"fast food fix" news and stories

As you might expect, I have a lot of cookbooks, old and new, sweet and savory, healthy and decadent. The division between those last two types of cookbook always seems more important around the beginning of the New Year, since many hope to add new and improved eating habits to their list of things to accomplish during the year. The difficulty with cookbooks is that all to often "healthy" books are unfairly labeled as not being worth it, with bland or boring recipes that can't compare to the ones found in the more "decadent" cookbooks.

While it is true that the more fattening, higher calorie recipes usually taste good (assuming that you're using a good cookbook in the first place), so can the healthier ones. And this year, there were plenty of health-conscious cookbooks released to add to your collection, whether you are looking for something healthy or just for some that that tastes good.

Comfort Food Makeovers and Fast Food Fix both remake recipes into lighter versions without sacrificing flavor. The Biggest Loser Cookbook is based on recipes that worked for contestants on the hit show, and The South Beach Diet Parties and Holidays has a good selection for entertaining. Perfect Light Desserts has lots of lightened sweets recipes

Other health-conscious books include What to Eat to help you shop more effectively and choose nutritious foods, The Healthy Lunchbox has a selection of kid-friendly, easy to make lunches that are better than most school-provided alternatives. California Squisine is another fun, kid-friendly book to encourage kids to eat right (without knowing they're doing it). Diabetes Meal Planning Made Easy is a great resource for those who really need to manage their food intake to deal with diabetes.

Fast food is not generally perceived to be healthy nor something that you can replicate at home. Fast Food Fix has fixed both of those problems. Author Devin Alexander is a chef who specializes in tasty, low-fat cuisine, but could never quite shake of the craving for some McDonald's fries when it hit. She set out to try and modify the recipes and create healthier versions of favorite fast foods that could be made at home. The book has 75 remade recipes that use spicing combinations that replicate favorite flavors and lower fat tricks like baking (oven-frying) instead of deep frying. Convincing results (with less guilt) aside, there is one more very noteworthy feature about this book. Just like what you might order at a fast food, each recipe is designed to make only one serving. It looks like Fast Food Fix really let's you "have it your way" with healthy, tasty, homemade fast foods.

ABC has a sneak peek of Devin's McDonald's-style french fries and healthy KFC-style popcorn chicken.

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