cacio e Pepe and Skinny Pasta Al Burro are almost the same dishes, the only differences are that one uses spagetti and one uses fettuccine, and the skinny pasta has an addition of two ingredients, butter and oil! Why make a cookbook where two of the recipies are almost identical? Not to mention the fact that those two recipies are pasta with grated cheese on them, that's it. Not exactly an intricate italian dish. I have a lot of better, tastier recipies that I have found by simply googling around.
I give this book two stars because it does have a lot of information on oils and herbs and spices and the drinks look good (although I didn't try them, I don't think you can mess up a bellini too bad). I don't get why Teresa (or Heather) didn't write a cookbook with better Italian recipies and drop the whole weight-loss aspect of the book. Just give some good full-fat Italian recipies that taste good-not every cookbook has to be a diet book. Unless you are a big Teresa Giudice fan, not worth the money as I don't feel it's a real cookbook, more of a component to the Real Housewives of NJ show.
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