Who says comfort foods have to leave your diet, just because of a diabetes diagnosis. Cookbook reviewer, Lisa George gave a try to a cookbook that manages to mingle health with delicious food.

Robyn Webb, a best-selling cookbook author, culinary instructor, and food editor, has taken her familiarity with diabetes and created a handy tool for people in need of assistance in preparing healthy meals. Of her new book, The Perfect Diabetes Comfort Food Collection, she writes “I’ve devised a system of meal planning that will make your life much easier.  By learning the techniques, preparing a meal will become so easy that you’ll have more time for the other things in life that are important to you.”

The premise of The Perfect Diabetes Comfort Food Collection is that when you become proficient in preparing the master recipes, you’ll be able to branch out into more creative presentations. Your favorite basic foods can bloom into a month’s worth of options. The sub-title of the book is “9 essential recipes you need to create 90 amazing complete meals”.

Webb writes, “Each chapter begins with a blueprint: a step-by-step plan to master the technique of each dish. These directions were honed through many years of trial and error – I made all the mistakes and missteps so you don’t have to. The first recipe in each chapter will start you off with the technique, and each subsequent recipe will be very similar in preparation, but with different ingredients.”

The Perfect Diabetes Comfort Food Collection is divided into the following sections:

Burgers

Chicken

Lasagna

Meatloaf

Pasta and Sauce

Salads

Soups

Stir Fry

Tacos

Old-Fashioned Chicken and Rice Soup from The Perfect Diabetes Comfort Food cookbook.

“The recipes are paired with 1-3 suggestions. I want you to spend your efforts on main recipes I’ve featured; however, you will see several times that two of the recipes are paired because they go so well with each other. I always want to save time, so the easiest ideas are presented.” writes Robyn Webb.

Within the 230-page paperback cookbook, there are frequent pages of photographs, but often those photos are artful shots of the side dishes which really don’t require a recipe.  For example:  page 21 contains a picture of a pile of plums with one sliced in half as well as a photo of a plate of steamed carrots. Page 29 has a photo of a bowl of spinach leaves and another photo of a sliced apple round sprinkled with a pinch of cinnamon. Page 49 has a photo of whole wheat crackers and a picture of sliced strawberries. The crackers aren’t even homemade – they’re Wheat Thins, and the strawberries are just plain. I found myself rolling my eyes a bit at this. What adult reading this cookbook needs a photograph of store bought crackers and prepared fruit? I would much rather see an image of the featured recipe instead of something as common as a bowl of pineapple chunks.

Tried and true recipes:

In the chapter on soups, I prepared the Old Fashioned Chicken and Rice Soup on page 160, certainly a comfort food. Webb writes in the introduction to this recipe, “Honestly, if all you tackle is this recipe, you’ll be a master soup maker in no time! This recipe includes two techniques in one: a basic chicken stock, and an all-purpose chicken and rice soup. Master the stock and you’ll always have a rich broth that is perfect for so many soups and stews. Resist grabbing canned and boxed broth in favor of this step-by-step guide to making perfect broth.” It was a tasty soup and served nicely as an easy dinner.

My family enjoyed taste testing the Classic Meatloaf on page 82. My choice when making meatloaf is to shape the meat into individual portions so that they bake a bit faster and can be served easily. This recipe is a keeper.

Who needs this book:

I can picture the despair of a diabetes diagnosis for a person who had never cooked from scratch. Perhaps pre-diagnosis, they had been complacent in the kitchen buying easy-to-make dinners, eating out frequently, snacking on carbs instead of preparing healthy foods to grab when hungry, and not really paying attention to what they fed their body. After hearing from the doctor that symptoms were indicating diabetes and that diet could help control the disease, they might not have had confidence in their ability to prepare healthy foods and would be reluctant to do away with comfort food. Robyn Webb’s cookbook would be an ideal resource. There are plenty of ideas to make well-balanced meals with great variety that still provide that comfort food feel. This isn’t a book to read to learn more about diabetes, nor will seasoned cooks find in it much inspiration, but the contents of The Perfect Diabetes Comfort Food Collection provide a solid foundation for creating healthy meals to combat the disease.

— Review written by Lisa George, Latigo Ranch, Kremmling, Colorado. Photos by Hannah George.

Hungry for more? Read other cookbook reviews by Lisa George, on RealFoodTraveler.com.

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