Getting Thin and Loving Food!: 200 Easy Recipes to Take You Where You Want to Be

Kathleen is full of energy and passion on her show and in her cookbooks. And it is contagious! Both for her show and for her approach to dieting and cooking. There is so much good stuff in here, both motivational and cuisine.Here is a sampling of the good cuisine: Ahi Tuna with Napa Cabbage Salad; Tex-Mex Chicken and Barley Soup with Avocado; Eggplant, Chicken and Basil Stir-Fry; Pork Tenderloin with Lemon Butter Sauce and Swiss Chard; Cashew Chicken; Balsamic Chicken with Pan-Roasted Carrots, Parsnips and Potatoes; Flank Steak, Sweet Potatoes and Cilantro Stir Fry.We as we get older must watch what we consume (if you're not older yet you will do yourself a big favor to start eating better now) and so we need variety, food that is good for us and good to eat. Chef Kathleen's recipes continue to add variety and great food to my repoirtoie and I'm sure they'll accomplish that for you too.As with her first cookbook, this one has the bases covered: main dishes, appetizers, desserts, sides, even sauces and salsas and breakfast.

Kathleen is not only an excellent chef and host of a motivational Food Network show (Cooking Thin), but an inspiration. She has lost a lot of weight and kept it off. Her cookbooks aren't JUST cookbooks. In the first section of each book, she has a "heart-to-heart" with her readers about her philosophy on healthy eating and her own keys to weight loss. I have lost 30 pounds so far using Chef Kathleen's warm yet no-nonsense philosophy. More importantly, I have maintained a healthy lifestyle (and my weight loss) for over 2 years now. If you want to get off that diet roller coaster once and for all and make changes you can live with for life, this book is for you.

Chef Kathleen's approach to weight loss and a healthy lifestyle through portion control, regular exercise, and moderation, not elimination has helped our entire family to make necessary changes to our whole lifestyle. And between my husband and I we have lost a combined 40 pounds so far! The recipes in this book are quick, tasty, and easy. Even my 11 year old has made some of them! Our favorites so far are the Chicken Taco Casserole, and the Strawberry Cheesecake Mousse. YUMMY!The sidebars are very helpful also! Chef Kathleen and her mother offer great tips for substitutions, recipe morphs and how to choose the best ingredients.

The Cooking Thin approach helped me lose over 70 pounds and keep it off. This book is loaded with practical tips for living a healthy lifestyle, motivational stories and fantastic recipes. The dishes are layered with flavors, easy to prepare and taste absolutely scrumptious!

Kathleen Daeleman's new, second book deals with exactly the same issue, with exactly the same solution, as her first book, `Cooking Thin with Chef Kathleen'. The message in a nutshell is that you can loose weight and you can keep it off and still eat delicious food. The solution in a nutshell is that you take small positive steps each day guided by an instinctual knowledge of what is good for you and what is not, aided by a systematic study of packaged foods' nutritional labels.So why buy another book with the same message? The first consideration is that the book's list price is well below that of most other celebrity chefs, including most of her Food Network colleagues. From Ina Garten, you will typically get 30% fewer recipes for a 25% higher price, and no feel good healthy eating pep talks. That leads to a second reason. While Ms. Daelemans' 52 pages of introductory material may repeat a lot of her message from her first book, it still has punch, much like a heart to heart pep talk from an wise older sister. This is basically old wine in a new bottle, but still good wine.On Kathleen's principles for loosing weight, I can argue with only one. This is the reliance on that little inner voice of conscience that tells you that a certain indulgence, such as the remainder of a rich German chocolate cake she takes home after her birthday, is simply not good for you. As a one-time professional philosopher trained in the nature of knowledge, I can tell you this intuition is a myth. This knowledge is built up from a lifetime of reading, listening, and connecting things in your own mind. This means that there are a lot of food land mines out there of which you simply are not aware. My favorite is the Jewish soul food dish of oversized bagel, cream cheese, and lox. At one time, I could easily down two of these dietary blockbusters at a sitting without realizing I was eating enough calories for two days at my level of (in)activity. Another surprise is the nutritional danger of eating excess carbohydrates from highly processed foods such as white flour. I applaud Ms. Kathleen's grouping the low carb plans with other fad diets with their danger of failure through boredom. But, I contend that `that little internal voice of intuition' is not robust enough to support the path to a healthy lifestyle. This does not kill Daelemans argument. It only means that while you are following Ms. Kathleen's culinary techniques, read books such as `Superfoods Rx' by Dr. Steven Pratt and `Nourishing Traditions' from Sally Fallon and `Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy' from Dr. Walter Willett. These books will feed your little voice of conscience with information while Chef Kathleen feeds your tummy.Following the introductory pep talk on building your motivation, Ms. K has a chapter on pantry and kitchen equipment. All pantry lists have the same problem. They talk you into buying things with a limited shelf life and you have no immediate recipe in which to use the ingredients, so som