500 Fat-Free Recipes: A Complete Guide to Reducing the Fat in Your Diet (Hardcover)

by Sarah Schlesinger (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Dedicated dieters and recovering cardiac patients are often told to lower fat intake--but few people can concoct imaginative low-fat meals to make the dietary change either permanent or pleasurable. Schlesinger ( The Low Cholesterol Olive Oil Cookbook ) offers a valuable resource to those who wish to reduce fat to 10% of caloric intake. A lengthy introduction supplies details on stocking the pantry, cooking techniques used in recipes, and additional sources for diet-related information. Recipes suited for microwave cookery constitute a welcome chapter. Dishes such as Havana beans with rice and ricotta-apricot toastwiches combine plenty of complex carbohydrates. Perhaps the only problem is that some recipes do not give actual serving sizes in ounce or cup measures: for example, the barley and apple pilaf yields "6 servings," but when divided into sixths, serving sizes looked small indeed. Some of Schlesinger's culinary advice leads novice cooks in the wrong direction: baked goods made without fat do stale more quickly, and for this reason, they should be frozen, not stored in the refrigerator as recommended. But oversights are rare: most of the recipes are healthful and easy to prepare, making this book a good addition to the low-fat bookshelf.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
At last, here's a one-stop resource for healthy eating. 500 Fat-Free Recipes is the only cookbook to offer convenient, delicious, nonfat recipes--each with one gram of fat or less--as well as a complete guide to reducing the fat in your diet. The recipes are so good, people won't even suspect they're healthy!

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 442 pages
• Publisher: Villard; 1 edition (May 24, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679415890
• ISBN-13: 978-0679415893
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #920,514 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best fat free cookbook available!, July 15, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews

I have a shelf full of low fat and fat free cookbooks, but this is the one I turn to time and again. It is absolutely the best.

The author began cooking without fat in order to accomodate the needs of her husband, who suffered from heart disease. She was a busy working mom with a career and a family to feed --- she wasn't a trained chef and couldn't spend all day in the kitchen. The recipes reflect that --- they are simple, tasty, practical and fast, featuring ingredients that available in most grocery stores. The book also contains a lot of information to help make the transition to fat free cooking simple and painless.

If I could have only one fat free cookbook, no question, this would be the one I'd choose.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for Ornish followers or lacto-ovo vegetarians., August 25, 2000

By A Customer

In small leters in the introduction, the author explains this collection was developed for her husband who suffered from heart disease. They follow the Ornish program for heart reversal, which is basically low-fat, lacto-ovarian fare. The heart disease people, vegetarians, or those after better health/weight loss in general will appreciate this effort but those who do not know what "Ornish" means or those who skip the preface will be surprised that it's vegetarian and "no meat." Those wishing "meat-y" yet low-fat might be better off with one of Sue Spitler or Sandra Woodruff's books.

There is no space/some small space in the margins for notes although there is nutritional info. There are some vegan or vegan-friendly variations, but you have to hunt and pick. It's easier to adapt to L/O than vegan -- it's usually right there in the variation (ex: "use chicken broth or vegetable broth").

There weren't any overly exotic ingredients to me but the introduction does go over the ingredients used and explains what they are. That would be useful for cooking novices.

Some of the combinations are a little odd. Sometimes this works great and it's refreshing, other times it leaves me short of expectations. There is however, a consistancy of style across the recipes, and it's not bad if you want to be adventurous. I'd consider this more a "supplemental" cookbook rather than a "hardcore mainstay" one in my cookbook collection.

Overall, it's a nice collection, but not necessarily my favorite one when I was l/o and now that I am vegan I rarely use it. I didn't think it was so great that I wanted the other cookbooks she wrote later but who knows? Maybe those improved.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 500 recipes is stretching it., April 29, 1999

By A Customer

500 recipes is stretching it. Many of the "500" recipes in this book are simply variations on a theme. There is much less variety in the "500" than one might expect. Also, I found many of the combinations of ingredients repetitive and strange. For example, fruit of some kind in many of the grain and vegetable dishes. Examples of this include "Pineapple Carrots", "Green Beans with Tomatoes and Cinnamon", "Orange Acorn Squash", "Sherried Sweet Potatoes with Apples and Onion", "Butternut-Apple Casserole", "Peach-Blueberry Rice", "Spicy Rice with Dried Fruit", "Barley and Apples", "Carrott-Apple-Raisin Salad", "Carrot, Orange, and Celery Salad", "Oranges and Tomatoes with Honey Dressing". Unless this is your style you're not going to find 500 recipes to use. I found that many of the basic recipes that I liked were already in Dean Ornish's Program for reversing heart disease. He has some funky fruity stuff too.