The Kitchen Diva

A while back, I got an email asking me if I'd like to receive a free copy of a new cookbook.

Sure!

Last week, this arrived in the mail:

(minus the 'click to look inside' caption of course)

The Kitchen Diva's Diabetic Cookbook by Angela Shelf Medearis

Last night, I sat down to read through it. 

I discovered that it's a pretty helpful cookbook for people who are looking for healthy cooking options and for people who want (or need) to know nutritional information. 

In fact, that was my favourite part of the entire cookbook - the fact that every recipe listed nutritional information including carbs, fibre, calories and fat. They even included carbohydrate choices and exchanges for people who prefer that route. Extremely important information for all sorts of folks, not just those with faulty pancreases. 

Some of the recipes were pretty appealing and the pictures are tempting. (Doug doesn't like cooking without having a photo to refer to so I always pay attention to the photography.) I haven't tried any of the recipes yet but I like the fact that they cover a variety of types of cooking - from Asian to Cajun and back again. And none of them look particularly difficult or time consuming to make. 

I also liked the added information that was scattered in between the recipes like 'how to prepare an eggplant' and 'how to hard cook an egg'. Also helpful were the 'quick snack fix' ideas she included with many of her recipes. There would be a recipe for a fruit smoothie that would be followed by a few quick snack fix ideas with frozen fruit that I'm sure a lot of people would find helpful. 

The one thing that I didn't like was that all the recipes that called for sugar asked for Splenda or stevia sweetener instead of white or brown sugar. I do understand that the audience for the cookbook is primarily people with type 2 diabetes and I certainly respect the need to reduce sugar in the diet.  

I, however, never cook with artificial sweeteners so I would be replacing her suggestion with real sugar - meaning of course that the nutritional information for the recipe would no longer be accurate. 

Overall I think it's a good cookbook that people who are looking for healthy, simple meals will find very helpful. It will be a great addition to our cookbook shelf in the kitchen but I think I'll stick to the main course and side dish recipes rather than the dessert ones.