NancyM's Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
Extreme Lo-Carb Meals On The Go: Fast And Fabulous Solutions To Get You Through The Day
By Sharron Long
Adams Media - 2004
I may as well jump right in with the features I don't like. If this book had been titled, "Another Cookbook of Low-Carb Recipes, Tips and Information", I would have been happier with it. But its title is misleading. Extreme? How so? Extremely low in carbs? Maybe. Most recipes seem to be under 10 grams per serving. "Meals On the Go" is the part that really seemed misleading to me. I guess I was expecting more really fast recipes. I thought there would be more recipes for foods that could be put together in a flash and taken along to eat. Most of the recipes just don't fit that profile because they are neither really fast or portable. Maybe this book is like a newspaper article; written by one person and given a headline/title by another! (One clue is the title of the book is lo-carb; her website address is lowcarbcook.com and she uses the phrase low-carb throughout the book.)
To be fair, the recipes are labelled with a "Q" if they are quick to fix - quick being defined as under an hour start to finish. Not really my idea of quick. They also can be labelled with an "M" if they can be prepared ahead of time. This might be more useful in the "On the Go" theme to have foods ready to take along. Unfortunately, not too many recipes are marked both quick and able to be prepared ahead of time. That combination would be great for fitting into the types of foods the title implies the book contains.
The "Making Wise Choices" chapter gives tips and suggestions for making good food choices when cooking and for ordering in restaurants. Again I have to wonder why the book is titled what it is when there are 12 pages devoted to restaurant ordering.
The recipes for the most part sound good and have nice head notes. The instructions are very descriptive and I didn't find any confusing instructions at all. Nutritional information is given and almost all the recipes have a reduced-fat variation. Serving sizes range all over the place from 1 up to 16 with most being 6 or 8.
Many recipes use low-carb versions of ordinary ingredients but not an innovative method or ingredient substitution to lower the carb count. I've never seen a low-carb tortilla and many of her recipes use this ingredient. Other unusual or hard to find ingredients include lard, different soy products like soy protein isolate, soy flour, xanthan gum, milk and egg protein powder, pork rinds, kefir, and guar gum. Substitutions can be made for some of these but not always.