Featuring DREAM DINNERS: Life Just Got Easier, THIS TIME I DANCE: Creating The Work You Love, THE LOW-CARB GOURMET: Recipes for the New Lifestyle, and SMOOTHIES: Best-Ever Cool Drink Recipes plus Dana Cooper’s new cd “MADE OF MUD”

DREAM DINNERS…Life Just Got Easier
By Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna
$19.95, William Morrow
www.harpercollins.com

With the holiday season in full swing, most of us have a full plate when it comes to time spent entertaining guests and cooking for our families. Luckily for us the season just got less hectic, thanks to the new book DREAM DINNERS…Life Just Got Easier.

Authors Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna were once just a couple of hard working Moms, looking for a way to eliminate the drudge factor from nightly meal preparation. The solution to their problem came in the form of meals made in large quantities, using fresh raw ingredients, which were then frozen in individual meal-size servings. These meals could then be thawed and cooked at a later date, resulting in heat-and-eat dinners that were homemade and delicious. This concept worked so well for them, that in 2002 Allen and Kuna opened their first Assemble and Freeze Dream Dinners Center, and are now the proud owners of stores in 32 cities across the US. Writing DREAM DINNERS…Life Just Got Easier was the logical next step in spreading the word about their life-changing meal-prep method.

Not only is this a great cookbook with over 100 “Assemble and Eat” meals but there are many recipes for fresh foods such as the “Company’s Coming Layered Salad” or “Quick Raspberry Pie”. Pre-made, freezable drinks such as “Coffee Mocha Punch” or “Margarita Slush” makes preparing cocktails for a large party a breeze, as will the recipes for a delectable sounding “Pesto and Red Pepper Torte” and “Cinnamon Apple Cake”.

Peppered throughout this treasure trove of time-saving recipes, you will also find great tips on how to save time and money at the grocery store and how to adequately freeze your meals so they taste fresh when they are thawed and cooked. There are also some easy recipes for breakfast foods and wonderful breads, plus the fact that most dishes are prepared with low-fat ingredients is a plus for the heart-healthy and weight-conscious. With all the time you save, you will actually be able to enjoy yourself at your own party or family dinners for a change.

THE LOW-CARB GOURMET Recipes for the New Lifestyle
By Brigit Binns
$24.95 Ten Speed Press
www.tenspeedpress.com

For several years, Americans have been consumed by the low-carb craze, which, for most people, meant eating large amounts of meat and fat and skipping the bread and pasta. But in order to achieve a healthy and balanced way of eating, fresh vegetables and whole grains also need to be included but sadly, in many low-carb diets, this is not the case. However, Chef and Author Brigit Binns makes a case for this balanced approach to food in her marvelous new book THE LOW-CARB GOURMET Recipes for the New Lifestyle.

Trained as a chef in England, Binns was indoctrinated into the Haute-Cuisine style of cooking which revolves around the big three: butter, flour and cream. Upon leaving school, she needed to address her 15 pound weight gain, and realized that she would prefer to turn her attention and cooking talents to a cuisine which included a variety of fresh vegetables and herbs, as well as fish, chicken and whole grains.

With recipes that include an abundance of Appetizers, Soups, Salads and Side Dishes, as well as Entrees and Desserts, Ms. Binns teaches us how to cook like a gourmet chef, using fresh ingredients and easy-to-follow directions. Some special tools are necessary for a few of the recipes and the availability of fresh herbs is a must for most dishes. You will also find that some recipes are more detailed than others. The “Roasted Eggplant and Ricotta Rolitini with Tomato Sauce” will prove less challenging than the “Sliced Mushrooms and Calvados-Cured Salmon Gravlox”, for instance. The “Zucchini Fettucine with Sweet Butter” is a simple dish that will satisfy your craving for pasta, as the elegant Zucchini “noodles” fool your taste buds with their texture and flavor. And the “Pepper-Crusted Soft-Shell Crabs and Grapefruit Beurre Blanc’, although time consuming, looks like a meal that would be well worth the effort to prepare.

This innovative cookbook will teach you to push the envelope of your culinary talents and reward you with an abundance of low-carb fare that is likely to make you a fan of this very healthful and delicious way of eating, for life.

THIS TIME I DANCE Creating The Work You Love
By Tama J. Kieves
$14.95, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin
www.penguin.com

Are you stopped at a career crossroads? Are you longing for a life that looks wholly different than the one you are living now? If so, THIS TIME I DANCE! Creating The Work You Love is a must read for you.

When author Tama J. Kieves decided to leave her cushy job as a lawyer for greener yet unfamiliar pastures as a writer, she did so with complete abandon. As easy as this may sound, her journey towards a new career path and hence, a new life, was neither easy nor familiar. Unlike so many self-help books, which dole out advice and a list of exercises to get you motivated, Kieves simply allows us to accompany her on her often-debilitating journey from a corporate life to a creative one.

She describes her most vulnerable moments, including the fact that when she first left her job to become a full time writer, all she could manage to do was sleep. The writer within did not suddenly burst forth urging her on to work with the passion she had expected. Instead, this tender part of her inner self needed the corporate part of her psyche to let go completely in order to be able to surface.

As she recounts her step-by- step journey towards self fulfillment (she is now a very successful writer as well as a life coach and motivational speaker) Kieve’s story unfolds via a painful yet inspirational tutorial. “We only tend to find our mission once we take an intermission from the work life that doesn’t work” she recounts in a journal entry. Many such pearls of wisdom pour forth from the pages of this lyrical road map, giving us one of the most honest portraits of a struggling artist’s journey that I have ever read. “You could say it is the feeling of healing, coming home to myself after a long and bitter separation, and finding a table set with linens, candlelight, and lilacs just for me” says Kieves towards the end of the book, a confirmation that even the most arduous of journeys can lead us to a place of peace and fulfillment.

SMOOTHIES: Best-Ever Cool Drink Recipes
Bay Books

No matter what the weather, hot or cold, sunny or snowing, I always begin my day with a fresh fruit smoothie, to which I add protein powder. It is the perfect breakfast for someone like me who takes a couple of hours to warm-up to solid food, but needs a protein hit to get the ol’ engine running. But I have to admit, sometimes I get tired of the same thing every day, which is why I was so pleased to discover SMOOTHIES: Best-Ever Cool Drink Recipes.

With almost 100 recipes for great thirst quenching drinks, the categories extend beyond the Smoothie to include Teas, Shakes, Fruit and Vegetable Juice Cocktails, as well as Sodas, Crushes and Punches. Tired of the same old Egg Nog? Why not try “Peachy Egg Nog” which adds Peach Nectar and Orange Juice to the usual holiday fare or shake things up by serving a “Passion fruit and Coconut Cordial”. The “Cinnamon and Custard Shake” sounds mind-bendingly delicious, and perhaps Santa would prefer an “Iced Chocolate” beverage with his cookies this year.

For the Smoothie Adventurers out there, you have a choice of’ “Fennel and Orange Juice” or a “Meal in a Glass” which includes Spinach and Romaine Lettuce or you can choose to go all the way with a “Spring Clean Your Body” Vegetable Juice Cocktail. A big glass of “Lavender and Rose Lemonade” sounds delightfully calming while the “Yogurt and Honey Smoothie”, prepared with both yogurt and Vanilla Ice Cream will be sure to satisfy anyone with a sweet-tooth.

I assure you that you will have worked up a thirst by the time you reach the recipe for the “Orange and Ginger Tea Cooler” which will ease a sore throat and look beautiful all at the same time. With so many choices I definitely will never be bored again and tomorrow, I think I will definitely give the “Apricot-Tofu Smoothie” a whirl. Best of all, all of these drinks can be seen at their most sumptuous in beautiful, full-page color photographs.

MADE OF MUD
Dana Cooper King Easy Records
www.danacoopermusic.com

Listening to Dana Cooper’s new CD, MADE OF MUD, I am reminded of the reasons I love music. With soaring, eclectic yet memorable melodies, pictorial lyrics and a singing voice that invites you to stay awhile, Coopers’ talent is rounded out with an arsenal of guitar licks and arrangements that keep you wanting more.

The title track “Made of Mud” is a soulful commentary on the humanness that binds us together and reminds us that the simple pleasures of breathing in and out and feeling the sun on your skin is often reason enough to revel in the mystery of it all. Two disparate ballads about love, “Bird on the Wing’ and ‘Nothing to Fear’ are enchanting. The first song speaks to the fragility of new love replete with all its glory and heartache while the latter speaks to the security that comes with longevity. “What can I compare us to a comfortable pair of shoes. Stumbling down the road flapping and broken toed. Dancing and not letting go chancing the changing road. Laughing for all we know we have nothing to fear.” When Cooper sings it, you believe that deep abiding love really does exist.

With a fast-paced arrangement of Woody Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy Floyd” and seven other self-penned tunes, “MADE OF MUD” will wash over you like a dream you never want to wake from.