Atria Books

Book Review: America’s Most Wanted Recipes Without the Guilt by Ron Douglas

Title: America’s Most Wanted Recipes Without the Guilt: Cut the Calories, Keep the Taste of Your Favorite Restaurant Dishes
Author: Ron Douglas
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: September 6, 2011
Paperback: 336 pages
ISBN: 978-1451623314
Genre: Cookbook

From the back of the book:

From the New York Times bestselling author of America’s Most Wanted Recipes comes more copycat recipes from your family’s favorite restaurants–with fewer calories!

Ron Douglas has wowed home cooks across the country by uncovering the best recipes from hundreds of popular restaurants, including Applebee’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Chili’s, Olive Garden, P.F. Chang’s, and T.G.I. Friday’s. America’s Most Wanted Recipes Without the Guilt once again features delicious restaurant meals that can be enjoyed at home. But with the help of registered dietician and nutrition expert Mary M. Franz, Ron has created more than 150 amazing reduced-calorie versions. Take Bahama Breeze’s Jamaican Jerk Grilled Chicken, which usually contains approximately 960 calories. By using boneless, skinless chicken breasts, the entire family can enjoy generous, flavorful half-pound servings and save 590 calories. Or how about Dave and Buster’s Steak Fajita Salad? A restaurant portion contains a whopping 1,408 calories per serving, but Ron’s home-cooked version has 489. And for dessert? Macaroni Grill’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cake has 635 calories per slice. Home cooks can easily trim that calorie count down to 435. Ron will show you how! Each recipe includes nutritional details, the number of calories you will save, and easy tips on how to prepare your favorite restaurant food without feeling the guilt. The book also features a section on restaurant alternatives, as well as a nutritional guide detailing the overall dos and don’ts when it comes to healthy eating. Experience the pleasure and satisfaction of cooking fun, delicious food for your family while also keeping them fit! Watch your wallet get fat and your tummy get flat!

My Review:

If you are a fan of Applebee’s, Hard Rock Café or Olive Garden, fasten your seat belt, for America’s Most Wanted Recipes Without the Guilt by Ron Douglas has many lower kilocalorie, lower fat alternatives to these and many other popular restaurants’ menu items. It was very helpful to have the caloric and other nutritional information for each recipe and comparative information from the specific restaurant as figuring out recipe calories can be a bit time-consuming. A couple of things that could have been done differently with the nutrition data however is to include sodium content and to round to whole numbers the grams of fat, protein, etc. as these figures are certainly not known to 10 mg precision and even if they were, it would not be significant for anyone to track. Douglas supplements his recipes with a Health and Nutrition Guide that offers a level view of eating a balanced diet and does not promote any controversial or fad-type approaches to healthy eating and/or weight loss. While this section is helpful, what I would have like to see was some listing of authoritative references for readers to further their knowledge in some of the areas of nutritional research. In short, for anyone looking for good copycat recipes that significantly cut the kilocalories per serving, I recommend America’s Most Wanted Recipes Without the Guilt.

I received a complimentary copy of America’s Most Wanted Recipes Without the Guilt by Ron Douglas from Atria. to offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Book Review The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

Title: The Distant Hours
Author: Kate Morton
Publisher: Atria
Publication Date: November 9, 2010
Hardcover: 576 pages
ISBN: 978-1439152782
Genre: Historical Fiction

From the Publisher:

A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WW II. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.

Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours’ of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.

Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring unforgettable characters beset by love and circumstance and haunted by memory, that reminds us of the rich power of storytelling.

My Review:

An astonishingly brilliant gothic narrative, dark, mysterious, and beautiful, The Distant Hours by Kate Morton is an absolute must-read book. I had heard about Kate Morton and her books, but this is the first one I have read and I was so impressed by the beauty from Morton’s use of lyrical prose, vividly described details both present and past, coupled with her marvelous characters. I was truly engrossed and unable to stop reading. The Distant Hours is a rather lengthy tome, which will capture the reader from page one and not let go and as the reader journeys with the characters, time will pass by without notice as the reader journeys deep into the Blythe sisters history as Edie works to unearth the secrets of the Milderhurst Castle. Historical fiction, a gothic mystery and a love story, The Distant Hours does not disappoint. I am officially adding Morton’s previous two books, The House At Riverton and The Forgotten Garden to my Christmas wish list since The Distant Hours took my breath away. Beautiful, lyrical, mysterious and riveting, I cannot praise The Distant Hours enough and without reservation highly recommend The Distant Hours to every reader and gift giver alike.

About the Author:

Kate Morton, a native Australian, holds degrees in dramatic art and English literature and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland. She lives with her family in Brisbane, Australia.

I received a complimentary copy of The Distant Hours by Kate Morton from Atria Books to review. Receiving a copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.