Book review

The Looneyspoons Collection
by Janet and Greta Podleski
Granet Publishing, 2011, 400 pages, $34.95
ISBN: 978-0-9680631-5-6

If you’ve been seeking a way to help yourself or a loved one transition to a more healthful way of eating, The Looneyspoons Collection might be exactly what you’ve been looking for. This brightly coloured and easy-to-read cookbook provides a realistic approach to eating healthy, teaching readers how to eat well instead of how to diet.

Brought to us by the sister team of Janet and Greta Podleski, The Looneyspoons Collection is filled with love and personal integrity. After selling 2,000,000 cookbooks and enjoying success with their popular cooking show Eat, Shrink and Be Merry on the Food Network, the sisters decided it was time to reconsider their nutritional approach.

Since becoming a regular alive reader in 2000, and a registered holistic nutritionist in 2003, Janet wanted to share her knowledge and enlisted her sister Greta to rework their most popular recipes. The idea was to upgrade the nutritional content of their recipes to meet new nutritional standards not widely understood 15 years ago when the original Janet and Greta cookbooks were flying off the shelves.

When the sisters recognized that their original nutritional information was not up to the more robust standards we have today, they took their first (and still selling) books out of print and upped the nutritional content of them. The result of such remarkable integrity is The Looneyspoons Collection.

With more than 325 revised, updated, and healthy recipes (100 of them brand new) mixed with a host of laugh-out-loud jokes and puns, The Looneyspoons Collection also shows a serious side that explains confusing nutritional concerns such as healthy salt intake, allowable sugar consumption, and the link between good food and the perfect weight. Countless nutrition tips pepper the book on almost every page.

To be clear, this isn’t the usual cookbook you might expect to see in alive. The recipes lend themselves to fast preparation and often use easy and convenient options such as canned soup or frozen green peas. But for anyone who is seeking an easy and careful transition to a healthier way of eating and cooking that focuses on good nutrition, this book certainly has it all!