One of the top ten cities will be featured each month in the magazine this year, so readers will have access to information about all the things that got the city their ranking.

Lentils may be in short supply, especially if you want to buy them in bulk, but for the average home cook, the odds are good that you're not eating lentils every day and a cup or two should still be easy enough to come by. Lentils are high in protein and provide a huge advantage over beans in soup because they do not have to be soaked in advance and have a relatively short cooking time. This recipe comes from Cooking Light and is an easy to make, satisfying dish.

I used black lentils to make this soup, but you should be able to substitute any kind you have, such as red or yellow, and still come up with a great result. I also opted to omit the cilantro, since I don't like it to have a really strong presence in dishes, and did not puree the soup. The dish was slightly spicy and very good, especially considering that it only took about one hour to make!

What is a birthday party without a birthday cake? A disappointing celebration, that's what. Any dessert can be appropriate for a birthday if you stick a candle on top, but a lovely cake doesn't need candles to be appropriate - especially if the birthday boy/girl doesn't want to think about how many candles should be topping of that cake. This cake recipe is from Cooking Light and is a lovely, easy-to-make layer cake.

The cake itself is light and moist, and the frosting is fantastic. The brown sugar mix melts in your mouth and develops a slight crunch on the outside as it sets. I had to double the original recipe to make enough frosting to cover the cake and a tiny bit left over that was a great dip for some pretzel sticks. I would make the icing alone again and serve dipped pretzels as a salty-sweet snack food, but I wouldn't hesitate to make the whole cake again, either. I just need another occasion.

A dessert - or any food, for that matter - does not have to be exotic or outrageous to be delicious, nor are those the qualifications for it to be food porn. This Sour Cream Raspberry Swirl Loaf from Paula, a.k.a. the Cookbook Junkie, looks like something that your mother or grandmother might make to serve to family coming over for brunch and it is a good example of comfort food. You could even make it to serve to your own grandmother. The recipe comes from Cooking Light (though this picture makes it look tastier than theirs does) and can be made ahead, as it keeps well in both the fridge and freezer. A light and delicious treat is always a good thing to have on hand.

I debated over what to name this dessert. The recipe that inspired it was in a recent issue of Cooking Light and was called a sorbet, but I felt that the rich, smooth taste of the dessert did not really fit the sorbet name. To me, sorbet inspires an icier treat and not a creamy one, not to mention the fact that most sorbets contain no dairy products at all. Ice creams usually have cream in them, but I think that in this case we can make an exception because the dessert, Black Cherry Buttermilk Ice Cream, is delicious enough to satisfy any ice cream lover.

I saw this recipe in an old issue of Cooking Light (from 2003) that I had lying around and it immediately caught my eye. Why I didn't make it the first time I saw it, I'll never know, but I'm glad I did it now.

Waldorf salad isn't something that you see too often, but the combination of apples, raisins, celery and walnuts is not only addictive, but crunchy and satisfying. Coleslaw, too, is crunchy and refreshing, which is why it is such a popular side to accompany rich and meaty meals. Of course, both salads are slathered in mayo, so they're not exactly healthy foods despite having low-cal ingredients. This is one of the reasons why I liked the Cooking Light recipe, since it eliminates a lot of the fat but still tastes great. Combining the elements of the two salads into Waldorf Coleslaw worked beautifully.

I have to confess that I don't really care for fish tacos, but I imagine that if I could taste these that they would change my mind. Joe, at Culinary in the Desert, whipped up a batch of these very colorful Fish Tacos based on a recipe from Cooking Light magazine and if they taste even half as good as they look, they're probably outstanding. They use cod, fresh tomatoes, green onions, lime and cilantro, along with a little chili powder for some heat. The cod is cooked quickly in a skillet, so this sounds like it would work well as a summer dinner when you don't want to heat up the kitchen too much. Check out the recipe if you're interested in making them at home!

If people would only look to the cookie all our problems would be solved." - Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld (The Dinner Party)

Black and White cookies are one of the best things to ever come out of New York City, where they are so popular that they could be the city’s food mascot, with thin crust pizza running a close second. At first glance, the cookie looks relatively simple, but achieving Black and White perfection isn’t, well, black and white.

A real Black and White cookie has a thick, cakelike base. It is softer than a cookie and lacks the chew that a sugar cookie – which many bakers unfortunately choose to use as their base – would have. It also is not nearly as sweet as a sugar cookie, an important element because the cookie has to stand up to the sweetness of the icing on top without overwhelming the taste buds. The icing on the top of the cookie is a key element in the Black and White, not just because it creates the color pairing that gives the cookie its name. The icing – not frosting – is a relatively thin layer of chocolate or vanilla that is poured smoothly onto the cake-like cookie. A thick glob of overly buttery or sugary frosting would upset the balance of flavors – not to mention that it just wouldn’t taste that great on a cookie.  

If there is one thing that will sell a cookbook it is high quality, full-color photographs of the food. Good cookbooks will sell regardless, especially as word of mouth spreads, but if you flip open a brand new cookbook in the bookstore and your mouth begins to water, chances are excellent that you will be walking out with that book in hand. Unfortunately, while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it doesn’t necessarily indicate a good recipe. Some dishes will photograph well, but are lacking the flavor to make them great. This is a disappointing thing to discover about a new cookbook or recipe, but it will happen, even in great cookbooks. The more perplexing problem is when the photo of the food is unappetizing. The dish may taste fantastic, but the very sight of the finished dish is unappetizing. Creamed chipped beef and chilis are good examples of things that don’t photograph particularly well. The best way for a publisher or a cookbook author to avoid this sort of negative attention is to leave out the photo. A few choice words about how wonderful the recipe is will sell it – even without an illustration.

The photo shown here is of a recipe for S’mores Ice Cream on Cooking.com. While the dessert is simple and probably tastes good, this is a bad photo. Though I believe it is actually the large storage bowl for the ice cream, it resembles a bowl of chunky-looking chocolate soup and it is unappetizing. Scoop some out, put it in a cone – people, including myself, will be far more likely to make it.

For every calorie you ingest on any given day, there are probably just as many diets, tips, how-tos, and recipes for salads and protein shakes. I don't believe there is an end-all be-all list anywhere, and I am somewhat skeptical about "tips" from so many experts on every website.

However, I do have all kinds of respect for the Mayo Clinic, which has a list of five ways to "makeover" your recipes to make them healthier (not just for dieting, but overall health). They aren't simple one-liners like "reduce the amount of fat" which we already know. The Mayo Clinic article gives us more information on how to do it, where, and by how much. Details are on their site, but the five tips are:

1. Reduce the amount of fat, sugar and sodium
2. Make a healthy substitution
3. Delete an ingredient
4. Change the method of preparation
5. Change the portion size

After successfully promoting the supper club trend that has become so popular in the past could of years, Cooking Light highlighted a new concept in this month's issue of the magazine.

Many people who work outside of their homes eat lunch out almost every day. The days that they don’t eat out they are as likely to grab a candy bar and a bag of chips out of the hall vending machine as they are to have brought something from home. Beyond a peanut butter sandwich, sometimes it can seem daunting to prepare a whole meal in the morning before you leave for work. The concept of the lunch club is that different people bring in foods on different days of the month, dividing up the cooking duties but still providing everyone in the office (who wants to participate) with a full, healthy lunch.

Cooking Light magazine has paired up with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises to open a food kiosk at a gourmet food court in downtown Chicago. The food court is located in the Water Tower and the kiosk will sell foods based on recipes in Cooking Light, including a line of take-home entrees and side dishes intended as ready-made dinners. According to the New York Times, editors at the magazine see a lot of possibility in the kiosk as a potential column or test market for new ideas, while Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises is hoping to capitalize on some of the name recognition of the magazine to sell healthier options, though some would not be surprised to see advertiser-sponsored events appearing in-store to help make it a financial success. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises owns and operates over 70 restaurants around the country, including the Eiffel Tower restaurant, in Las Vegas, and Tru, in Chicago.

I opened my newest issue of Cooking Light (March 2006) and, in amongst some delicious sounding recipes for barbecue meatloaf and sour cream scones, I found a coupon section. Though it is affixed to the spine of the magazine, the perforated coupon sheets are nearly identical to the type that I find in my Sunday paper. I admit that coupons are useful - because I'm not going to turn down an extra $1 off my next OceanSpray purchase - but I still don't like the idea of such overt advertising in my magazine. The size of each issue seems to increase by several pages - aren't they selling enough full page ads? I can't decide whether this speaks to the magazine's need to increase its revenue, a loss of newspaper readers or simply the fact that advertisers now believe that a coupon sheet in Cooking Light is the best way to reach potential consumers. Only time will tell if this will work for the magazine or the advertiser, I suppose, but I'd rather keep my reading material free of punch-out coupons.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]