Fresh Start: Great Low-Fat Recipes, Day-by-Day ... (ISBN 0517702789)

Amazon.com Review:
Julee Rosso, formerly half of the Silver Palate team that revolutionized American home cooking, shows you how to make incredible fresh gourmet meals with low sugar and low fat. Each dish sounds like expensive restaurant fare, yet the recipes are simple and the presentation easy to follow. Four weeks of helpful, day-by-day menus plus charts, cooking lore, tips and techniques will inspire you to make healthy cooking a daily commitment--and it will soon become a lifelong pleasure!

Low-fat, Day by Day Menus of Great Food:
Rosso has turned out lots of great cookbooks, but this one is for us who want or need every now and then to cut back and eat more sensibly. The great thing is that this doesn't have to be boring,uninteresting food. Her zest and skills in putting together healthy food with attractive and luscious fare is evident in this collection. For example, one dinner entree I love is: Herbed brushetta, Broiled Honey Salmon, Hobo Potatoes, Asparagus Spears with Parmeasan Shards, Green Beans and Peaches in Wine. Having tried this more than once, it's good, you'll lose pounds and smile all the while you're tasting this great food. All the nutritional analysis is there as well as great sections on smoothies and treats/snacks, etc.

Love the Menus:
As a busy mom, I have very little time to plan healthy menus and run to the grocery every time I run out of something. So Fresh Start cures those problems for me by giving me 28 days worth of menus (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts) to feed my family which are healthy, low-fat and absolutely delicious. If not for this book, I'd not have tried and loved half the things on the weekly menus. No, it isn't your ordinary, topically-arranged cookbook, nor does it pretend to be. It serves it's purpose quite well. And hey, if you're looking for a delicious way to cook Salmon, there's always the index in the back of the book. This is definitely one of my favorites. My only caution/advice to you is that if you're not one whom likes to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, you'll grow weary of the constancy of cooking. Go ahead and eat your oatmeal and strawberries in the morning, and a healthy grilled cheese for lunch. Then open the book and dig in for a delicious dinner from Fresh Start.

My go-to cookbook:
Whenever I'm in the middle of a dish and not sure how to continue, or just need a good, relatively simple (with ingredients you can actually get) recipe, I always reach for this one. The opening chapter is fantastic, along with the hints and comments along with the book. There are plenty of great recipies, from vegetarian dishes to easy ones to more complicated meat dishes. The organization could be a little better, but once I read through it once, I can just flip to the index. The individual eggplant towers are delicious and it definitely is my go-to recipe when I can't think of what else to make. Highly recommended.

One of our standards:
This is probably the single volume we use most in our house for new recipes. It's not that we don't like the taste of richer foods, but they disagree with us, and these recipes are (so far) without a clunker in the bunch. A combination hard to beat!

The best healthy-eating book I have!:
...While it's true that the recipes are organized by menu, it is not so difficult to pick and choose your way through the book to create alternative meals that suit your style. What I can say about this book is that the recipes ROCK. My loving partner has a family history of heart-disease. We are both failed vegetarians who fell off the wagon because we LIKE meat. Neither of us are interested in going back to eating TVP and soy. What we do want is a book that will help us eat sensibly, reduce the risks of dropping dead from poor eating habits, and still allow us to eat food we like. Recipe after recipe in my book has been marked Very Good! or Excellent! beside it. The Turkey Paillard Piccata and Brown Rice with Asparagus and Almonds is delicious, the Country-Roasted Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes is savory and pleasing, the Roasted Chicken with Fresh Figs and Kalamata Olives is out of this world, and the Individual Eggplant Towers have become a family favorite.