Anne Lindsay's Smart Cooking: Quick and Tasty Recipes for Healthy Living.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

It’s all about health, and the information needed to make healthy choices. Each book ties 200+ practical recipes to using food choices as a means of warding off a major health concern. For Smart Cooking, it’s cancer. For Lighthearted Everyday Cooking, it’s heart disease.

Each book contains extensive, detailed information, as drawn from the results of current research, on the link between diet and health. Vitamins, fibre, fats, and sodium are discussed in relation to their role in health risk and disease prevention. Each book lists and discusses Canada’s Guidelines for Healthy Eating, how to make sense of BMI, and how to read the nutritional information labels on packaged foods. All recipes, in both books, are accompanied by a nutritional analysis. As well, Lighthearted Everyday Cooking gives the Canadian Diabetes Association’s food choice values for each recipe.

Both books are substantial updates of earlier editions. As well as adding the support of and information from the Canadian Cancer Society and Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the books contain many new and updated recipes and colour photos.

The recipes all use ingredients readily available from any large supermarket. Cooking skills required are basic, and equipment minimal. Ingredients are given in both imperial and metric; steps that can be completed in advance are highlighted. In each book the recipes follow the usual groupings of soups, salads, vegetable and grain dishes, fish, meat and poultry entrees, baked goods, and desserts. Smart Cooking has a good selection of muffin and breakfast recipes. Lighthearted Everyday Cooking features a selection of lunches to go and meatless main dishes. The recipes, overall, are variations on simple, family meals—chili, meatloaf, stew, hash, skillet suppers—punctuated by a few special-occasion treats such as sherry-braised ham or endive with chevre and shrimp. There are some regional and ethnic influences, but nothing too adventuresome. Old fashioned ingredients such as cabbage, turnip, parsnip, and plums appear in updated roles. Vegetables and whole grains are the stars.

The books are practical, attractive, and packed with nutritional information and a wide variety of easy, inexpensive recipes.