LOVING Bethenny Frankel's The Skinnygirl Dish!

I recently (as in 3 days ago) got Bethenny Frankel's cookbook The Skinnygirl Dish and haven't been able to put it down.  I've read so many books on healthy eating/clean eating/paelo eating/flexitarian/vegetarian/low carb/no sugar/etc etc etc and while some I have really liked (Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Diet is still a favorite), most I haven't liked at all and not even finished.  For some reason, certainly it isn't the title which I really don't like, The Skinnygirl Dish has been the one to really motivate me.  In fact, after reading just the first 3 chapters, I was so motivated that I did a full kitchen clean out!  I'm not sure if it is her non-preachy style of writing, the fact that it all seems so basic and simple or that it really isn't a diet plan but I just love this book.

I'm not a star in the kitchen.  I'm not a total failure, the smoke detector doesn't go off and my husband doesn't turn green when I cook, but I'm not the kind of person that can just throw together a few healthy ingredients and have a wow type meal (well, except for my kitchen sink salads....those are always good!).  So I think what I really like and appreciate about Bethenny's book is the ease and options for all the recipes.  After a recipe, she gives substitutions or options for almost every ingredient in the recipe while keeping it's healthy goodness.  I love this!  I can't tell you how many times I've read a recipe that sounds good but because I'm missing one ingredient, I don't make it because I'm too much of a kitchen idiot to think of a substitution.  Skinnygirl Dish is totally changing that for me.

For example, on Tuesday night, I made her 'Game-Time Zesty Baked Chicken Wings'  but I didn't have chicken wings.  Or Dijon mustard.  Or fresh parsley.  The recipe sounded so good when I read it but normally, I probably would not have even marked the page because I never buy or cook wings.  But after her recipe, the second 'variation', as she calls it, said "Instead of Dijon mustard, try any other mustard or barbecue sauce (preferably low-sugar)".  The sixth variation said, "Instead of chicken wings, try 16 chicken breast strips (cut 4 chicken breasts into 4 strips each); 16 ounces extra0firm tofu; 16 ounces tempeh".  The ninth variation said, "Instead of fresh parsley, try any other fresh leafy herb (like cilantro), half the amount of dried parsley, or any other dried herb".  I know, I know, these are all probably really obvious to most people who take one step into a kitchen but not for me.

Way too dark photo to do it justice but awesome Skinnygirl Zesty Baked Chicken "Wings"

I made the Zesty Chicken Wings with chicken breasts cut into strips, spicy brown mustard and dried parsley - I had all the other ingredients needed on hand -  and it was fantastic!  I really, really loved it and I was so proud of myself.  Stupid, maybe, but liberating, for sure.  I wish I had taken a better photo so that you could really see that coating.  So delicious. 

This afternoon, I made her blueberry muffins.  She uses oat flour in all her recipes (again, she gives variations) which I was intrigued by because it gets me away from wheat.  She also uses raw sugar which I've never cooked with.  I did go out and buy the oat flour and the raw sugar because I was curious to see if I could tell the difference and again, because I'd like to get further away from wheat products.

The muffins were SO crazy good, I can't even tell you!  No eggs, no white flour, 3/4 cup of the raw sugar but I used about half that, a very small amount of butter.  All really good ingredients.  Her original recipe called for soy milk but the variation was any other plain or flavored milk so I used skim.

Blueberry Muffins fresh from the oven

I got 8 muffins out of the recipe and because they were so good and tasted so nice and sweet to me, I was convinced that they were packing major calories despite the fact that the ingredients seemed innocent enough so I plugged the recipe into Calorie Count.  It came back with 172 calories per muffin, 4.4 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of protein, 21.4 grams of sugar (I used a full cup of blueberries instead of the 3/4 cup she calls for because I'm a blueberry freak and these results are with the 3/4 cup of sugar which as I said, I cut in half).  I don't think that's too bad!  Yes, the sugar count could be lower but in comparison to a standard blueberry muffin, I think it's a winner.  And it was good good good!

Can you see the ooey gooey blueberry goodness??

I've marked most of the recipes and I'll keep posting reviews when I try them but so far I'm 2 for 2 with the recipes, I have a clean pantry and a new way of looking at cooking so I'd say this book is a winner!