The 1200-Calorie-A-Day Menu Cookbook: A Quick and Easy Recipes for Delicious Low-Fat Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and Desserts Ches, Dinners

I do a lot of cooking and a lot of dieting. This book has been a great help in getting a health menu together with 1200 calories a day. And you feel like you ate something when you are done. Every recipe I have tried is a real winner. My husband keeps asking me why this cookbook author is not a celebrity chef -- because everything is so good and low calorie too. This is a cooks book -- if you don't want to take the time to cook each meal yourself, it may not be for you. For me, it is worth the effort if the alternative is frozen or packaged "diet food."

I've tried recipes from a number of low cal/low fat cookbooks and many of them are so bland and tasteless my husband has begged me to never cook them again. Everything I've tried from this book has won rave reviews (especially the cajun chicken and beef stir fry). I also found them to be easy to adjust to personal taste preferences. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is trying to stay low cal without giving up taste.

My wife and I have made about a dozen of these recipes and have never been disappointed -- they have been consistently delicious. We also use "Eating Well" magazine and a few other sources of tasty low-cal recipe, in addition to standard cookbooks.Each recipe tells you the calories (important) and grams of fat (not as important) per serving. As with any cookbook, there are always minor modifications to make to suite your taste (for example, the lemon-mustard chicken with angel hair pasta recipe doesn't create enough sauce for our taste, so we increase those ingredients).These are not "15-minute recipes," nor do they take hours. You have to want to cook; it's not uncommon for a dinner entree to have a dozen ingredients. But the rewards are worth it.

This book is perfect for me. I want to eat a 1200 calorie a day menu. But I was spending so much time compiling recipes from the various books that I have that I gave up. This book allows you to choose a breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. No strict regimen. No matter which meals you choose, you don't exceed 1200 calories. It's perfect. The recipes are more "gourmet" which is what I like to prepare. All the recipes are based on 4 people but its not that difficult to scale down to one or two, it just takes a smidgen of effort. Best recipe book I have found to date.

If you're looking for basics, this probably isn't the cookbook for you. But the recipes are so incredibly good that this is the perfect place to look for the special meal. Who can resist blintzes with cheesecake sauce and raspberries? Or (my favorite) shrimp and cheese chowder? Probably not for the basic in-a-hurry dieters, but a must for the gourmands out there (whether you're cutting calories or not!)