The Complete Plate: 120 Recipes, 30 Meals

This well-designed debut cookbook highlights the importance of meal planning, nutrition, and cooking for health and weight management. Klukas was an athlete and personal trainer who had to give up exercise due to a heart condition. She blogged about her experience of losing weight while eating nutritiously, leading to this book of meal plans and recipes that she developed for diets of 1,500, 2,000, and 2,500 calories per day. Klukas emphasizes that her plan doesn’t “demonize whole nutrients like fat or sugar” but instead recommends a balanced approach to eating. Readers who try recipes such as sweet potato frittata, banana parfait, and lemon ricotta crepe will not feel deprived. This cookbook is extremely well organized and provides a checklist of ingredients for each meal plan, a guide to meals based on what readers are in the mood to eat, a calorie count for each recipe, and informative side notes on nutritional value, advance preparation, and freezing. Recipes are generally easy to prepare, giving readers a refreshingly moderate and nutritionally sound approach to weight management. (Jan.)