I'm Not That Crazy About This Book! Here's Why! | The South Beach Diet Cookbook (The South Beach Diet) |...

Many recipes for success! | The South Beach Diet Cookbook (The South Beach Diet) | Arthur Agatston

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	• 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

Hit and miss recipes

I bought this book because of the many vegetable dishes, not because I'm on a diet. The salads and soups are very flavorful and can be prepared as is - no adjustments necessary. The Hearty Minestrone, the Tomato Salsa with Avocado and Onion and the Quiche are terrific. However, some of the meat and fish dishes didn't turn out so well. The Chicken Paprikash is too watery, I liked the addition of broccoli, but cooking the for 20 minutes turns it to mush, while the chicken turned out tough. There are no side dish suggestions for these meals and the photos are misleading, for example a salmon dish shows a whole salmon steak in the picture as one serving when actually half a steak is a serving size. In other recipes I've noticed the cooking times are off. Overall, I'm excited about the use of the herbs and spices to perk up vegetables and low fat recipes and will be more cautious preparing the main courses.

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I'm Not That Crazy About This Book! Here's Why!

I will get to the bottom line first. This book is fair. I have three big complaints about it:

1) The recipes call for a lot of fresh herbs or other ingredients that are costly. Fresh herbs are expensive and I have found that I will use them for one or two dishes and then they go in the trash after another couple of weeks in the refrigerator. Some of the recipes require a small amount of ingredients that you would rarely or never use again. So you would have to buy an entire jar/package/can, use your tablespoon or two and then the rest will most likely get discarded. For instance, how often will you use chipotle pepper powder after you have used the 1 teaspoon or double-strength tomato concentrate (Italian tube). For how many other recipes have you used (or will you use in the future) ancho chilie powder, capers, flaxseed oil or tamarind paste? For those of us on a budget, I believe some of these can be expensive meals to cook.

2) There are not enough recipes from this book that I would ever cook, because my wife and I are fairly picky eaters. Recipes such as Grilled Clams Gremolata, Spiced Pickled Eggs, Cottage Cheese Stuffed Celery just did not appeal to us.

3) A good number of the recipes can take a fairly long time to put together and cook.

The recipes are presented in a very clear, concise manner. Each recipe lists the number of servings and the nutrition per serving, and which phase of the diet the recipe can be used for.

For the most part, there are not as many Phase I recipes in the book as I would have liked because Phase 1 is the most restrictive. That's where someone might need the most help in finding foods to eat. It's a two-week period in which most all carbohydrates are cut out of the diet. This is to wean the body from the carb cravings. I won't go into details. You can read the original South Beach Diet book (which also has some recipes) to get all that information. The Appetizer section has the most Phase I recipes and the least any of the other phases.

In Phase 2 of the diet, you can start adding back the 'right' carbs: wild or brown rice, sweet potatoes, sugar-free preserves, whole wheat bread, and several other no-no's that were not permitted in Phase I.

Phase 3 is the least restrictive and I have not gone to phase 3 or tried any of the recipes.

I read a couple of the other reviews of this book and the reviews make the the book look very appealing, especially the listings of some of the recipes. The problem is that many of those really good sounding recipes take a LOT of time to prepare and cook and/or they are Phase 3 recipes. It's MY guess that many people buying this book are looking for Phase 1 or Phase 2 recipes.

There is only ONE Phase 1 dessert in the book: "Chilled Espresso Custard" and I can tell you we won't be preparing that one!

There's probably a dozen recipes, at best, in this book that we'll use. Overall, I'm disappointed in this.

The book says there are over 200 recipes in this book making it sound like there's a huge selection. In my opinion, it's not that many. If you take those 200 recipes and break them out by each of the recipe section (appetizers, meats, etc.) then categorize each one of those into Phase 1, 2, and 3 you will find there really aren't THAT many recipes for each phase for each recipe type.

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Many recipes for success!

Information presented in an easy to understand format. Delicious recipes with many choices in each catagory.

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Recipe Book

Good Recipes, some that I never heard of. Like Cauliflower made to be like mashed potatoes.

Great diet..Great recipes!

I love The South Beach diet and this cookbook is Great! I have tried several recipes and espically love the two soup recipes (Veggie Beef and Chicken and Veggie Chowder). If you are on South Beach you NEED this cookbook.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

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