Cookbook Advice

I just bought HUNGRY GIRL 300 UNDER 300 from a book club. I have decided I did not really care for the recipes because there are artificial sweeteners in the recipes. I recommend staying away from it if you do not like to use them. I do go onto kraftfoods.com and they have a healthy section with meal planning tips. I tend to tweak the recipes a bit, but at least you will have the meal ideas.

Hope this helps!

Hit the library. You can check a ton of books out and take your time going thru them. Copy what you like. I do that all the time!

Check out the books at Goodwill and other thrift stores. You will have plenty of time to look through them and pick out the ones that work for you. I believe every Mom should have a good general information cookbook like the Betty Crocker Cookbook. Not only do they have good receipes but cooking time charts, meal planning ideas, as well as guides for what flatware (spoon-fork) is for what and glassware for all occasions. If you want to set a formal table there are guides for that too. There are also calorie charts, I found those to be extremely helpful.
There are a lot of good cookbooks out there for healthy eating but I found that they are mostly portion control or use a lot of artificial sweeteners. To me it is better to read through a good general information cookbook, use the calorie chart then learn to add salads, fruits and other low cal foods to your meal or diet.
Healthy meal planning is really quite simple. Dinner, you need a piece of meat about the size of a deck of cards, a 1/2 cup of starch ( potatoes-rice noodles) about a cup of veggies. Add a salad and a fruit serving. I like to save dessert for my bedtime snack. Most of the time I end up not having dessert.
If you would like to PM me for ideas of what to add to a specfic main dish, please do. I have been on a healthy eating diet for over 30 yrs. And I can tell you it works. I have been watching my sodium amounts, chemical additivies, no MSG, ect. I have energy and I am strong and healthy. My ex dismissed my healthy eating plans and he's only 5 months older than me and is falling apart. He has diabetes, gout, losing his sight, bad back ect ect ect. Our kids are now seeing that Mom's preaching about eating healthy does work.
You are what you eat -- garbage in - garbage out -- it's that simple.

I get almost all of my recipes from allrecipes.com. It's free and you can search in so many ways, by ingredients, low fat, low cal, family friendly, etc.

I really like allrecipes.com. If you sign up for it, they will send you recipes every day. If you like what you see, youcan send them to your own on-line recipe book. I don't like all I see, but I end up saving 1 to 3 per week.

Good luck to you and yours.

I collect cookbooks. The ones I would recommend to you are:

Better Homes and Gardens (the red and white checkered one). It has probably over 1000 recipes, is organized really well and has recipes for just about everything. It also has nutrition info listed for each recipe and recipes tagged as "fast", "low calorie" etc. That makes it a lot easier to choose healthy dishes to cook. Every recipe I have tried from that book has turned out yummy, so it is a safe bet.

Bon Appetit Fast Easy Fresh: Again thousands of recipes. No nutrition info listed, but every recipe has turned out FANTASTIC and focuses on fairly quick and easy dishes that have a lot of fresh ingredients.

My last suggestions are to go easy on the sides. If you are cooking a main dish and then stumped on what to serve with it, I would suggest always pairing it with vegetables and or fruit. Remember that each side is adding calories. You really don't need to have "main dish, vegetable, potato, bread" for each meal. We will generally have green salad with our dinners 3 or more times a week, other standby's are steamed broccoli, roasted cauliflower, green beans, corn on the cob, pineapple, canteloupe or watermelon. Sometimes we will have rice pilaf or some sort of risotto on the side. But really, I would just start with main dish + 1-2 sides of veggies and fruit and that should be plenty.

I have given up on actual cookbooks. I google recipes now and print them off on a full sheet of paper and put them in a 3 ring binder. I have those divider sheets in there so they are sorted. I jot notes on the bottoms if there is a little change or if the family loves it, etc. I have noticed cookbooks have about 3 recipes I will actually use and they just waste space. Plus I figure this will be a binder of family favorites so when my kids are grown I can copy it for each of them. Good luck!

like several other posters here, i just print out (or write out!) recipes i find online. go to sparkpeople.com it's free, and they have all kinds of recipes in all kinds of catagories. they even have a thing where you enter your recipe and it tells you all the info. calories, fat, carbs, etc. about your dish.

A lot of people like Rachael Ray books because she makes things simple - not a lot of measuring, just "eyeball" a lot of things. Jessica Seinfeld has a book with healthy alternatives for kids. I also agree that the library is a great resource so you can try some recipes before buying the cookbook.

I would caution you about going to company websites such as the Kraft site suggested by another poster. Those sites will tend to feature their own products, which have a lot of additives and preservatives in them. And of course, they are often more expensive. You can read labels too - try not to buy anything that has high fructose corn syrup, "enriched" flour (it's been stripped of nutrients and then had just a little bit added back in), partially hydrogenated fats/oils, or a lot of salt and sugar.

Also, buy local farm produce as much as you can - there is much more nutrition in something grown locally than something that was picked 2 weeks ago before it was ripe and then shipped across half the country. You can shop at farms themselves or seek out a farmer's market.

And "what do I serve with that?" - fruit or vegetables. Go for a colorful diet - things with all the different colors, not just green, but also red, purple, yellow, orange. We steam a lot of vegetables and just serve them plain or with a tiny amount of butter or healthy butter substitute. Salad bars are fun at the table too - kids like to serve themselves and they make better decisions when the stuff is in front of them. They also like to dip - so raw veggies dipped in hummus is a great choice. Grilling is fun too - make kabobs out of peppers, onions, small potatoes, etc. I just coat the vegies and the chicken or fish with canola/olive oil and fresh herbs, whatever I have on hand (thyme, parsley, rosemary....). Try fresh-picked corn on the cob, put in foil with a little butter, water and salt/pepper, and grilled.