As someone who has been diagnosed as being pre-diabetic, I'm interested in cookbooks that will give me recipes that are good for me but that my family will like as well. This cookbook has those kinds of recipes. I tried one recipe, oven-fried chicken, which we liked. There are others I am interested in trying such as Walnut Chicken with Plum Sauce and the Herbed Yogurt Cheese Spread.
In the nutritional "per serving" information given for each recipe there is a PCF ratio. I guessed this to mean protien, carb, and fat ratio but had to look it up to verify that because it was never explained in the book. The carb count on some of the recipes seemed high to me for diabetics, especially recipes using beans, grains, pasta and potatoes. One of the soups has 53 grams of carbohydrates per serving. This breaks down into exchanges other than starches (such as milk, vegetable, and protein) but still, the overall amount seems high.
There is a section of herb blend recipes that is good. However, the recipes have "ded" attached to the ingredients, such as 1 teaspoon ded oregano, or 1 tablespoon ded basil. I'm guessing that means dehydrated or dried? No explanation is given.
Some of the serving sizes are quite small. There's nothing wrong with that, but one needs to be aware that if it says the recipe serves four, the servings of chicken may only be 2 ounces per person as was the case with the oven-fried chicken I made. For some of the dips and spreads, the nutritional information per serving is for 1 tablespoon. Also, many of the dessert recipes rely on Splenda which keeps the carb grams lower but may pose a challenge for those who avoid artificial or chemically processed "natural" sweeteners.
Overall the book has good, basic recipes that use ingredients easily found in any grocery store. The author also includes a good introductory section about managing diabetes, explaining the glycemic index, the importance of fiber, and how to make recipe adjustments which I found helpful. There is an appendix explaining how the food exchanges work which is helpful as a reminder to those familiar with it and a learning tool for those who aren't.
