I’ve read several articles over the last couple of years about the surge in cookbook publishing. Seems like everyone and their dog has published a cookbook with many of them touting the virtues of a particular diet. Those are the ones that bother me the most as I really don’t believe that any fad diet which typically promotes cutting out a particular type of food is very healthy. Unfortunately, I think that it’s those types of diets that have propelled the current cookbook publishing mania.
Throughout other posts on this site, I reference that I don’t like to cook. There are probably a hundred other things I’d much rather do than cook food. I certainly like to eat food, but I don’t want to take time to prepare it. I need to shift my thinking slightly if I’m going to lose this weight and feel better about myself because what I eat is the main culprit and stumbling block in my goal. I overeat. Food is my drug. I find that I eat for two main reasons, I’m hungry or I’m stuck. What I mean by stuck is that maybe I’m working and I don’t know what to do next, or I don’t have anything to actually do next and therefore I reach for food. I don’t think this is the same as eating when I’m stressed out or bored, it’s more about feeling lost in the direction I’m supposed to move.
I’m going to add to this that I’m a picky eater. As I’ve also noted on this site, I grew up in the middle of the Midwest where meat and potatoes are a key ingredient to dinner. This is home to the casserole and pot-luck dinners. When I was growing up, a lot of people would grow and process their own food. Homemade jams and jellies were just the tip of the iceberg. Canned everything from the garden was common (tomatoes, pickles, green beans, corn, just to mention a few). People also raised their own chickens for eggs and meat as well as cattle and hogs for beef and pork. I like simple foods or at least foods made with ingredients I can relate to and find easily. I strongly dislike fads in anything including food fads. Seriously, what the hell is Kambucha and why is it a big deal right now? I don’t like hummus or couscous or anything that feels pretentious. I want simple.
OK, with that rant over, a few years ago I stumbled onto a cookbook that I ended up buying. I don’t have very many cookbooks, I think there’s less than 10 in my cabinet and a good half of those were given to me. So I’ve bought only 5 or 6 in my lifetime, maybe a couple more than that which I’ve then sent off to the used bookstore. The cookbook I found that I think has helped change my eating is Taste of Home Comfort Food Diet. It seems to have all the foods that would be found at a good Midwest pot luck dinner but made in a way that means they have fewer calories. I’ve probably made a dozen meals from this book and have liked most of them. As I’m trying to eat better, I think I’m going to try to make more from this book. The other cookbooks I have that are in a similar style are Taste of Home Comfort Food Makeovers and Cooking Light Comfort Food. I also have the Better Homes and Gardens New Dieter’s Cookbook which does have a lot of comfort-type foods, but a few other recipes I won’t ever try, however, it’s the one which has a holiday cooking section that is nice.
All of these cookbooks provide a serving size and the nutritional information per serving which has helped me in learning how much I’m eating throughout the day and how much a serving size should be. I won’t ever buy a cookbook in the future that doesn’t have nutritional information along with the recipe.
The only drawback to these cookbooks is the same thing that seems to be an issue with most recipes and that is they are usually for 4-8 people and there are just two of us. That’s helpful with some recipes that work great as leftovers (love the soup leftovers) but not great when I just can’t eat everything before it starts to go bad, that is unless I want to eat the same thing for lunch and dinner 3 days in a row, which I don’t. To counteract this, a couple of years ago I finally bought a foodsaver machine, one of the basic ones. This is the machine that vacuum seals meals in a bag then they can be frozen. I have used it more in the last 8 months than I have previously and am finding that it’s a really good tool to have. I can also freeze items in serving sizes so that when they are thawed I am only eating what I should. I also asked for and received a food scale a few years ago for Christmas and have used it multiple times as well, twice this past week alone! I find that fancy kitchen gadgets and machines don’t really help me that much in eating, but these few tools that make portion sizing easier to follow are great compliments to some really good cookbooks.
Thank you to the authors of those books I’ve mentioned in recognizing that there is a whole group of us who just don’t want snooty, pretentious fad food, just good, simple, easy-to-follow recipes with recognizable ingredients.
