The tag line at the bottom of the front cover reads "How to make certain you and your family eat the recommended five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day." This book is 19 years old, but it couldn't be more relevant for our 21st century home cooking and dietary needs.
Schlesinger opens with an Eating Plan which I read through initially and found very useful. I'm not one to follow someone else's menus, but Schlesinger's plan is far more pragmatic than that: it includes shopping and storing advice and a focus on what she calls the Fabulous Forty Garden Variety Fruits and Vegetables. By the time you finish reading about these, I guarantee you'll have whet your appetite for fresh produce. Schlesinger's approach is not only informative, but appetizing.
Also in the beginning, Schlesinger delivers basic cooking techniques (grilling, steaming, stir-frying and blanching) so the reader can quickly learn how to prepare the recipes she includes in the main section of the book.
There are many things I like about her recipes. One of them is Schlesinger's insistence on cooking whole foods. These recipes aren't diet recipes per se, but simple, healthy recipes exploding with texture and fresh flavor. Though the book is organized like traditional cookbooks with meat chapters filling out the middle of the book, Schlesinger succeeds at making fresh produce the star, which is how healthy eating should be.
In addition to her overarching whole foods mindset, Schlesinger does a great job of showing you what amounts to practically endless possibilities for combining fruits and vegetables so that, really, you have no real excuse for not finding something good to cook in this book that involves those fresh items you already have on hand.
Each chapter comes with some very basic starter recipes that follow the chapter's theme. These are all pretty good go-to recipes in and of themselves. On top of that, Schlesinger offers Quick Takes, expanding those basic ideas. I love the Quick Takes section in particular because it takes the core basic recipes and expands them in all sorts of creative ways you might never have thought of on your own. Finally, the At Your Leisure section offers more complicated recipes for the adventurous cook willing to take on new techniques and new flavors. Even these recipes are do-able for most home cooks.
What I like most about this book is the general flexibility with which the author approaches cooking in the first place. Want to make a hearty minestrone soup? She offers You-Choose-the-Vegetables Minestrone and cites the following possibilities: Carrots with Cauliflower and Escarole; Broccoli with Corn and Green Beans; Cabbage with Zucchini and Carrots; Eggplant with Green Beans and Red Bell Pepper; and Brussels sprouts with Corn and Carrots. In my house, the cabbage-zucchini-carrots version would be a hit, but your family may crave one of the different varieties. The point is that we often forget that a recipe for minestrone is not one size fits all; rather, a minestrone can have many variations and still be good, and you, as the cook, have the pleasure of choosing, with her imaginative guidance, the recipe that appeals most to you.
Finally, at the end you'll find a microwave section which is really useful for anyone who thinks the microwave is only for reheating leftovers or making popcorn. I'm a fan of Barbara Kafka's The Microwave Gourmet and very frequently use my microwave oven for all sorts of real cooking techniques (especially steaming vegetables). If you don't own Kafka's book, Schlesinger's will work equally well in teaching you how to master the microwave.
Because this book is almost 20 years old, I'm not sure how relevant or accurate the nutrition information is at the front of the book, though quickly paging through it again, I don't think you'll find any misinformation there, either. What she promoted nearly two decades ago resonates today: eat more fruits and vegetables if you want to prevent cancer, fight obesity, delay diet-related diabetes and improve your general health and well-being. She also promotes a lower-sodium, higher-fiber regimen which is equally relevant today as doctors continue to fight the battle against heart disease.
Look for this book on bookstore shelves if you can, or try out your local library or used bookstore. Be warned: you'll likely need to buy it used online if you can't find it elsewhere. Brand-new copies found online run to extremes (I did find one new copy for $4, but the usual price range for new copies through second-party sellers was $46-$100 as of this posting). However, used "like new" copies of this book are available and run less than $18 with shipping, which is more than reasonable for this very useful cookbook.
