American Heart Association One-Dish Meals: Over 200 All-New, All-in-One Recipes (Hardcover)

by American Heart Association (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The subject of this volume-easy, healthful cooking-may not be original, but the recipes within prove to be surprisingly so. Recipes are divided into four chapters: Seafood, Poultry, Meats and Vegetarian. Luckily, the recipes are more exciting than the mundane section monikers. Salmon and Snow Peas with Ginger-Lime Rice, Chicken and Mushroom Cacciatore with Gnocchi, Spicy Spaghetti and Meatballs and Butternut Squash Risotto with Pistachios are among the tempting entries. Each recipe is accompanied by nutritional analysis (calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, fiber, sugar, and protein), but friendly commentary keeps this volume from feeling too clinical. Food is clearly the focus of the book, but appendices on Eating for a Healthy Heart, Meal Planning, Shopping and Risk Factors for Heart Disease make this a useful volume for anyone who has to watch their diet and health carefully. (Nov
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Juggling work, school, family, and home seems to be the norm in today’s hurried world. Many of us often grab a quick bite and keep on moving, sidelining healthful eating habits and nutrition. How wonderful it would be to wind down after a long, hard day with a wholesome, home-cooked meal. Now, the American Heart Association, America’s most trusted authority on heart-healthy living and diet, presents a brand-new cookbook that can help. One-Dish Meals is designed for the millions of health-conscious Americans who are always on the go.

The more than 200 simple and tasty one-dish recipes offer sensible, convenient alternatives to fatty fast food and high-sodium frozen dinners. The American Heart Association once again proves that healthful, satisfying meals needn’t mean sacrificing great flavors or precious time. Many of these delicious dinners practically cook themselves. And forget about washing a sinkful of dishes, because almost every recipe here cooks in just one pot—so dinner is easy to make and quick to clean up.

Arranged by category—meat, poultry, seafood, or vegetarian—each recipe includes nutrients essential for heart-healthy living. You’ll find everything from weeknight dinners to special-occasion favorites—from stews, meat loaf, and pot roasts to cassoulets, enchiladas, and even a tagine. All you need is one dish and this cookbook, and in no time at all, you’ll have a healthful, home-cooked meal.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; 1 edition (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609610856
• ISBN-13: 978-0609610855
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #95,593 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

93 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars our new favorite cookbook, September 17, 2004

By	joyous (Irvine, CA) - See all my reviews

My partner and I cook real home cooked meals every night, but we don't always have tons of time to do it. Plus, since I've been working to lose weight, we've been looking for recipes with reasonable portion sizes, with more vegetables, which are lower in calories. We're only in our 30s and don't have any heart problems, but bought this cookbook for more general health-conscious reasons. We own over a hundred cookbooks, and this is our new favorite. We've had it for about four months now, and cooked a few dozen recipes from it, a number of them multiple times. Most of them have received either excellent or good reviews from both of us. Only a handful haven't worked well, and even those weren't bombs -- we think that they only needed minor tweaking to match our personal tastes better.

We're the kind of people who sit down once a week and choose recipes to cook that week before making up the grocery list. We put sticky notes on the top of the page to mark the selected recipes and then move the notes to the side to mark ones we've tried and liked well enough to note for later. Well, this book looks like a *forest* of sticky notes. Some weeks, we cook every night from this single cookbook. I love the variety of recipes, the detailed nutritional information, and the fact that most (maybe all?) of them only use one pot (a lot of other "one dish" or "one pot" cookbooks have you make pasta or rice separately). He loves the fact that he doesn't have to keep asking, "Honey, is this one on your diet?" Because everything in this book is fair game -- which is strangely not true of a lot of the other supposedly healthy cookbooks I have, once you look more closely at the recipes. We both love the results: not too fancy, just good, solid food for a weekday evening that's interesting but doesn't take too much time or effort. And the dishes never taste "diet."

This cookbook is great for people who want to make just a single dish, and maybe supplement it with a simple salad or a piece of good bread. If you (or someone in your family) won't be satisfied without separate meat, vegetable and starch courses on your plate, this isn't the cookbook for you. If you're happy with one bowl that has the vegetables, starches, beans, meat (or not), etc. all mixed together, dig in.

A fair number of the recipes use frozen vegetables and/or canned tomatoes, which is helpful for busy cooks who like to use lots of vegetables but only shop once a week and worry about the veggies going bad by the end of the week. At the same time, the recipes don't depend on using prepared foods (like mixes) as short-cuts, which is a pet peeve of mine with the fast-preparation books (the exception: an occasional can of cream of something soup). They assume you have spices in your cupboard and can get fresh herbs, but most recipes don't require hard-to-find ingredients.

The recipes do not include time estimates, which is a minus. Still, they are pretty consistent about giving good estimates for each step, so you can add up the cooking times yourself (not like a lot of books, that have steps you have to guess at, like, "simmer until just tender" and "while X is cooking, chop Y and then add it"). The recipes range widely in cooking/prep times, with some very fast (~20 minutes), many in the 30-50 minute range (including periods of simmering when you don't have to watch the pot and can be cleaning up the kitchen), and some that involve roasting for an hour or more or slow cooking for even longer.

No, there are no pictures in the book. But you get over it. The directions are clear (hooray!), and you can picture well enough what you should end up with.

Some of the dishes that we've tried so far and liked: lentils bourguignon; creamy turkey and wild rice soup; chicken ravioli Italiano; salmon and pasta with baby spinach; chicken and double mushroom stew; poblano chicken with rice; beef and barley stew; chipotle pork posole; fennel braised with red lentils; cassoulet with zesty tomato sauce... etc. If you have a hundred cookbooks, you're not going to find a lot of brand-new things that you've never seen before. However, these recipes have already been tweaked to make them healthier, so we don't have to guess about making substitutions. And they've clearly been tested more throughly than most, because they (almost always) work right the first time, which is more than I can say for most cookbooks!

All in all, this is a great find, and I highly recommend it.

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Helpful One-Dish Meals, November 18, 2003

By	Terra Wellington (A Syndicated Columnist) - See all my reviews

No matter how much you love to cook, I've found that practicality consistently wins over. So, when I saw the American Heart Association's new cookbook One-Dish Meals, I had to take a closer look.

This cookbook gives some time-saving advice, with the rest of the pages dedicated to one-dish propositions, which include less mess, are fast and easy, and are healthy for you.

As a TV Consumer Wellness Expert, www.terrawellington.com, I like the Chicken Slaw with Teriyaki Plum Dressing or the Lemon-Tarragon Shrimp Vermicelli.

What is missing from the food preparation smorgasbord is a picture per recipe (my pet peeve). Other than that, it's a winner.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Healthy CAN taste yummy !, May 3, 2004

By A Customer

This is my first review ever, but after having had the book for only three weeks and having cooked almost every weekday out of this book, I felt compelled to provide feedback - that's how much I like this book. All the recipies that we have tried thus far have been very well liked by our whole family (mum, dad and a toddler). I actually collect cookbooks as a hobby, so I've got quite a few but so far this is the only cookbook where I don't get tired of reading through it (and yes, one of my requirements for a good cookbook was great photography, but this book changed my mind). I love the fact that most of the dishes really are prepared in one pot and usually dinner is on the table within 30-40 minutes, including the prep work - however the book does fail to provide a quick overview of the estimated cooking time (my only pet peeve). And from tasting these recipes - they don't taste 'healthy' - they are just plain yummy.
There is a great overview of nutrition details per dish and while checking out recipes there are many useful cooking and shopping tips!
One last thing - these recipes are easy enough to follow for any beginning cook but also interesting enough not to bore the experienced cook....and last but not least, it feels great to know that you are cooking healthy!

Definitely a keeper!