When it comes to cookbooks, Betty Crocker has the advantage of name recognition. When you take the Betty Crocker name and add it to a book titled "Eat and Lose Weight," there certainly will be a lot of lookers.
"Betty Crocker's New Eat and Lose Weight" (Macmillan, $21.95) is out this month, and it promises "three easy steps to lose weight and feel great." The problem is that there are about a gazillion others on the bookstore shelves that make the same promise.Not all of them are as slick as this 270-page hardback. Not many of them are as comprehensive.
The three steps that this cookbook emphasizes are eating right, exercising and setting goals. It sounds easy enough, unless it's late at night, no one else is around and the munchies are driving you up the wall.
Then you'd like to take those goals, drag them through some bean dip and have them for half time.
Wait, Aunt Betty has some better ideas. On Page 47 is a special list of items labeled "Munchie Attack Rescue."
There are 20 ideas on the list, and all are under 100 calories each. It's here that I begin to take issue with Betty and so many of her friends. I wonder if they have ever really had the munchies? If you have the munchies, can you cure them with three 21/2-inch graham cracker squares?
Yeah, maybe, if you smear some peanut butter on them and cover it all with chocolate. But just three naked graham crackers? Unbelievable.
How about one-quarter of a cantaloupe with 1/2 cup nonfat vanilla yogurt?
No, if you are going to give us tips on making it through the munchies, make them real. How many pounds of popcorn can we eat? Are there more calories in the last piece of chocolate cake than the first? What about if we cover it with milk? Does it matter if we eat it for breakfast?
Page 47 is not a valuable tool for us or this cookbook.
Other pages do work, however. "Eat and Lose Weight" provides essential information on substituting ingredients, food comparisons, what to order at restaurants and what to take to parties.
More than anything, I especially like the emphasis that it places on exercise. There is also information on nutrition labels, fat comparisons, health claims and diet gimmicks.
Plus, there are 200 recipes. Granted, not all of them are inventive. Some of the same fish and pasta recipes you'll find here, you'll find in a hundred other books.
There are a few that stand out. Here's one for Beef Tenderloin with Sweet Onions.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram staff writer Art Chapman writes this column on low-fat cooking and eating. Write him via snail mail in care of the newspaper at P.O. Box 1870, Fort Worth, TX 76101-1870; or via E-mail at
(artc@startext.net). His site on the World Wide Web is (startext.net/interact/chapman.htm).
*****
Recipe
BEEF TENDERLOIN WITH SWEET ONIONS
Serves 4
1/4 to 1/2 cup ready-to-serve, fat-free, reduced-sodium chicken broth
2 large onions, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup balsamic or cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
4 beef tenderloin steaks, about 1 inch thick (1 pound)
Heat 1/4 cup broth to boiling in 1-quart saucepan. Stir in onions and garlic; reduce heat to medium. Cover and cook about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onions are very soft and brown, adding up to 1/4 cup more broth as needed to prevent onions from sticking. Stir in vinegar. Cook uncovered over medium-high heat about 2 minutes or until liquid has evaporated; remove from heat.
Meanwhile, spray 10-inch nonstick skillet with nonstick spray; heat over medium-high heat. Sprinkle salt and pepper on beef. Cook beef in skillet about 8 minutes for medium doneness, turning once.
- Nutritional analysis per serving: 180 calories, 7 grams fat, 8 grams carbohydrates, 55 milligrams cholesterol, 370 milligrams sodium, 36 percent of calories from fat.