Product Description

Quick, delicious and healthy kosher cooking.

Norene Gilletz has a passion for recipes that are simple, healthy and delicious for the kosher (or not) cook. High in flavor and low in calories, they focus on good carbs, good proteins and good fats, and are made with readily available ingredients.

Norene's Healthy Kitchen is packed with chef's secrets, including easy preparation ideas, freezing tips and nutrition notes. The recipes are heart-healthy, weight-loss-friendly, smartcarb-friendly and glycemicindex-friendly. The selections are good choices for anyone on almost any diet. Recipes are suitable for the kosher kitchen, with lots of dairy-free and vegetarian options that the whole family will enjoy.

Here are samples of the more than 600 delicious recipes:

• Tabbouleh (Middle East)
• Chimichurri chicken (Argentina)
• Oriental chicken and pasta salad (Japanese influence)
• Spanakopita (Greek)
• Winter vegetable latkes
• Lemon berry mousse.

With its easy-to-follow instructions and readily available ingredients, this new cookbook brings great taste and good health to every table.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #229835 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 511 pages

Review
Just what the doctor ordered.... Packed with chef's secrets and nutrition tips. (Carolyn Blackman Canadian Jewish News 20070427)

About the Author

Norene Gilletz is author of The Food Processor Bible and one of North America's leading authorities on kosher cooking. She is a Certified Culinary Professional (International Association of Culinary Professionals), a food consultant, a cooking instructor and a freelance food writer. She lives in Toronto.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Welcome to Norene's Healthy Kitchen! My world revolves around food. I love to cook and bake and believe that eating is one of life's greatest pleasures.

People often ask me how I create my recipes. Sometimes I've tasted a dish at a restaurant or at a party that feeds my creativity, while at other times a photograph in a cookbook or magazine sparks an idea. A trip to the supermarket often inspires me to combine a variety of ingredients in a certain way, or I may wake up in the middle of the night with a concept for a new dish.

People love to share their treasured recipes and ideas with me and these often become a springboard for new recipes. I firmly believe that once someone's name and recipe is in print, that person becomes immortalized and his or her memory will live on, to be enjoyed by future generations through the flavor of memory.

I'm always delighted when people say "Your books are my bibles." The incredible success of Healthy Helpings (originally titled MealLeaniYumm!) made me realize how hungry people are for quick, easy meals with a healthy focus. This led me to write Norene's Healthy Kitchen.

Obesity and diabetes have reached almost epidemic proportions, despite all the health and diet books flooding the market. Most people have difficulty controlling their weight and bounce around from one diet to the next, looking for a quick fix. I speak from experience as I have a family history of diabetes and heart disease. I've struggled with my weight for years and if I didn't cook and eat the way I do today, I'd probably weigh at least a hundred pounds more! I control my blood sugar levels through lifestyle changes by making healthier food choices and by being more active.

Norene's Healthy Kitchen is just what the doctor ordered. It teaches you how to transfer the advice from your doctor or dietitian straight to your plate. You can still enjoy your favorite foods, but now with fewer calories, carbohydrates, and unhealthy fats -- and without sacrificing flavor. My motto is "Food that's good for you should taste good!"

The recipes in this book are fast, fabulous, flavorful, and fun. They focus on smart carbs, smart fats, and smart proteins, and feature a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, legumes, and nuts. Fish and poultry are more prominent than red meat, and I've also included many vegetarian dishes. There are lots of healthy, delicious desserts. (You'll notice that many of my desserts include chocolate, which comes from the cocoa bean -- and everyone knows you should eat beans!)

You'll learn smart strategies to make quick, delicious meals that are good for you and the whole family. Small changes in your diet can add up to significant health benefits. I strongly believe that the simple choices we make each day have the greatest impact on our health and well-being.

My recipes are heart-healthy and weight-loss friendly, offer low glycemic index values (GI), and are suitable for people with diabetes. They're compatible with most of today's popular heart-healthy, smart-carbohydrate diets, including The South Beach Diet, YOU On a Diet, Weight Watchers, The Mediterranean Diet, and The CI Diet.

This book appeals to all palates, from singles to families, from children to seniors, from beginners to well-seasoned cooks.

The recipes in this book work well for the Kosher cook, but you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy my leaner versions of latkes and matzo balls, which will definitely "de-light" your palate.

I've included wonderful recipes for easy entertaining and for Shabbat, as well as for the Jewish holidays. Norene's Healthy Kitchen is also Passover-friendly. The Passover chapter, which is almost a cookbook on its own, offers helpful charts for cooking and baking substitutions, as well as a comprehensive list of all the recipes in this hook that can be used or modified for Passover.

While writing this book, I could hear your questions: How can I convert my favorite recipes and make them healthier? What can I substitute if my family doesn't like an ingredient? Can I prepare this in advance? Does it freeze well?

I've done my best to answer these questions, and more. Every chapter begins with helpful information and tips. There are Chef's Secrets and Nutrition Notes peppered throughout the book, in bite-sized morsels so you can slowly digest them and apply what you've learned at your own pace.

The recipes have been written to "hold your hand" while you cook. It's the next best thing to having me right beside you in your kitchen! I've shared my culinary secrets with you and hope they will provide you with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to experiment with new ingredients, methods, and recipes.

I prefer to cook from scratch, but there are often times when I'm too busy, too tired, or too lazy to do that, so I use shortcuts. I've streamlined my recipes to save time and clean-up. I love "machine cuisine" and use my food processor, microwave, slow cooker, and grill to save time. I like to develop recipes that can be cooked in advance and refrigerated or frozen until needed, so there are lots of storage and freezing tips.

My recipes are user-friendly. If I can't prepare a recipe quickly or use easy-to-find ingredients, it probably won't be in this book. They also offer lots of variations to allow for different tastes and availability of ingredients. You'll love the helpful charts for substitutions, cooking times and yields, pan sizes, weight, volume and temperature conversions, healthier options ... and much, much more.

I believe cooking should be fun, so I've combined puns with pots and pans to help you laugh while cooking your way to good health. I hope you use this cookbook often and make it dirty! Put your apron on and start cooking.

From my healthy kitchen to yours ... enjoy! Eat your way to good health!

Customer Reviews

Great Recipes; Difficult to Read/See Them
Oy! I just received this cookbook. I have 3 others by this author, and I use them regularly. Her recipes are simple and DELICIOUS. However, I was disappointed when I opened this new book and saw that, while it is full of her eater-pleasing recipes, all recipes are printed in a light red ink that provides little contrast with the white page. The print font for the recipes seems to be smaller than in her other books, too. In other words, I find it difficult to read the recipes. I certainly won't be able to read them at an arms-length distance, like when I'm combining ingredients and want to see what to do next. Much as I want this collection of recipes, I may return the book. How could a publishing company make such a poor choice of print color?

This is my kind of cooking
I really loved this book. This is my kind of cooking. Easy to make, healthy and delicious. Since I liked her other books (especially Healthy Helpings) I pre ordered this book. I have already made some of the recipes and plan to use more soon. Each receipe has a cute short blurp about the recipe which is entertaining, and most have useful cooking tips.
The ingredients are common stuff that I usually have on hand and makes good use of the food processor and microwave, but their use is not essential. This book also has great info on the glycemic index, glycemic load, heart healthy cooking and lots of useful kitchen infomation. Which makes it a great gift for a beginner or more experienced cook. You will use it for everyday and entertaining and no one will think of it as low fat and healthy.

Should be in EVERYONE'S kitchen!
Norene's Healthy Ktichen: Eat Your Way to Good Health (Whitecap $29.95 US), by culinary expert Norene Gilletz, is a new Kosher cookbook on healthy cooking, released just in time for the High Holidays.

Many of you are familiar with and fans of Norene's seven other cookbooks including The Food Processor Bible, Healthy Helpings (MeaLeaniYumm) and MicroWays.

Healthier food choices don't always mean that we need to sacrifice flavor for nutrition and Norene proves that healthy cooking can be as nutritious as it is delicious in her latest cookbook. Packed with 600 fabulous recipes and color photographs throughout, the pages shine with her passion for healthy kosher meals from around the world.
Norene has been careful to ensure that her recipes' ingredients can be found at local supermarkets. Her friendly voice and culinary expertise make it easy for home cooks to integrate diverse, healthy dishes in their busy lives. You don't have to be health or diet conscious to enjoy her recipes but they are all compatible with the Weight Watchers and South Beach diets.

Favorite dishes include: Confetti Vegetable Strudel, Lox and Bagel Cheese Strata, Spanakopita roll-ups, Chimichurri Chicken, Luscious Lemon Berry Mousse and even one of my recipes, Vidalia Onion Salad.