While in B. Dalton's, I saw Martha Stewart's Healthy Quick Cook on sale for 15.00. Since I have just moved in to an apartment and am kind of on my own for the first time in my life, I decided to buy the book and begin to eat well. I must say though, that I am a bit of a picky eater. I won't seafood, many vegetables, but almost everything else is game. I had leafed through the book and saw a few very good recipes, such as cucumber and dill soup, and a couple of fruit dishes.
When I got home and starting to look through it, I was a bit baffled. Many of the ingredients I'd never heard of, and I've worked as a cook before. The recipes call for specific types of ingredients. You're not supposed to use just any kind of mint, it has to be a rare one. These recipes are not cheap. They may be easy to make and healthy, but they are definitely not for individuals that don't want to blow all their money on exotic dishes.
The book is good for people who want to experiment once in a while, but it is not an everyday kind of cookbook.

Pros

The first four pages of the book has a section for the basics, giving recipes for things such as chicken stock, lemon dill yogurt sauce, pesto, soy dipping sauce, and tons of dressings like orange vinaigrette and poppy seed vinaigrette. These are really nice because they fit into her recipes as well as plain dishes like a salad or if you feel in the mood for pasta you can make the pesto instead of using a canned sauce.
Nice setup of the book into a menu style like I'm used to seeing at home.
Gorgeous pictures of the dishes which give ideas of how to present the dishes at home.

Cons

Threre are pitches for Martha Stewart's home collection. For instance, in the presentation pictures, there are lines such as "serving them in a small glass like my Depression glass water tumbler". It might be a small pet peve of mine though. I don't like when people try to push their products on me.
Sometimes the ingredients that are listed are very common, but Martha Stewart uses the French equivalent of the word to make it sound more exotic. If you don't have any background in French, you may not know what she's talking about. For instance, there is a recipe for Thyme-roasted poussin. Poussin is chicken in french. No where in the recipe does she mention that poussin is in fact chicken. (The recipe looks really good though)
Some things I've never heard of. Like, what in the world is jicama? I'd love to know. and what is a morel? All I can think of is the eel.

The cookbook is set up into 4 sections, the four seasons. There are recipes that are supposed to correspond to the season. The recipes are presented in a menu style. For instance, a drink recipe, meat recipe, salad/soup recipe and desert recipe would be grouped together, so that the reader would not have to decide what went well with the butterfish. Martha would have already told you the drink to prepare it with and the side dish to serve it with. This is very good for individuals not able to make these decisions.
Prep time for dishes is usually around 10-20 minutes per dish.
I personally will pick and chose the recipes that I would personally eat. Some look extremely good like blueberry shortcake, peach pastries, apricot glazed chicken, and the spice-rubbed roast pork loin. others are not so appetizing to me. The recipes at least will give you some ideas for future recipes and meal plans.
Try to wait until it goes on sale though, I definitely think $32.50 is a bit too much. It's worth the $15 I paid for it.


Recommended: Yes