The 1500-Calorie-a-Day Cookbook [Paperback]

Everything the first cookbook, The 1200-Calorie-a-Day Menu Cookbook : Quick and Easy Recipes for Delicious Low-fat Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and Desserts wanted to be and wasn't. Don't get me wrong; it was fine for its time. This book is just plain better.

Updated recipes with 9 or fewer ingredients and less reliability on fat-free, chemical-laden frankenfoods. (Although there are some!)

The entire meal takes less than 30 minutes--the whole menu complete on one page. Calorie count and other nutritional information provided for each recipe/menu including identifying menus higher in fiber, vitamins A & C, and calcium.

I made the Creamy Pumpkin Pie dip for our dance troupe hafla and it was a big hit! Nothing to take home.

She doesn't provide grocery lists. That will depend on what menus you choose. But, she does offer a brief nutritional introduction (just enough to keep your eyes from glazing over)and suggestions for what to do with leftovers. I'm all about freezing extra portions for later so I don't mind a recipe that serves 4-6.

Those who've read some of my other review will note that I'm a BIG fan of mix and match diet cookbooks. If I was going to buy a companion volume, I'd choose The All-Natural Diabetes Cookbook

This takes the guess work out of losing weight as the author puts meal suggestions for you for a 1,500 calorie day...and you can pick and choose which ones you want each day to make it work.

At almost 200 pages, you have lots of choices.

I am actually a weight loss coach so I'm pretty regimented about what goes in my body and what I put a 5 star review on. For me personally, every recipe that I've plugged in to both my calorie counting software (free all over the internet or on iphone aps) has been accurate...but I haven't tried them all yet...I can only speak for the ones I have eaten and double checked. So far, it's on the money for me.

These are the kind of recipes you can share with your family and they will wonder why they are losing weight because they don't taste "diet"...that's my favorite kind. I love to cook, but I love good food more, and I love being skinny even more than that. :-)

There is everything from breakfast, to snacks and appetizers, to lunches, to dinners, to desserts.

If you have no time you can still find an easy recipe. For example, on a fast and furious breakfast day you can eat apple halvers or a big bowl breakfast parfait or a travel mug breakfast. Then when you have more time, eat a bacon and egg breakfast sandwich or an english muffin pizza scramble or even a Sunday breakfast of mini ham and potato quiches or drop biscuits with creamy apricot spread or a hashbrown casserole. You can be as fast or as gourmet fabu as you choose. You can eat any kind of meat or go days without it.

Snacking and desserts? How about Sweet and sticky cinnamon popcorn balls, frozen peanut butter banana pie, featherlight chocolate raspberry almond cupcakes, chocolate chip and banana pudding cakes, double stuffed deviled eggs...and lots more.

Main dish? Sizzlin' steak and onions, black bean poblano chili soup, sloppy joes, creamy herbed chicken and noodles, pinto bean shephard's pie, buttermilk battered fried chicken tenders, chicken almond hoisin wraps, buttery toasted almond fish fillets, pork chops, spicy lemon mustard chicken...and lots more...

These are just examples...there are around 200 pages.

On a restricted diet? If you are a creative cook, these are easy to adapt for gluten-free, or veggie eaters with substitutions, etc.

This takes the planning out of diet menu planning.

Negatives: I usually have a few things I list as a negative on even my favorite cookbook reviews...like maybe they don't contain nutritionals, or maybe they have ingredients that are hard to find or lots of processed foods...this doesn't.
I honestly can't think of negative. It plans out the meals for you in a 1,500 calorie day, each thing I've made tastes great and has had the right calories, I've lost weight (BIGGEST test), it contains nutritionals so even if I want to take a recipe from here paired with a frozen dinner and a few snacks on the go I can on a super busy day, it even suggests side dishes etc...LOVE IT.

Conclusion: These not only make your days low calorie, but they are tasty and healthy too. It's like doing Nutrisystem or Jenni Craig without the steep cost or processed foods or having to drive to see a counselor. Plus you can eat WITH your family because they are pretty universally appealing in my opinion.

p.s. My own personal calorie needs have been scientifically measured. I know I typically burn 1,950 calories per day in normal activity (I'm pretty small) so, because of this, if I eat 1,250 calories per day that 700 calorie deficit means I will lose just over 2 pounds per week. (A deficit of 3,500 calories equals a loss of one pound. Your body dips into its fat stores for energy for fuel which results in the loss. Old school..Calories in vs. Calories out.) But that's easier said than done. For most people 1,500 calories would be a smart goal. But even someone like me can lose weight well on it. I have a hard time sticking to 1,250 calories per day. I often aim for 1,500 to be my intake, and this is the most common number someone on a diet takes in as a female. The good news is that if you are a male or need more calories you just get to eat more! It's all easily adjusted.

I LOVE the premise behind this book!!!!!

--delicious meals in just 30 minutes or less
--nutritious and delicious 350-calorie meals
--150 calorie snacks
--150 calorie desserts

The author is DEFINITELY on to something here!

However, there are a few disappointments here and there that I hope the author will take to heart and revise in a future issue:

1. WAY WAY TOO MANY PORK RECIPES!
In the 6 recipe Poultry- and meat-based breakfasts section, 4 of them have some form of PORK, one is beef, and ONE is for poultry as a turkey sausage dish! The next 7 recipe egg-based breakfasts section have 3 recipes calling for PORK again. Another 3 barely miss this because she specifies using turkey ham in two recipes and turkey pepperoni in one. The 10 recipe Breads, Pancakes ad Grain-based breakfasts section has another FOUR recipes or menus with PORK. She even suggests canadian bacon as part of the menu for one of her fruit- and vegetable-based breakfasts section. My point is, if someone were to follow these breakfast menus for a month, they would be consuming a pork product 12 days out of 30. That's a lot of pork consumption, and that's JUST FOR BREAKFAST. Fortunately, only 3 or 4 of her lunch recipes and 8 of her dinner recipes call for pork or pork products (like pepperoni or sausage). Still, that totals almost 24 out of 90 recipes for breakfasts, lunches and dinner, a whopping 27%, that call for pork products. For the person who doesn't eat pork, that's more than a quarter of the book which is either useless or has to be refigured.

2. WHERE'S THE LENTIL???
I would like to see her include more egg recipes, more chicken recipes, and more meatless recipes. Lentils are a fantastic high protein high fiber and incredibly nutritious food that could have brought a lot more variety to her lunch and dinner offerings. A quick look through her book didn't find one single recipe utilizing lentils. Lentils may very well be one of the cheapest, easiest, quickest-cooking, nutritious but so overlooked foods, and I can't believe a recipe book such as this one, in 2009, made this error. Lentils do not cause the gas that other legumes do, and they cook very quickly. They are truly a dieter's as well as non-dieter's super food. And I am disappointed that I cannot find even one recipe for a dish that includes lentils in this book.

3. Most of her recipes serves 4. Leftovers from lunch or dinner aren't difficult to use on another day, but having every breakfast recipe serve 4 requires reconfiguring for those of us who do not have 4 to serve for breakfast every morning. Breakfast leftovers just do not keep very well. I think it would've been fairly easy to make a note somewhere on each recipe what to do to make each recipe to serve 2. Sometimes cutting it in half doesn't work. Overall, however, this isn't a major complaint. You do have to be careful though. There is at least one recipe which serves 8, so 1/4th of the recipe would actually be TWO servings and not just one.

4. I would like to see just a tad bit more coordination between meals, or at least to have suggestions for a day-by-day meal guide. Otherwise, it's a lot of cooking every day.

5. The lunch recipes, many of them anyway, aren't very conducive to taking to school or work. I would love to see a future edition expand a lunch section specifically for those that have to take their lunch with them.

Otherwise, this book really is a GREAT idea!!! When I have the time, I may sit down and come up with my own 1500 calorie a day cookbook, pulling a few recipes from her book but including many other more nutritious offerings as well, for my own personal use. This book is a good first step, and has some really great ideas. I love that I could choose 3 meal recipes, 1 dessert recipe, and 2 snack or appetizer recipes from this book every day and stay within 1500 calories!!!!

I recommend this book just for the strength of its idea. It could go a long way in helping to plan out some great menus, all within a specific 1500 calorie range. While many of the recipes will be completely useless for me, there are a few good ones in here. Mostly, though, this book is great for the ideas it generates for me.