Worth Reading | The South Beach Diet Cookbook (The South Beach Diet)

Healthy and Flavorful, But Expensive | The South Beach Diet Cookbook (The South Beach Diet) | Arthur Agatston

books:


	• The South Beach Diet Cookbook (The South Beach Diet) Arthur Agatston Rodale Books, 2004 - 344 pages average customer review:based on 90 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Breakfast for six?

Everything that I have cooked so far using this book been excellent. The peanut butter stew is delicious and didn't taste like peanut butter but like something that I'd never eaten before and can't wait to eat again. My "HOWEVER" is that the recipes that I have tried make way too much food for two people; I'd like to know if anybody makes breakfast for 6 on a regular basis.

Worth Reading

Good follow-up book to the original South Beach diet, with many recipes of tasty dishes. -- South Beach Diet has been on the top of bestseller lists for a few years now. However, in view of the recent critiques of Atkins low carb diet, I think that it is better to consider other approaches

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Healthy and Flavorful, But Expensive

My husband and I gave the South Beach diet a try to lose "baby weight" we both had gained, and the diet works very well, that is, if you can stick to it. We both got compliments about our trimming down within a couple of weeks of starting the diet. South Beach isn't all about eggs and turkey sausage, and this book proves it. However, South Beach ingredients are expensive, and the recipes are pretty time consuming. It got to a point where we made a choice to go back to quick and convenient foods so we could free up more time to both play with our daughter, and to put an end to the massive grocery store costs. However, there are some awesome recipes in this book, and I will probably draw from them to cook for my family when my daughter is eating adult meals. We like the Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Cups (we baked them ahead of time, stored them in the fridge, and then just popped them in the microwave each morning when we were ready to eat them), and the Mexican Lasagna and Chicken Mole are so yummy I don't need to be on a diet to want to eat them. It is nice that there are so many food categories, and they list which phase they are in, to keep your diet on track. South Beach foods definitely aren't bland or boring. They just use herbs and spices for flavor, instead of bad carbs and sugars, which is a good way for everybody to eat, whether they need to lose a few pounds or not. Some recipes in this book are a little to weird though. We like fish, but some of the many fish recipes here do not sound very appetizing.

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South Beach Diet Cookbook

Uses lots of fresh herbs but nothing you can't get from most markets to enhance the flavor of simple things. The receipes are often ones you'll want to use again even when off the diet.
Good format and organization. Just enough theory in the beginning to understand the overall concept of the diet without belaboring it and the rest solid receipes including ones from good Miami restaurants.

Good diet, but the cookbook could be improved

The book starts out with a good, basic explanation of the precepts of the South Beach Diet, just in case you haven't read the original book or need a refresher. It includes a much more thorough guide to stocking your kitchen than what you'll find in the "Good Fats Good Carbs Guide." It starts off with a list of all the things you should clean out of your pantry when you start the diet, and then moves on to a fairly thorough guide to what you should look for when perusing the grocery store.

Recipes are handily marked with a colored bar and label saying which phase they're intended for. There are definitely some wonderful recipes in here. The Oatmeal Pancakes are absolutely amazing. The Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Cups tasted good, but the consistency was terrible--they only sort-of firmed up, were soggy on top, and when used in conjunction with paper muffin cups as suggested, refused to part ways with the paper. The Hot Scrambled Tofu had no real flavor to it and was pretty unappealing. Texture and structure were two weak areas for this cookbook, which is a trait I associate with cookbooks written by people who may cook good food, but aren't entirely familiar with tried-and-true techniques.

The layout is clear and easy to read. Ingredients are set apart from the recipes and spaces out well; the fonts are clear and easy to read at a glance; instructions are broken down into small paragraphs; and all recipes include nutritional information.

There is definitely wonderful food to be found in this cookbook, and we certainly won't put it on a back shelf and never use it again. However, the quality is just spotty enough that we tend to turn to other cookbooks first.

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