[.ca] The Low-Carb Comfort Food Cookbook (ISBN 0471267570)

Too Far Left:
When I bought this I though it would help with family snacks & "comfort food". We live in a very rural area, and most of the supplies they use to prepare these foods are not available nearby. I have hit an "insulin resistance" stage of my life, with diabetes running in my family lineage. I am about 20 lbs overweight. I just thought this book was horrible. I want ways to improve our foods, not totally change them from things on our farm or found locally. The layout of the book was also bad from my view. When I get a cookbook I want a simple layout, with this there is too much chatter mixed with the recipe. Also they talk in the first chapter that you can substitute things - ie real sugar for splenda - yet not a single recipe shows conversions or how you would change their recipe. I have been limited to 50 grams of sugar per day - and I hate sugar substitutes (including splenda). To me this book was a total waste of my money & time. If you are into some health kick and want all the expense & time of these recipes then fine. But if you are looking for changes due to hitting a 'pre-diabetic' stage in your life stay away from this book!

A waste of money:
I spent fourty-eight dollars buying all the odd ingredients for all the breads and desserts in this book (vital wheat gluten, whey soy powder, almond meal, etc.) and not a one of them were any good. The magic rolls, pizza crust and cookies all have a very mealy texture and tasted quite plane. They also made quite a mess of my kitchen.

One of 3 Low Carb Cookbooks I Count on:
I highly recommend this cookbook. The desert and candy sections are very good. I didn't like the breads very much, but the main course dishes have been great. I really like that the carbs are listed for each ingredient in the recipe. That is so useful when I change the amount of an ingredient in a recipe to lower the carb count or adjust the recipe to our tastes. I bought it for the baking ideas, but really like it for the other recipes. I keep this cookbook handy along with "500 Low-Carb Recipes: 500 Recipes from Snacks to Dessert, That the Whole Family Will Love" and the Atkins "Quick and Easy New Diet Cookbook".

I'm loving this book!:
Got the book from the library and now I must buy a copy. (Everything looks made for my taste!) I just made the Magic Rolls...Oh oh oh... I can't keep out of them. Are they supposed to be hollow? Well, mine are but I don't care...they are divine. (Alternatives are given if one wants to make them out of whole wheat, or into raisin rolls, low carb danish pastry, herbed croutons, bread crumbs.) I thought I'd failed when they were in the mixing bowl..it was just a bit too easy. So I figured I'd be tossing them out...and I'd then for sure just return the book to the library and forget about it. But no!! These are kinda magic. I would make these no matter what kind of diet (or not) that I was on. They are GOOD! I can't wait to try more recipes from the book now. :)

Good Cookbook:
The coconut macaroon cookies, sugar cookies, and the chocolate chip cookies are reason enough to buy the book! I do substitute other sweeteners (mostly bulk Splenda and brown or crystal maltitol) for their little bits of real sugar and the recipes still turn out great. I chop up low carb chocolate bars or get low carb chocolate chips, sometimes increase the sweetener to my taste, add more/different extracts, whatever. I use a tsp of lemon and a tsp of coconut extract for the lemon peel in the macaroons--and pineapple extract is good to sub for one of the tsp of vanilla. King Arthur Flour has good unsweetened coconut for this recipe. Sometimes you do have to order online ingredients for many of the low carb cookbooks, depending on where you live and what is available. So? Almond flour (which is much healthier)is not as available as white flour in most supermarkets--yet. Same for some other low carb ingredients. This is a low carb cookbook. If you want to use regular flour, buy a regular cookbook.