Wholesome Harvest: Cooking With the New Four Food Groups : Grains, Beans, Fruits, and Vegetables - Hardcover

With a title that cleverly avoids any hint of the vegetarian persuasion, this informative guide to four food groups by dietician Gelles ( The Complete Whole Grain Cookbook ) should appeal to health-minded cooks everywhere. In truth more of a cookbook than a diet or health book, it features quite a bit of good information about nutrition, diet and health, as well as cooking techniques for what appears to be the '90s answer to meat, fish and fowl: the sometimes quirky and yet always nutritionally solid bean. While the writing is straightforward and rather dull, the recipes are stimulating. Some of the best include entrees-- a vegetable sukiyaki, cannellini with fennel and sauteed arugala, couscous with three peppers and Senegal stew with millet. A section on breads and spreads includes tips about inventive, low-fat cottage cheese-based toppings. While the volume's breakfast recipes and menu suggestions are handy, conspicuously missing are recipes for fruit-based desserts. All told, the book's hardy soups and entrees will make it a valuable addition to the expanding shelf for healthful food cookery.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gelles, a nutritionist and author of The Complete Whole Grain Cookbook ( LJ 10/15/89), provides dozens of high-fiber, low-cholesterol, low-fat recipes developed to accommodate the new basic four food groups plan. These "wholesome" dishes are far from boring, however, and although nutrition information is provided for each, Gelles does not sacrifice flavor or taste to rigid dietary guidelines. All the recipes are meatless, but dishes like Risotto with Fresh Herbs or Madeira Black Bean Soup should appeal to nonvegetarians and vegetarians alike. Far more approachable than Sarah Schlesinger's similar The Garden Variety Cookbook ( LJ 6/15/92), this is recommended for most collections.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.