ZonePerfect Cooking Made Easy: Quick, Delicious Meals for Your Healthy Zone Lifestyle [Hardcover]

Gloria Bakst (Author), Mary Goodbody (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 24, 2006

From the cooking expert at ZonePerfect Nutrition, daily and weekly menus that make it easy for you to stay in the Zone

Offering a proven formula for permanent fat loss, optimal health and all-round peak performance, the Zone diet has an estimated over two million followers worldwide. Zone Perfect Cooking Made Easy shows you how to stay in the Zone while enjoying delicious, easy-to-fix meals. It features 150 recipes from Gloria Bakst, whose work as the cooking and lifestyle expert at ZonePerfect Nutrition appears in the "Cooking with Gloria" section of ZonePerfect's well-traveled website.

Zone Perfect Cooking Made Easy shows you how to adapt the Zone's 40-30-30 (carbs-fats-protein) formula to real food and your real life and supplies daily and weekly menus along with down-to-earth explanations of the latest nutrition research findings.

Easy and Tasty Recipes for Zone Living:

• Lettuce Wraps with Thai Peanut Sauce
• Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms
• Tuna and Apple Salad
• Shrimp Scampi with Sun-Dried Tomatoes
• Scallops with Orange and Sesame
• Grilled Swordfish in Lime-Cilantro Sauce
• Grilled Mahi-Mahi with Strawberries
• Chicken Taco Salad
• Open-Face Avocado-Chicken Salad Sandwich
• Turkey Apple Quesadillas
• Grilled Lemon-Basil Pork Chops
• Chili-in-the-Zone
• Zucchini Lasagna
• Spicy Eggplant Stir-Fry
• Steamed Butternut Squash with Bok Choy and Mushrooms
• Sweet Crisps with Ricotta and Berries
• Apple Crisp or Fresh Fruit Crisp

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Keep your body in shape and your taste buds happy in the Zone

Gloria Bakst, a former food expert at ZonePerfect Nutrition, presents her mouthwatering collection of meal plans and recipes that will keep you in the Zone. So scrumptious and so simple to make, you just won't believe it's . . .

Breakfast . . .
Sunday Brunch Bagels with Smoked Fish
Blueberry Smoothie

Appetizers, Soups, and Salads . . .
Stuffed Mushrooms
Shrimp Soup with Ginger and Snow Peas
Arugula and Roasted Pear Salad

Fish and Seafood . . .
Grilled Swordfish in Lime-Cilantro Sauce
Baked New England Cod
Mussels with Artichoke Hearts

Poultry and Meat . . .
Chicken Stir-Fry with Almonds
Sauteed Turkey Breast with Mushroom & Garlic
Marinated Lamb Kabobs

Tofu, Tempeh, and Other Vegetarian Main Courses . . .
Italian-Flavored Tofu Sausage with Vegetables
Chili-in-the-Zone
Zucchini Lasagna

Vegetable Side Dishes . . .
Brazilian Black Beans with Salsa
Oven-Roasted Orange Vegetables
Grilled Eggplant with Hoisin Sauce

Desserts and Snacks . . .
Sweet Crisps with Ricotta and Berries
Summer Cherries Jubilee
Almond Biscotti

150 easy-to-make recipes . . .
2 weeks of family-friendly menus . . .
1 ZonePerfect program for every lifestyle!

Lose weight. Increase energy. Improve health. Feel great. These are just a few of the amazing benefits of the Zone lifestyle, the perfect 40-30-30 balance of proteins, carbs, and fats that's scientifically proven to help you slim down, shape up, and satisfy your cravings for real food. But how do you juggle your family, career, and busy schedule if your diet plan is hard to follow? It's easy with ZonePerfect Cooking Made Easy.

Specifically designed for real people with real lives, this incredible collection of simple recipes and meal plans takes the hassle out of shopping, cooking, and eating "in the Zone." Food expert Gloria Bakst avoids the overly complicated "block" method of other Zone meal plans and provides a realistic alternative for people on-the-go. She's done all the work so you don't have to, creating a wide array of mouthwatering dishes that are perfectly balanced, surprisingly easy to cook, and unbelievably good.

You'll learn how to:

• Stock your pantry and shop using the book's handy food guide
• Prepare delicious, balanced meals your whole family will love
• "Eyeball" a restaurant menu to find Zone-friendly items so you can eat in the Zone wherever you go!

For more than ten years, the Zone has proven to be a safe, effective way to eat well, feel better, and look your best. But that doesn't mean you have to work all day in the kitchen. All you need is ZonePerfect Cooking Made Easy.

About the Author

Gloria Bakst is a nutritional lifestyle consultant and the founder of Balanced Nutritional Lifestyles. Gloria spent seven years as the food expert at ZonePerfect Nutrition and wrote the popular Cooking with Gloria column on the Zone Perfect website. Her recipes have been published in Weight Watcher cookbooks, The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook and The Healing the Heart Cookbook.

Mary Goodbody is a nationally known food writer and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Taste: Pure and Simple. She recently worked with bestselling author Debra Ponzek on The Family Kitchen Mary also has collaborated on cookbooks with Williams-Sonoma and Art Smith, Oprah Winfrey's chef.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (July 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071457909
• ISBN-13: 978-0071457903
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #183,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great for a beginner, February 6, 2007

By 

iiheather "iiheather" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ZonePerfect Cooking Made Easy: Quick, Delicious Meals for Your Healthy Zone Lifestyle (Hardcover)

I bought this book expecting a quick and easy way to prepare delicious and healthy dishes for myself and my family. While it is quick, simple and healthy, the taste of the recipes is just ok. I'm a very good cook and a lot of the recipes turned out bland. After a while I ended up adding extra spices or using different cooking techiniques to make the dishes palatable.

All that being said, this book is a great resource for someone new to the Zone way of cooking and for someone that is either new to cooking or ,as in my mom's case, hates cooking and wants something easy to make.
I loved the fact that the author had suggestions for complementary dishes included in each recipe to help you decide which meat to serve with which vegetable and how to make it a complete Zone meal. No guesswork here!

Also, the first few chapters are devoted to teaching the reader about the Zone and it's health benefits as well as how to come up with an eating plan. There are also sample menus for week. It is a very well thought out book, but I just wish that the recipes were more interesting and that the book included pictures of the dishes. It's a good book to start with though.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BALANCED Nutrition!, September 5, 2006

By 

F. B. King (Marblehead, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ZonePerfect Cooking Made Easy: Quick, Delicious Meals for Your Healthy Zone Lifestyle (Hardcover)

I love this book! As a working person with too little time to cook, I can open nearly any page of Gloria's book and find something healthy and tasty to prepare, without a lengthy list of ingredients or an intimidating set of instructions. And her recipes aren't just quick and healthy, they are imaginative and delicious -- she freely combines poultry with fruit, for example. (I personally think a lot of these recipes could be made for ANY meal of the day, breakfast, lunch or dinner!) Best of all is her emphasis on balance: she offers good eating in the form of recipes that are balanced (carbs to fats to protein) in ways that we could all pay more attention to. This is ZONE eating at its best. Five stars for this cookbok!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Book!, September 9, 2006

By 

CJR Moore (Tulsa. OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ZonePerfect Cooking Made Easy: Quick, Delicious Meals for Your Healthy Zone Lifestyle (Hardcover)

So glad we received this book as a gift. Following it for the past 2 weeks has already made a major improvement in our energy level and healthy feeling. It is a much healthier and better balanced way of eating than Atkins and South Beach. The recipes are clear and easy, with very helpful notes and practical tips by Gloria Bakst. For people often on-the-move like us, one of the best things about this book is the great suggestions for mobile eating, in restaurants, and easy to carry healthy snack foods. Ms. Bakst's style, humor and friendliness make this reading a delight. Thanks, Ms. Bakst and Ms. Goodbody for a great book. Highly recommend!