Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #712 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 191 pages

From Amazon.com
Janet and Greta Podleski, also known as The Looneyspoons Sisters, are the high-energy authors of the low-fat cookbook Looneyspoons and its follow-up, Crazy Plates. But to call these sisters cookbook authors may be a misnomer: they're more like a wacky comedy team touring Hoboken doing the low-fat-zealot routine for admiring audiences.

No, Crazy Plates is not just about low-fat recipes. There's much, much more here, including fat facts (a pound of body fat--representative of 3,500 calories--if shaped into a ball, would be the size of a softball and equal four sticks of butter), "Trivial Tidbits" (baking soda used to be added to the water for boiling vegetables until it was discovered that it destroyed the veggies' vitamin C), "You Do the Math" (substituting Canadian bacon for the regular high-fat stuff once a week for a year will cut your fat intake by 1,196 grams), and a lot of corny humor ("Did you hear what happened to the peanut when he walked through the park? He was a salted"). Then there are the recipes--accompanied, of course, by cartoons--like Salmon Davis Jr., broiled salmon steaks in a spicy tomato sauce; Mercedes Buns, cinnamon rolls with less than three grams of fat per serving; My Yammi Spice, oven-baked fries with cumin, paprika, and oregano; and Berry Maniloaf, a lemon and raspberry bread loaf with 161 calories per slice.

The recipes are well laid out, not time-consuming, aimed at the home cook with a family to feed, and will please the palate of those wanting gourmet fare without the fat. But how do the Podleski sisters accomplish this rare feat? Spices are an essential ingredient of many dishes: Name That Tuna Salad, for example, gets its character from basil, mint, garlic, and Dijon mustard--with no help from that scary sidekick, mayo! This is a book for anyone who wants to cut back on fat without losing flavor, and for those that like a little slapstick with their flapjacks (Peter Pancakes, with bananas and strawberry sauce). --Stefanie Durbin

Customer Reviews

You will never know this is low-fat
Trying to cook healthy for my family used to be a big fight and other cookbooks used to use ingredients that you had to find in health food stores and speciality stores...where this cookbook, every recipe is fabulous...so good that I lost 50lbs and everyone in the family eats the food...especially the most finicky eater in the bunch...and the ingredients can be found at your local supermarket...this is a must have book

Love These Cookbooks
I started off with Eat Shrink and Be Merry, then I bought Looney Spoons and just recently added this to my cookbook collection.
While sometimes the recipes do seem a little tedious (with all the ingredients), they taste incredible and I love all the nutrition facts located throughout the books. I have found many recipes that I enjoy making and mix it up to try something new in the book each time I go shopping!

Very Good yummy low-fat,
I have just got this cookbook, and sure didn't need another cookbook for the shelf. I have tried some of the recipes and all were excellent! They were low fat- yet everyone enjoyed them, and we would recommend this to any family. Now the format is a bit over the top with all the little captions. The recipes titles get a little annoying- they are so silly and its unclear just what it makes. But it is still a cookbook worth having. I plan to share copies with my sisters!