Excerpts

Healthy Eating, Healthy Heart In this new edition of the American Heart Association's cornerstone cookbook, you'll find more than 800 recipes, with heart-healthy dishes covering every meal of the day, including breakfasts, snacks, beverages, and desserts, designed to satisfy every craving. More than 100 of the recipes are new and 250 of them are refreshed from the association's previous cookbooks, which means they've been updated for the way we cook and eat today, whether it's new ingredients, spices, or herbs or a different cooking technique. In the headnotes throughout, you'll find suggestions for complementary recipes to help you easily plan a meal. In some cases, we've suggest pairing entrées with side dishes or desserts that bake at the same temperature in the oven or that both use the grill so that putting together a meal can be convenient and time-saving. Also new to this edition is a special chapter with more than 20 delicious slow-cooker recipes, including Italian Wedding Soup, Chicken Sofrito, and Smoky Pulled Pork with Barbecue Sauce. As you plan your meals at home--and when you make food choices away from home--what matters most is to establish a well-balanced diet. To do this, keep the following basics in mind, and then eating well can be as easy as 1-2-3. 1. Include a wide variety of nutritious foods from all the food groups. 2. Limit foods that include nutrients that are detrimental to good health. 3. Choose the right foods in the right portions. About the Recipes Each recipe in the book includes a nutrition analysis so you can decide how that dish fits with your dietary needs. These guidelines will give you some details on how the analyses were calculated. Because of the many variables involved, the nutrient values provided should be considered approximate. When figuring portions, also remember that the serving sizes are approximate. Each analysis is for a single serving; garnishes or optional ingredients are not included unless otherwise noted. * When ingredient options are listed, the first one is analyzed. * When a range of amounts is given, the average is analyzed. * All the recipes are analyzed using unsalted or low-sodium ingredients whenever possible. In some cases, we call for unprocessed foods or no-salt-added and low-sodium products, then add table salt sparingly for flavor. If only a regular commercial product is available, we use the one with the lowest sodium. * We specify canola, corn, and olive oils in these recipes, but you can also use other heart-healthy unsaturated oils, such as safflower, soybean, and sunflower. * Values other than fats are rounded to the nearest half gram. Because of rounding, values for saturated, trans, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats may not add up to the amount shown for total fat value. * For recipes that call for broth, we used our homemade broths in the analyses. We encourage you to make your own broth to keep sodium low and flavor high. If you do use store-bought broths, be sure to choose the products lowest in sodium and fat. * Meats are analyzed as lean, with all visible fat discarded. Values for ground beef are based on lean meat that is 95 percent fat free. * When meat, poultry, or seafood is marinated and the marinade is discarded, the analysis includes all the sodium from the marinade but none of the other nutrients from it. * If alcohol is used in a cooked dish, we estimate that most of the alcohol calories evaporate as the food cooks. * Because product labeling in the marketplace can vary and change quickly, we use the generic terms "fat-free" and "low-fat" throughout to avoid confusion. * We use the abbreviations g for gram and mg for milligram. Excerpted from The New American Heart Association Cookbook, 9th Edition: Revised and Updated with More Than 100 All-New Recipes by American Heart Association All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.