After a couple of decades of following a reduced-fat diet, one of the two people in my house decided that it was time for a change. That decision was mainly prompted by the awful realization that the next jeans purchase would very likely entail a size change -- and not to a smaller size! So, since the beginning of the year, our household has been following a low-carbohydrate regimen instead of the low-fat diet we'd been following for almost twenty years. No more rice, no more pasta, darned little milk and most assuredly no sugar. Ugh. All the things we like are suddenly verboten!

At least we weren't buying nasty little bars from the Atkins people: no, we were following the way set forth by the Eadeses in Protein Power, keeping the diet to less than 15 grams of carbs per meal. Such a wholesale change in eating habits, though, meant that many of our cookbooks were suddenly no longer of much use, since most low-fat meals are both low in protein and high in carbs. Oh, woe, what to do!


Patricia Butkus to the Rescue

The Ms (who has never been one to pass up an opportunity to buy another cookbook) picked up a copy of The Everything Low-Carb Cookbook several weeks ago, and it's since become pretty much the household's low-carb bible. This volume is targeted specifically at folks cutting back on their carbohydrate intake, whether on a weight-loss plan or for some (unstated) medical reason.

The arrangement of TEL-CC is a bit different from traditional cookbooks (trust me on that; as I write this at the kitchen table there are approximately eleven zillion cookbooks within twenty feet). Oh, the usual breakdown of Appetizer / Salads / Soups / Desserts can be found in the table of contents, but some of the other entries are a bit more... unusual. They include such topics as:

Five or Fewer Ingredients
Fusion Fun
French Entrees
Comfort Food
Weekend Meals
Mexican Specialties

Yep, there's even an Italian Food section, though there's not a speck of pasta in any of the fourteen recipes. There is not, however, a vegetarian section (that should come as no surprise). In all, there are sixteen sections, each with its own mini-table of contents. There's also a brief introduction to the theory and practice of low-carbohydrate diets, an appendix by recipe name, and an index by main ingredient.


The Layout

Each section starts with a table of contents, in which "easy recipes" are starred; although I found nowhere that "easy" is defined. None of the recipes I've cooked to date have been particularly complex; preparation time is rarely more than half an hour. Few recipes have more than a dozen or so ingredients, and almost everything is readily available at your local grocery, unless maybe it doesn't stock arugala and escarole.

Except in the Appetizers section, recipes usually have an entire page to themselves, and I've seen no recipes that span two pages. Besides the ingredients and cooking directions, every recipe also has nutritional information, which comprises carbohydrate and protein counts. Each also is accompanied by a one-sentence serving hint or, as the Cajun cooks call it, "lagniappe", with a little tidbit of information about the food. Recipes are characterized by Butkus as "low" (less than 10g of carbohydrate) or "moderate" (10-20g of carbohydrate).

There are no illustrations in the book except for some cartoons on the cover, nor are there any pictures of the food. That doesn't bother me -- nothing I cook ever looks like the pictures, anyway!


Some Recipes

Over the past six weeks or so, we've come up with a couple of winners and a couple of losers. On the recipe for Chicken and Mushroom Soup, I just now found a yellow sticky inscribed with the notation, "There are much better ways to serve chicken," in the Ms's angular printing. In the index, however, several recipes have been picked out with a highlighter. Among them are:

Chicken Grape Salad (low carbohydrates): cubes of cooked chicken breast combined with halved grapes, chopped celery, and slivered almonds in a mayonnaise base. A great improvement on tuna salad!

Pesto-Baked Chicken (low carbohydrates): chicken breasts and zucchini pan-baked and served with pesto and asiago (or parmesan) cheese. Yummm!

Garlic Shrimp with Salsa (low carbohydrate): shrimp seared in garlic-infused olive oil, served with avocado, julienne jicama, and salsa. Good, but my Cajun barbecued shrimp is worlds better!

Stuffed Bell Peppers (moderate carbohydrates): your Mom's stuffed peppers were never like this! A savory spiced beef and tomato filling carefully spooned into cored bell peppers and then baked; served with a sprinkling of parmesan on the top.

Gotta quit, it's almost time for dinner!


OK, I'm Back

One serious complaint that I have with the book is that it is so dedicated to the concept of high protein / low-carb (as opposed to low-fat) that the nutritional information supplied with recipes includes only protein and carbohydrate counts. Personally, I don't give a fig what the Eadeses and Atkins say, I still want to know how much dietary fiber, cholesterol, sodium, and fat I'm getting; and the total caloric content of my meal. Butkus claims in her introduction that "It is difficult to determine accurate fat content in final recipes, especially given that much of the fat used during cooking doesn't remain in the final dish. Keep in mind that 1 gram of fat equals 9 calories."

Bushwa. An entire generation has watched its fat, fiber, sodium, and cholesterol intakes almost religiously. Tell us all the contents and let us make our own decisions based on full disclosure. Printing only protein and carbohydrate contents is concealing the high likelihood that some of us would be appalled at how much fat and cholesterol we're suddenly eating. It gives me the willies...


Recommendations

This is by no means a perfect cookbook. One of the people in the house (me) remains unconvinced that a low-carbohydrate diet is as healthy as its proponents claim. The subtitle of this book -- 300 delicious recipes to help you reduce your carbohydrates and stay healthy -- seems to me self-serving. I'd strongly urge anyone considering following a low-carbohydrate diet long-term to talk not just to your friends but to your physician or a nutritionist. I should also point out that Butkus is a chef and caterer in the Chicago area, but her biography contains no reference to formal training as a nutritionist or dietitian. And no, even though she's from Chicago, I don't know if she's related to Dick.

The recipes contained in The Everything Low-Carb Cookbook can surely be part of a balanced diet, and many have proven tasty enough that we've repeated their use. The Ms has lost about ten pounds on the low-carb diet (in two months); I'm eating the same low-carb dishes but adding a small serving of rice or an occasional baked potato; I've lost six pounds.

I recommend this cookbook only to people who are strong-willed enough to look carefully at the low-carbohydrate diet before leaping into it headlong. If you would like to see a brief but interesting review of the positives and negatives of many diet plans, there's a good article in the March, 2003, edition of "Cooking Light."





Recommended: No