Microwave Gourmet Healthstyle Cookbook

by Barbara Kafka

Recipes for healthful foods cooked in a microwave oven are supplemented with advice on portion sizes, diet, and different oven wattages

Genres: Cookbooks

623 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1989

Reviews

[Loretta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm currently reading/using a cookbook that I have had for over twelve years now called-
"MICROWAVE GOURMET HEALTHSTYLE COOKBOOK" by Barbara Kafka. 5*****

This is just a wonderful book about microwave cooking that will completely change how you cook and eat. I have used this book off and on during these last twelve years to frame how I eat. However, when I started working full-time again in 2011 I fell by the wayside, so to speak, and now because of results of recent medical examinations I have had to go back. At the time I bought this book I did have one of the oven-type microwaves that I was not using to its full capacity because I really did not know how. All the recipes in this book are not just extremely healthy but are all cooked in a oven-type microwave except for a very few. However, many can still be cooked in a smaller microwave but, of course, the ingredients are reduced. It is quite obvious Barbara and her staff put in amazing amounts of research and time to develop this amazing cookbook which I dub the healthy "Joy of Cooking" cookbook. There are tons of lists of different ingredients used in the recipes and their calorie counts to help one in preparing even your own meals. The only thing I did not like is that these charts are placed in the book haphazardly and there is no index for them, and so, you to virtually have to go page-by-page to find and mark them for future reference. Also, Barbara is a garlic fiend. I like garlic too, but not in the amounts that is in many of the recipes or in raw form; simply because my stomach cannot tolerate it. But, reducing that ingredient is no problem. The majority of the recipes are vegetarian and non-red meat. However, she does include very lean meat recipes for those who do what to indulge in a meal with meat once in a while. What I love about Barbara is that she has the great talent of expressing how wonderful vegetables, fruits, rice, pasta, fish, etc. look and taste making one look forward to eating these recipes and, therefore, not feeling deprived. Barbara, also, does not come off as a sanctimonious health nut. She is an accomplished and well-educated food columnist and accounts how she has fought "roundness" all her life. And, anyway, you will not feel deprived because she incorporates so many different spices in these recipes that you do not even miss the fat, salt and sugar. And, really, these recipes are scrumptious.

I highly recommend this book to anyone really needing/wanting to follow a low calorie, low cholesterol diet. You will not be disappointed. And, by the way, you can still make these recipes even if you do not have an oven-style microwave, as I no longer do. Many of them can be cooked in a conventional oven or in a convection oven if you have one like I do. You can also use a Chinese steamer basket, like I do, to cook fish and vegetables. And, as I have been finding out recently, it is actually costing me less to cook this way, and that certainly is a plus considering how food prices have sky-rocketed.

[Amy]

Liked this book, given to me by my mother, but we haven't used a microwave in over 5 years. It had some good recipes in it, though, if I remember. I wonder if it's still applicable to the new microwaves>