[chgolatin2]

Looking into some good books for single people, somewhere in the line of simple, fast and healthy foods for single people or couples.  Any good recommendations from our Audio Guru's that are in good health or watch their diets and tend to take care of their bodies?  Food and nutrition play a HUGE part in overcoming mood disorders just wondering if anyone has any good ideas?  Hopefully someone could enlighten me!  I am not a "HUGE" kitchen fan but I do fairly ok, but ok is not good enough

Thanks!

[bprice2]

I'm not sure this is exactly what you are looking for, but my wife subscribes to a publication called Cook's Illustrated.  I just started flipping through it for the first time the other day and most of the articles/recipes I find very interesting...mostly because its stuff I like to eat and easy to make. 

Anyway...here's their URL:  http://www.cooksillustrated.com/

[ctviggen]

In my opinion, Cook's Illustrated is not for beginners.  Their recipes are much too complex.  For instance, they have a fantastic all-beef meatloaf recipe.  This recipe requires blooming gelatin, along with reducing the sauce put on top of the beef.  The final steps are to put the sauce on the beef, broil, then put the last amount of sauce on the beef and broil.  And those aren't even 1/3 the steps to make this recipe.  As another example, I made some crescent rolls.  This recipe required steps performed several days in advance.  There were multiple rising steps, typically performed in the fridge.  As yet another example, my wife and I tried to make cookies that are thin enough to wrap around a wooden spoon's handle (I can't remember the name right now -- lace cookies?).  If you took the cookies off the pan too early, they were incredibly hot.  If you took them off too late, they were already stiff.  That was by far the hardest to make cookie recipe I've ever made.  Having said that, the recipes are good.  They tend to have too many steps, but they are good. 

One cook book I do recommend is by Alton Brown:

I'm Just Here for the Food

This is written by cooking type, instead of by recipe.  So, if you want "boiling", there's a chapter on this along with recipes. 

In my truly honest opinion, this is the book that kicks butt:

The Professional Chef

Want to know the five mother sauces and how to make them?  It's in there.  What Charcuterie and Garde Manger mean?  It's almost 1300 pages of cooking goodness.  The only detriment is that as it's for chefs, the recipes tend to make enough for 10 people.  Nonetheless, it has everything including techniques for dicing onions and other vegetables quickly and easily.

[bprice2]

Well, like I said, I just picked up this month's edition for the first time.  In it are recipes for hamburgers, skillet-roasted potatoes, grilled shrimp, grilled pork loin, oatmeal cookies, chicken salad, and grilled flank steak...all very simple.  Maybe this months edition is for people like me...simple.

[MaxCast]

We have The Joy of Cooking and it has served me well.  It doesn't hit hard on health topics but it covers the basics of food types and supplies recipes. 

[Christof]

No recipes in this but this book by Harold McGee will bring you up to speed about the "how's and why's" of cooking.  Even his website will give you quite a bit of info. 

[jules]

chgolatin2,

I totally agree on the importance of nutrition in combination with keeping physically fit. When you think about it, cookbooks are usually aimed at the evening meal. How many people pick one up for their daily breakfast or lunch? The good thing about breakfast is, that if you can find a good formula, you can do the same thing each day and not have to think about it too much.

So here's a breakfast suggestion ... I'm presuming you're in the middle of a northern summer so the fruits available to you might be something like ... strawberries, bananas, nectarines, passionfruit, pears and probably quite a few more. If you're in the habit of eating some sort of breakfast cereal what works well is to cut back the amount of cereal and top it with a decent layer of fruit selected from the above. If you don't eat cereal then maybe you just have the fruit with some yoghurt. This tends to change seasonally but there's always something available. Here, it's mid winter but there's still berries, pears and passionfruit to keep things going.

Lunch ... maybe it's worth considering something more in the salad line and if you want it portable, you can do it as some form of rolled up item using those thin wraps. Avocado, lettuce, rocket, spring onion tops, cucumber, pesto, olives, grilled capsicum, grilled eggplant [aubergine] and smoked salmon are all potential fillings for roll ups or ingredients for salad.

Evening meal ... Stir fry's are healthy and if you've got the basics you can swap ingredients around without having to put too much planning into it.

ctviggen ... in the "extreme cookbook" class I like Anton Escoffier's "A Guide to Modern Cookery". It's totally out of date now and full of extreme detail but it's also beautifully written and I have never found a recipe by Escoffier that isn't technically flawless and perfectly balanced

jules

[macrojack]

If health, mental & physical, is your target, the focus should be more on what you don't eat than on what you do eat. Sugar is not good. Too much salt can be problematic. The PH of your blood is the most important issue. You don't want to be too alkaline or too acid.
I would recommend that you look into Macrobiotics. If you would like a jump start on the subject, PM me and I'll try to fill you in better. When I got involved 25 years ago a lot of people dismissed it as a fad diet. Nowadays the food pyramid looks like it was designed by a macro. The medical world has reluctantly taken notice.

[BradJudy]

While not specifically health or singles related, How to Cook Everything is my stand-by - http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Simple-Recipes/dp/0471789186/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6246552-2585457?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184112504&sr=8-1

It's great for all of the basics from pancakes from scratch to how to best cook eggs to which meat cuts are good for fajitas.  I often grab it just to find something basic like that rather than a full recipe, which it has vast number of.  It also often has multiple simple variations to try on a single dish.  It's effective as both a cooking reference and a recipe book.  However, don't buy this book if you want photographs of completed dishes or anything like that. 

[macrojack]

I used to eat at a place called The Chicago Diner on Halsted St. near Wrigley Field. If it's still there, you might find it interesting.

[soundbitten1]

I used Cook's Illustrated recipes for a few years and found myself slowly gaining weight no matter how much I exercised . The recipes were delicious but also fattening ( their primary concern is taste ). I changed my diet in March and have lost 15 lbs . I gave up sugar , white flour products & processed foods . Now I  eat lots of whole grain brown rice , at least 1 green leaf salad every day , more vegetables , swtched from beef to buffalo meat ( about 1/3 less fat and calories ) , also eat more fish and lean protein . I feel great and ,  surprisingly , have acquired a taste for my new diet .

[jules]

Yes!

I'll back both Macro and soundbitten on that. A diet that might look extreme in that it cuts out sugar and white flour etc takes a little re-adjustment but once you're used to it, it makes a world of difference. Funny though, I think it's a bit like giving up cigarettes in that the longer you persist [and I'm talking about maybe 12 months or more] the less you feel like the heavy fare you've eaten before.

jules