Weekend Cooking- Eat What You Love Everyday by Marlene Koch

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food. 

Eat What You Love Everyday by Marlene Koch
Published by Running Press ISBN 978-0-7624-5163-0
Hardcover, $26.50, 349 pages

A few years ago at the Book Expo, I met Marlene Koch, author of the cookbook Eat More of What You Love. She created recipes for some of our favorite dishes and lightened them up without losing any of the flavor. Her recipe for Steak Diane is one my family enjoys a great deal.

Koch was at BEA again this year, promoting her new book, Eat What You Love Everyday, and once again it looks like a winner. It has 200 new recipes, all lower in sugar, fat and calories.

Marlene Koch at BEA

Following the introduction, there are short sections on Everyday Healthy Eating Tips (like 'Cook everyday'), Everyday Ingredients (where she discusses things like agave nectar and buttermilk), Everyday Meal Planning ( I liked 'Set aside time each week to look for new recipes', and Pinterest is a good resource for this), and Everyday With Diabetes.

There are fourteen chapters, with standard ones like Breakfast and Brunch, Everyday Soups and Sandwiches and some different ones such as Cook It Fast or Slow: Pressure and Slow Cooker Favorites, and even one with Menus for Every Day, Every Occasion, and Everyone, which puts together recipes from the book into various meals.

I found several recipes I'm going to try include:

• Savory Southern Biscuits
• Buffalo Chicken Dip
• Southern Style Grilled Cheese (with pimento!)
• Antipasto Pasta Salad
• Fabulous French Onion Chicken

The first one I'm going to make is
Breakfast-Style Egg Salad Sandwich
Ingredients:
2 large hard-boiled eggs
1 green onion, chopped, white separated from green
1 1/2 teaspoons light mayonnaise
1 1/2 teaspoons plain nonfat Greek yogurt
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 slice light white or wheat bread
1 1/2 teaspoons real bacon bits (like Hormel)
Directions:
1. Peel eggs, cut them in half, remove yolk from one of the eggs, and discard it. Using the coarse shred on a box grater, grate the egg and egg white into a small bowl (you can mash the eggs with a fork, but the grater makes for a much creamier egg salad). Add the white part of the onion, mayonnaise, yogurt and salt and pepper. Stir well to combine.

2. Toast bread and spread the egg salad on the warm toast, sprinkle the bacon bits on top, and garnish with the green part of the onion.

One of the best things about these books is that Koch uses ingredients that every kitchen has readily on hand. If you are looking to lighten things up, you can;t go wrong with Eat What You Love Everyday.

Marlene Koch's website can be found here.

rating 4 of 5

Weekend Cooking- Eat More of What You Love by Marlene Koch

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

Eat More of What You Love by Marlene Koch
Published by Running Press ISBN 978-0-7624-4589-9
Hardcover, $27

I'm always the optimist when it comes to trying recipes that claim to be lower in fat and tasty too. Yet too many times I have tried them, only to be disappointed.

So it was with some trepidation that I tried a recipe from Marlene Koch's new cookbook Eat More of What You Love, which I got at BEA. I was looking for a new entree, and I came across Steak Diane in the book. It looked simple, and the accompanying photo made my mouth water.

The result was delicious! Topping filets with sliced mushrooms and diced shallots and then a sauce made of nonfat half-and-half, cornstarch, beef broth, Dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce made for a lowfat but tangy and tasty dish. And it was only 265 calories per serving.

When my family raved about the meal, I looked for more entrees to try. Chicken Cordon Bleu is another favorite, and I have a recipe that I use frequently. Marlene's recipe had only 250 calories per serving, and again uses Dijon mustard and nonfat half-and-half, along with some chicken bouillon for the sauce.

You also spread the chicken breast with dijon mustard before adding the ham and Swiss cheese and rolling in flour, egg then panko crumbs. Everyone loved the chicken and this recipe will replace the older, full-fat one.

There are 200 recipes in the book, and at the bottom of the page is all the nutritional information, including food exchanges and Weight Watcher Plus Point Comparisons, which makes this book a great resource for anyone using a weight loss plan.

I can't wait to try more recipes from this book, from breakfast baked goods to sandwiches to desserts; there are so many variations on things my family already enjoys that I know they will love it.

Marlene Koch has a website with tips and free recipes, including this one for Root Beer Barbequed Chicken that is up next on my list. The cover of the book is gorgeous, and although there aren't photos for a lot of the recipes, what ones are there are lovely.

Don't think of this book as a diet cookbook; think of it as cookbook filled with new, healthier variations  of your favorite foods. Your recipes will thank you for the makeover and your family will thank you for the tasty meals.

rating 5 of 5