Book Review: Fix-It and Enjoy-It Healthy Cookbook

Most moms are on a mission to get their kids to eat more vegetables. While my daughter used to throw back broccoli and cauliflower as a baby, she’s much more cautious with veggies these days.

I have a confession to make: I have a veggie complex. My cooked vegetables never seem to taste as good as they do in restaurants or from other cooks. So I’ve been on a quest to enhance the flavor of vegetables during cooking.

About a week ago, I got a present in the mail to help solve this problem.

Good Books, the publishers of the Fix-It and Forget-It series, sent me another book to review (last week I reviewed the Fix-It and Forget-It Big Cookbook). This book, Fix-It and Enjoy-It Healthy Cookbook, is different from the others in the series because it’s not for slow cookers. Instead, the book contains plant-based main and side dish recipes that are prepared in the oven or stove-top. And like the other Fix It books, all the recipes are submitted by home cooks.

Even though I’m a dietitian, I don’t necessarily search for “healthy” cookbooks, which is why I didn’t request this book in the first place. Instead, I seek recipes that appeal to me, and based on my taste preferences and nutritional knowledge, will sometimes make substitutions or additions. I personally think this tendency to categorize foods into “healthy” and “unhealthy” is counterproductive. But I’ll save that rant for another post.

Now back to the book…

I was pleasantly surprised to see so many creative ways to prepare vegetables and fresh fruit. Remember, these are home cooks experimenting and coming up with their own recipes. After seeing vegetable idea after vegetable idea, I had to calm myself down. For broccoli alone there’s Broccoli Dijon, Sesame Broccoli, Broccoli with Cranberries, Corn and Broccoli Bake, Roasted Broccoli and Italian-style Broccoli. That’s a lot of broccoli.

Overall, I’m impressed with the number of appealing fruit and vegetable recipes in this book. So if you’re struggling to come up with fruit and vegetable ideas, you might want to give it a try.

This week I tried Holiday Green Beans and they turned out tasty. Did my daughter eat them? No. But I’ll keep offering – and in the meantime my husband and I get more variety.

Got a tasty vegetable recipe? Please share!

Holiday Green Beans (I cut the recipe in half)

Makes: 10 servings
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20-30 minutes

Ingredients
2 lbs (about 8 cups) fresh green beans
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 tsp, olive oil
½ cup slivered almonds
Pepper to taste

1. Steam beans in saucepan until just slightly crisp.
2. Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil in large skillet for 3 minutes
3. Add beans to skillet. Sauté 1 minute
Add slivered almonds and pepper to beans. Toss together and then serve
 
“Reprinted from Fix-It and Enjoy-It Healthy Cookbook. Copyright by Good Books (www.GoodBooks.com). Used by permission. All rights reserved.”

Tagged as: book review, Easy meal ideas, fruits and vegetables, kids eating vegetables