I am thinking of buying "Low carb comfort foods" (Eades) , "15 minute low carb meals the whole family will love" and "500 low carb recipes" (Carpender)

anybody have these books?

I am looking for family friendly things I can make using regular, locally available ingredients, especially bake mixes....

Thanks!

I have the comfort foods cookbook and also 500 low carb recipes. Both are excellent. Although I am a vegetarian (lacto-ovo) I ignore the meat recipes...believe me there's plenty of good stuff left over.

I don't care for Dana Carpender's (500 low carb recipes) personality - she is quite opinionated, with her opinion being the right one of course - remember Susan Powter from our low fat days? She sorta reminds me of a very low key Susan Powter....but this comes out more in her newsletters than in her books. And in all due respect to her, for whatever reason, she's tamed it down these last few years. Her recipes are excellent though, and I do continue to receive her newsletter for the recipes and tips.

What I'm really looking forward to is Karen's new book. She is THE creative cook; her tips and recipes are incredible. I still can't get over the "fried rice" made from cauliflower...I ignore the meat and use tofu or cheeses...it's better than real fried rice. I could live on that stuff.

This is such a great forum. I don't have time to particpate much but I am quite a lurker. Thank you all for making it such a great website. I didn't mean to be rude about Dana Carpender, but I guess I've been wanting to get that out of my system these last few years! Her books are very good, just don't take everything she says about low carb as the gospel; she's not a doctor or nutritionist; use your own good sense and do what works for you!

I have Dana Carpender's book and love it. Some of her recipes aren't Atkins friendly but you can leave stuff out. If you are just getting started in lowcarb cooking she has a whole section on ingredients every low carber will need. You can check out her recipes in the archives of her holdthetoast web site to see if you'd like them before you buy her book.

My boyfriend picked up the Comfort Food book because I have been DYING for chocolate chip cookies that don't use soy.

This book has it! It also has some of the most interesting info on LC cooking I have seen around.

I also have Dana Carpenders 500 low carb recipes, I find them very easy, and that they use everyday foods. The section in the front where she explains what the low carb products are like whey protein, etc. was extremely helpful to me. I will be looking for Karen's new book when it comes out!!

LOVE them! Dana's books are a godsend!!!! Buy all you can!

Take care, and good luck!

Both of these cookbooks are available on overstock.com for about 1/2 their list price -- might want to check it out.

Must be in the minority

The recipes seemed OK, but I haven't been able to successfully reproduce anything that my family "loved". They were OK with some of the baked goods (I found the oatmeal cookies I tried were too oily, and I was hesitant to "waste" 3 g carbs on each cookie, if I were to eat any quantity, so I froze them.

Tried a vegetable dish with Napa Cabbage, Fish Sauce, Coconut & nuts - we gagged through it and threw the rest out.

Either I like things simpler, or I just don't have the same tastes as she does.

The bread ("white") was a disappointment - tasted fine, but was so thin that I had to slice it lengthwise, rather than crosswise to get a slice that I could use.
Now I have a cupboard full of various proteins, whey and other ingredients - I'm going to have to try more of the recipes, rather than waste those expensive ingredients.

After this, I'll stick with more simple fare, though.

Nothing personal, but I cannot imagine getting far enough with that recipe to even taste it......Yuck.

Kaay

QUOTE from cmcole

"Tried a vegetable dish with Napa Cabbage, Fish Sauce, Coconut & nuts - we gagged through it and threw the rest out."

These are basic ingredients of many Thai dishes. The real secret to do Thai dishes to create a balance, by adding dozens of different ingredients. I assume to make it lower carb some ingredients were omitted from the original recipe by the author of this LC book.

I cook daily for my family (three out of the four of us lc'ing) and my whole family loves the recipes in the Dana Carpender books. In general, I find that if I pick recipes with ingredients we like and whose combination sounds appealing, then the final product will be successful. I have made many items from 500 Recipes that my family requests. The zuccini pancakes(kolokythia krokettes) are a delicious side dish, and the skillet chicken florentine and and chicken piccata are favorites. The chocolate chip cookies and the protein bars are also good. I have a crock pot recipe from the 15 minute book cooking right now. We have tried one or two things that I wouldn't repeat but no cook book is going to be 100% to my taste.
I recently bought the Comfort Foods book. I hope someone can comment on the pasta recipe in there because I am actually thinking of buying a pasta attachement for my mixer in order to be able to make it! If it tastes like most lc pasta, I will save my money! The only thing I have made from there so far were some cheddar "biscotti" that are kind of like little cheese crackers. Not bad but I need to work on getting them to crisp more. They don't taste at all lc.

I, too, have DC's 500 Low Carb Recipe book and have loved most things I've tried. The Heroin Chicken, All-Meat Chili and Hazelnut Shortbread are a few that come to mind. I must try the biscotti that WendyLynn just mentioned, though!

is my husband's lactose intolerance.

There are so many recipes I can't even try, unless I'm cooking two separate meals, because they are full of cheese.

The heroin wings, for instance, have Parmesan in them.

Oh, well.

Obviously, the reason there are so many cookbooks on the market (of any kind) is that different people have different tastes.

I've collected a vast quantity of recipes from the Internet, and these are my most-used ones (even though I spent large dollars to buy DC's 500 recipes book).

I'm finding 500 recipes uninspirational for main dishes. So many are just a mix of ground beef and cheese.

I thought of that already.

I've only tried a handful of her recipes so far, but I haven't been disappointed yet. When is Karen's cookbook due out? I definitely would want one.

I just got Dana Carpender's book for Christmas and I haven't tried too many things yet, but a lot of them look very good. The only downside for me is even though we don't count calories, I wish her recipes had ALL the nutritional info, like calories, etc.