Rating: 
Summary: I think people are being too harsh
Review: Can you all really say that you want to obsess over calorie counting? Of course not. Usually its easy to determine an average calorie count and if it's such a big deal you can add up the calories in the ingredients and divide by the servings. We live in a society that is plagued by weight issues. We should all just eat nutrient rich foods and excercise. We shouldn't be obsessing about the calories in EVERYTHING. So please chill out and enjoy the book because the recipes are delicious.
Rating: 
Summary: Delicious but Disappointing
Review: I couldn't wait to get the cookbook - I love the show and the food always looks so delicious. I dutifully read the first part of the book and was amazed to find no nutritional information or even suggested menus. Could I eat all of one recipe - two or three recipes at the same meal - how much, how often? While Kathleen knows intuitively how many calories she's eaten at any given time of the day, I don't. And I definitely don't have the time to sit down with my calorie guide and figure out how many are in each recipe. One day, maybe I'll know the numbers too, but until then, the cookbook is being sent back. When I know my numbers, I can use the book. Too bad, though, the food looks delicious. Unforunately, her approach is very, very disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: No nutritional information? So what?
Review: I don't see what's the big deal with this book not having any nutritional information in it. If people want that, there's thousands of other books out there that will provide that. It is a weak excuse for giving this book a bad review. The recipes are clearly very healthful, delicious and flavorful. That should be the whole point of cooking and eating thin, isn't it? Kathleen writes in a very entertaining way that shows she's obviously been through all the pain and struggle that every person who's overweight has been through. Bravo to her for creating these absolutely fabulous recipes and hopefully there's more to come.
Rating:
Summary: As Good as her show!
Review: I love Chef Kathleen's TV show and now I love her book! Chef Kathleen has an inspiring story to how she got thin, which is included in the book. What really makes this book great is how she teaches you to change the way you look at food, losing weight and how you prepare food. There may be other authors out there telling you the same concept: losing weight, if you want to maintain it, it has to be a lifestyle change, BUT Kathleen says it in a way I finally understood. If you like her show, you will love the book. Thanks Kathleen!
Rating:
Summary: What Happened to Chef Kathleen?
Review: What Happened to Chef Kathleen?I have really enjoyed Daelemans' show 'Cooking Thin' on the Food Network, so I was thrilled when I saw that a companion book with the same title was slated for publication. Specifically, I like her sound approach to healthy cooking, and her recipes include lots of flavorful, fresh ingredients. One of her tenets of weight loss is that is that it is ineffective to make changes one cannot continue for a lifetime. This lifestyle modification approach makes good sense and is shared by experts in the field of nutrition, some of whom appear regularly on her show to share their wisdom, knowledge, and insight. For the book, however, Daelemans chose her parents and sister to be her experts. Which would have been ok if they had anything useful or intelligent to say, but if the book is any indication, they don't. My first big complaint about this book is that there is no nutritional information accompanying the recipes. This makes it hard to incorporate them into a diet, because it is unclear what contributions they are making. Most people count some aspect of the nutritional content of their food throughout the day, whether it's calories, or grams of carbohydrates, fat, fiber, or vitamins, but you are on your own if you want to use her recipes. It's 2002, for crying out loud! Cookbooks have been including nutritional information for well over 20 years, but apparently that fact escaped Daelemans' editors. The largest fault of this book, however is the inane comments of her parents and her sister that appear in the text at the beginning of the book and alongside every recipe. Why on earth do we need to have it pounded into us again and again that her father dislikes any meal without meat? His comments are always something like, '[this recipe] is ok for not having any meat in it.' Or 'I'll eat it if I have to, but can we have meat tomorrow?' In addition, the editors must have thought it would be a good idea to include lots of quotes from Daelemans' parents, even when this adds no value to the text. Were they trying to be cute? It made me cringe after a while to keep on reading, but I did- it was like watching a bad accident on the side of the road- I just couldn't believe it kept getting worse. Obviously, Daelemans has been failed by her editors terribly. There is a huge disconnect between the integrity of the show and the truly creative, useful tips clients get from Daelemans as she helps them learn new ways of cooking and preparing food that is satisfying and promotes a healthy lifestyle, and this book, which includes a lot of blank spaces, and more that perhaps would have been better off if it had been left blank. Watch the show and skip the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Delicious Reading
Review: I really like this book. True, Ms. Daelemans has left out nutritional information but as she explains in her book, moderation is the key to successful weight loss. I did not have a problem with the lack of nutritional information but could see that being a problem for people that need to crunch the numbers. The recipes I tried were delicious (the chicken patties were fantastic as was the homemade granola) and very easy to make. My only complaint is that many recipes call for only sweet onions and say that if you cannot find sweet onions, you should pass on the recipe until you can. That was unfortunate because where I live, they are hard to find. The book also comes with some great tips to make easy lifestyle changes to help the weight come off. All in all a very nice book but I've given it 4 stars due to the requirement of some very specific ingredients for the recipes.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: I have to say, I LOVE Kathleen's show on FoodTV, and some of the recipes in this book are outstanding, but overall this book just falls short. The lack of pictures is disappointing (but forgivable), but not including nutritional information in a weight-loss cookbook is shocking. Although I understand the rationale is to encourage people to eat properly without getting bogged down in counting every single calorie that passes their lips, having an idea of how many calories are in each recipe helps you balance your meals out. The author advocates balancing higher calorie foods with lower calorie ones, however doesn't give you the information to put this in practice. And personally, part of the reason I buy cookbooks aimed at "healthy eating" is that they do the work for you--I don't want to be bothered having to calculate everything on my own. I feel that not including nutritional information will give most dieters a false sense of how much they really are eating (if I could intuit how many calories I ate then I wouldn't have such a battle with my weight). I was also disappointed that the majority of the vegetable and breakfast recipes are overly starchy. While there is nothing wrong with potatoes and bread, probably half of the vegetable side dish recipes are potato based, and not nearly enough fibrous vegetable recipes are included. And there are a LOT of pasta recipes. Again, nothing wrong with pasta, but there just seems to be an over-emphasis here. My feeling is that a healthy eating cookbook should emphasize a wider variety of vegetables and whole grains. And again,..., I found too many recipes with a caveat that they were for "special occasions" because they were too high in calories (but again, we don't know how high because there is no nutritional information). I don't need another recipe for butter-cream frosting or popcorn balls... I already have plenty of "splurge" recipes. Not to be too nit-picky, but I also didn't find that many of the recipes to be all that inspired. Many of the Italian-type recipes are ones my Italian grandmother taught me years ago. Overall, some of the recipes are good, and most are easy to prepare, but it seems like the best ones from the book are the same ones she gives on her TV show. I'm sure she's a fine chef and I have to say the book is very entertaining as an autobiography. I enjoyed reading about her journey to weight loss and the associated tips she provides in the first few chapters of the book are excellent. I will continue to be a fan of her show, but this cookbook just misses the mark. If you don't have many other "healthy eating" cookbooks maybe this would be useful--but plan on buying a book on nutritional information and spending a lot of time doing the math, on the other hand if you already know the basics of healthy cooking, pass this book by.
Rating:
Summary: A common sense approach to healthy living
Review: I don't know about the rest of you, but I was attracted to this book precisely because it DIDN'T have all of that calorie counting nonsense. I just want to eat healthy and live well, not obsess over every little morsel of food that goes into my mouth. I appreciated that Chef Kathleen acknowledged that we would cheat sometimes and that was O.K. This book gives hope to those of us who can't do all that math just to get to lunch! I want a way to make good, healthy food an effortless, no nonsense, part of my life. With this book, Chef Kathleen is showing me how to incorporate good sense into my everyday life.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring Story and Advice, Excellent Recipes
Review: This is an excellent book for someone who wants to take control over his or her nutritional and dietary life. The advice is heartfelt and realistic. The recipes are diverse in their ingredients and easy to prepare. My extremely finicky husband has even enjoyed the dishes that we have tried! After my first read-through I was disappointed by the lack of nutritional information with the recipes but I realized that this book is not intended to do the work for me - but to motivate me do take the steps necessary to gaining control over my nutrition and part of doing this is READING LABELS on the foods I buy. It is easy to blame a book or diet program for a lack of or slow progress if that cookbook/program is laying out every detail of your diet - from ingredients to caloric counts. But,you have only yourself to blame if you don't take the few minutes it takes to read the labels at the grocery store. As I said before, this book is about taking control and that does take some work. I have been completely inspired not only by the book, but by Kathleen herself, and I hope other readers will get the same from this great book!
Rating:
Summary: No Nutritional Data!
Review: I was very dissapointed in this book as were some previous reviewers. I enjoy Chef Kathleen's show, "Cooking Thin" , so I ordered the book. There is NO nutritional data at all !! I was also sorry to see that there were also no pictures of the recipes. I returned the book. It would have been easy for the editors to include the nutritional info. I did like reading how Chef Kathleen got Thin, but save your money and invest in another cook book!
|
