Classy and Opinionated Lifestyle Mom Blog
In 2011, Becky Selengut released Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast, a cookbook of recipes celebrating locally sourced Pacific Coast seafood. Now, in 2018, she has updated and expanded her book with a brand new edition, Good Fish: 100 Sustainable Seafood Recipes …
In its never-ending quest to help people with diabetes live full lives while minimizing the associated complications, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has released a new cookbook, The 12-Week Diabetes Cookbook by Linda Gassenheimer. This innovative book concentrates on dinners, featuring twelve full weeks of …
Too often, the word “diet” conjures up negative feelings associated with restrictive rules and deprivation. Not so with The Mamma Mia! Diet: The Secret Italian Way to Good Health, a new book by Paola Lovisetti Scamihorn and Paola Palestini. The Mamma Mia! Diet (MMD) turns that negativity completely upside-down with its focus on delicious food and a healthy lifestyle.
* Complimentary Book Received for Review.
This book is not merely a collection of recipes, nor is it a nutrition and health textbook. Rather, it’s the best of both, written in a friendly, understandable way that brings common sense to the science of losing weight. The reader learns not just what to do to gain the benefits of the MMD, but why, and that makes all the difference.
It’s long been established that the Mediterranean diet has health benefits such promoting heart health and lower weight. It emphasizes consumption of fruits and vegetables, healthy fats such as olive oil, legumes, whole grains, and moderate amounts of proteins such as chicken and fish. Although based on the Mediterranean diet, the MMD concentrates on the foods and traditions of Italy, home of the authors. Mamma Mia!
The first half of the book goes into great detail about the basics of nutrition and food, as well as lifestyle elements that affect health, such as exercise and sleep. Separate chapters about carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, fat, protein, salt, and beverages (including wine) and the role they play in the MMD provide a wealth of information, both scientific and practical. Each chapter also contains a very helpful list of “dos and don’ts” that make it easy to understand and follow the principles of the MMD.
Recipes, seasonal menus, and informative appendices make up the second half of the book. The recipes are a celebration of the best of Italian food. This is not the Americanized versions of Italian food, with its large servings of pasta drowned in heavy sauces; no, these dishes are light and flavorful, featuring fresh, seasonal ingredients. Pasta is an important part of many of the recipes, but it’s generally whole-grain pasta in reasonable serving sizes. The recipes are thoughtfully created for maximum flavor as well as nutritional value, and each recipe is accompanied by a “Mamma Mia!” sidebar highlighting the benefits of the recipe’s ingredients.
Let me tempt you with some of the recipes from the MMD:
• Breakfast: Homemade Muesli; Peach Shake
• Starters: Italian-Style Crudites; Caprese Salad
• Lunch: Lentil Salad; Pasta with Broccoli
• Dinner: Baked Eggplant Rolls; Grilled Salmon Steak with Spinach
• Desserts: Apple and Ricotta Cake; Lemon and Rosemary Sorbet
Whether you fully embrace the Mamma Mia! Diet and follow it to the letter or simply employ the parts of it that suit you and make some of the recipes, you’re sure to learn from and enjoy this interesting book.
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Giveaway: One lucky winner is going to win a paperback copy to try The Mamma Mia! Diet for themselves from Hatherleigh Press.
Giveaway Details: This giveaway is open to residents of the US ONLY age 18 and over. Please read our Terms of Service & Disclaimer Policy before entering. This giveaway will close on March 30th, 2018 at 11:59 pm EST time. No purchase necessary to enter or win.
Disclaimer: A. Bailey received a complimentary product for review purposes & feature on The Classy Chics blog. No monetary compensation was received. A. Bailey’s thoughts, opinions and words are 100% her own. Your thoughts may differ. Please read the blog’s terms of service policy before entering any giveaways. The Classy Chics are NOT responsible for prize fulfillment or shipping of any items won from this blog.
Seriously Good Freezer Meals is a unique compilation of 150 family and freezer – friendly recipes that will help busy families save time while still getting a home-cook meal. * Complimentary Book Received for Review. Karrie Truman wrote this book because the freezer meal fans …
The Waffle House sells 145 waffles per minute – 877 million waffles and counting since they opened and almost 10% of North Americans eat waffles at least once a week. But the really hot trend in waffles is taking the experience beyond breakfast to create …
Helen Martinson struggled with obesity for most of her adult life, and suffered the adverse consequences to her health due to her excess weight. Over the years, she tried countless diets but the weight always came back. Finally, she resorted to bariatric surgery for a lap band, and when that brought on a slew of health problems, she switched it out for a gastric sleeve. Since her top weight, she has lost about 140 pounds—and more importantly, she’s kept that weight off!
* Complimentary Book Received for Review.
Through her years of battling obesity, Helen discovered a way of eating that not only is healthful and helps her maintain her healthy weight but also tastes great. Her plan relies on high-protein recipes that are low in calories, carbs, and fat, all while being big on flavor. Cookin’ Skinny is a collection of Helen’s best recipes so the rest of us can benefit from her experience.
I like this cookbook. It’s a sweet little book with cute illustrations and unfussy pictures of several of the recipes. Cookin’ Skinny isn’t one of those oversized coffee-table books with highly stylized glossy photos. Instead, its emphasis is on the recipes, all designed to be part of an overall weight-loss plan.
The recipes cover just about every category you’d want, broken into convenient chapters. Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find in Cookin’ Skinny:
* Breakfast Dishes: Blueberry Pancakes; Florentine Eggs
* Lunch Dishes: Chicken Sandwich Mediterranean-Style; Turkey Fajitas
* Soups and Salads: Chicken Gumbo; Tuna Salad with Crunchy Cabbage; Creamy Dill Ranch Dressing
* Supper Dishes: Crispy Fish Sticks; Stuffed Beef Tenderloin
* Side Dishes: “Faux” Fried Rice; Spicy Eggplant
* Sweets for the Sweet: Blueberry-and-Peach Crisp; Meringue Cookies
* Fun Foods: Cacciatore Meatballs; Mini Taco Salads
Every recipe includes a nutritional breakdown with all the information you might need. In some cases where the recipes have options, there’s nutritional data about the options, too, a nice feature not found in many cookbooks.
Since Helen’s focus is protein-rich foods, she has included a very helpful section in which she explains how and why a high-protein diet can lead to healthful weight loss. She also has an extensive listing of protein sources, along with the serving size and number of calories and grams of protein for each.
One of my favorite things about Cookin’ Skinny is that the author included before-and-after photos of herself, with a twist: Her “after” picture is at the front of the book, but her “before” picture is at the very end of the book because, as she puts it, “I have put that part of my struggle behind me.” Makes sense to me!
To learn more about Helen Martinson, visit her website. While there, check out the excerpt from Cookin’ Skinny, which includes the recipe for her Apple-and-Blueberry Cottage-Cheese Parfait!
Title: Cookin’ Skinny
Author: Helen Martinson
Paperback: 130 pages
ISBN-10: 148346878X
* This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, we may or may not receive a small commission which helps to support this site. Thank you!
Disclaimer: A. Bailey received complimentary products for review purposes & feature on The Classy Chics blog. No monetary compensation was received. A. Bailey’s thoughts, opinions and words are 100% her own. Your thoughts may differ.
Diabetes is serious. I know just how serious, having been my diabetic mother’s caregiver for the last years of her life. Understanding the importance of maintaining healthy weight and glucose levels is the foundation of controlling diabetes. That can be overwhelming, but fortunately, the American …
Everyday Vegetarian offers over 150 meatless dishes that aren’t just for vegetarians, but for everyone that wants to incorporate more fruits, whole grains and vegetables into their everyday diet. What I love is that the book gives you easy to use and useful guides on …