I am now inspired to cook a little more Mexican. I was happily surprised when I first looked inside this book. There were a lot more recipes than I had anticipated, and I think this book was formatted and organized quite well. That being said, I would have liked to see a few more pictures of the recipes themselves. Ingredients are simplified, as promised, which makes both shopping for ingredients and preparation easier. My main complaint, however, is the "healthy" aspect to this book. Ingredient substitutions and recommendations felt like the sort of thing I was reading 20 years ago (e.g. low fat/non fat substitutions). I read in one review that this is actually a refreshed version of an older book, so that is probably why. Overall a good book with a wide assortment of recipes that I would maybe adjust for nutritional preferences.

Overall a great cookbook for those looking for lighter Mexican recipes. I really enjoyed the recipe for tomatillo salsa, and can't wait to try more. I would have liked more photos, but overall a decent book.

I loved this beautiful cookbook. A lot of easy recipes with a lot of ingredients I typically keep in my pantry. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to make easy but delicious recipes.

I am always looking for delicious, authentic but healthy Mexican food recipes. This book has it all. The recipes are simple and straightforward with short ingredient lists which I always appreciate. The food is low calorie and sure to please even the pickiest eater in your family.

If this cookbook doesn’t make your stomach rumble while reading it, read it again bc clearly you were wrong. Tons of flavorful, lightened up Mexican recipes. Easy to follow directions and easy to find ingredients.

All the recipes seem very traditional but delicious. We tried out a few of the appetizers the other day and were not disappointed! Will definitely continue to test out more recipes.

Mexican food is so delicious! And here, in California, it is plentiful. However, everyone should try to eat healthier. In a restaurant, you may be eating foods fried in lard. If you create the same dish at home, you can control the fat and calories. So, how does the Healthy Easy Mexican cookbook achieve the healthy part? Olive or canola oil instead of lard. Low fat cheese and sour cream (and even plain Greek yogurt) replaces traditional full fat dairy. Brown and white basmati rice replace regular white rice. Taco/tostado shells and tortilla chips are baked in the oven instead of frying them. Relatively minor charges can quickly up the healthy factor in your meals.

“This cookbook shows that many of our traditional recipes can be modified to be healthier and still taste great.”

This cookbook has every recipe you will need to replicate the food common to Mexican restaurants. I will save a ton of money buying deli salsas and guacamole by using the recipes included here. There are even recipes for enchilada and chili colorado sauces included.

The Healthy Easy Mexican cookbook is a great resource for those love Mexican food but not the calories within it. Many of the recipes are innovative (i.e., Mushroom Enchiladas). Others will let you know how to use some of the exotic Mexican ingredients in your market’s international aisle. I’m already planning on making the Shrimp Rice with that dried shrimp spice I’ve always wondered about. All the recipes have full nutritional information and even diabetic exchanges. Well done! 5 stars!

Thanks to The Experiment and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This cookbook claims that it has taken many traditional Mexican recipes, incorporated newer food trends, and modified them to be healthier. Some of the author's suggestions - eating more produce, using herbs and spices for flavor, limiting sodium and sugar intake, watching out for highly processed food - I agree with. Other "healthier" suggestions I found more questionable, and sometimes even contradictory. Margarine? Fat-free cheese? However, due to the constantly changing research on nutrition and varied expert opinions, I suppose it really comes down to what you think is healthier for you, and what you want to put in your body. Luckily, it's easy to make substitutions as you see fit.

Most of the recipes have limited, easy to find ingredients, and a fairly quick prep time. If you've ever wanted to make your own soft tortillas and/or hard taco shells, the included directions are simple to follow. I made the Mexican rice and slow cooker pork pernil tacos for my family, and they enjoyed both dishes although I did make a few modifications to the recipes. If you're comfortable using recipes as a base that you change you suit your own needs, and would like to try your hand at making some traditional Mexican sauces and dishes from scratch, this might be a recipe book that you enjoy.

An easy to follow recipe guide that will have any lover of Mexican food ready to cook. Delicious, you an not go wrong any recipe choice in this book.

5 stars, Totally Tasty Mexican Food

Healthy Easy Mexican by Velda de la Garza

This cookbook would make a nice addition to your pantry shelves. It has a nice selection of Mexican food recipes. Here's a list of the recipe categories:

Salsas & Dips
Appetizers & Sides
Soups & Breads
Salads
Meat & Fish
Poultry
Meatless Meals
Rice & Beans
Desserts

All of the recipes are easy to prepare and quite tasty, too. Nutritional information is included for all recipes. I found some of the recipes called for boiling the tomatillos on the stove, in broth. We roast our tomatillos, it's easy for us. You can adapt the recipes to your liking. Highly recommend it. Beautiful Mexican tiles, appear throughout, and probably comes complete with color photos of at least some of the recipes, but since I have an eBook copy, the photos did not show.

Warmest thanks to #netgalley for the complimentary copy of #healthyeasymexican I was under no obligation to post a review.

The recipes in this book are great. Unfortunately, none of the pictures would load, so I was sort of guessing at whatever I was making. The few things I did try my hand at turned out lovely tasting, although I have no clue if they were plated right.

Firstly the cover won my heart and then the title because I am a sucker for all things beautiful. I totally enjoyed going through the recipes and the author did a good job in including a number of recipes of salsas, appetizers, soups, salads, meat entrees, even vegetarian meals, and yummy desserts. Some of the ingredients may be harder to find in Africa but the cookbook is easy to understand and it would make the perfect addition to your cookbooks or as a gift. A huge thanks to the publisher for my e-ARC

A fantastic cookbook with really great pictures and lots of really good tips for making guilty pleasure recipes healthier. I can't wait to try some of them and use the suggested substitutions in other recipes in my life.
Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an arc for an honest review!

I love Mexican food because it's pretty similar to my Brazilian food so I was excited about this book. The recipes look nice and I'll be trying some of them at home. I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

Healthy Easy Mexican won my heart with that gorgeous cover! And the 161 included recipes? To die for! I adore this cuisine and the author, a registered dietitian, adds nutritious twists that not only make the food delicious, but good for you and simple to make. Hurrah!

There are tasty recipes for salsas, appetizers, soups, salads, meat entrees, even vegetarian meals and yummy desserts — a heavenly cornucopia.

As a non-cook, I found Healthy Easy Mexican especially helpful because it showed me how to stock my pantry, pick cooking tools, and choose healthy ingredients. Last night, I even made a fab dinner using recipes for South Texas Squash Casserole, Carrot-Cilantro Salad, and Kahlúa Parfait with Raspberries. It was fun, easy to do and a hit with hubs and me. What more could you ask for?

Healthy Easy Mexican would make a great gift for cooks at any level who love scrumptious ethnic fare. Highly recommended!

5 of 5 Stars

Pub Date 14 Sep 2021
#HealthyEasyMexican #NetGalley

Thanks to the author, The Experiment, and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.

Healthy Easy Mexican by Velda de la Garza has simple recipes with full instructions. There weren't photos of the finished dish, but I got an advance copy ebook so maybe the photos hadn't been added yet. Otherwise, great book and highly recommend for those who love Mexican food.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher The Experiment in exchange for an honest review.

Mexican food is without a doubt some of my favourite food to cook and eat, but I will admit that my own recipes lack that authenticity. I was very excited by the idea of this book as I am always looking for new Mexican flavours to mix things up. I also have a tendency to just pile cheese on everything, which is not ideal now I am trying to eat healthier.

The layout of this book is fantastic. The recipes are split into clear sections, the presentation of each recipe is as simple as possible and it also includes detailed nutritional information which is exactly what you want from a health-focused recipe book. At the top of each recipe, there is also a detailed breakdown of which ingredients are good for you and how they help which was a really nice touch. I think more healthy cookbooks should do this as it encourages education and experimentation.

Now to the recipes themselves. I think there is a fine selection but unfortunately a large portion of them aren't personally suitable to me. The sections are: Salsas & Dips, Appetizers & Sides, Soups & Breads, Salads, Meat & Fish, Poultry, Meatless, Rice & Beans and Desserts. As you can probably tell, the bulk of this book was not main meals which was a bit of a shame as that's what I was looking for. Having said that, I am a little biased in that I don't eat soup or salads and I am unlikely to make dip which already rules out three whole sections. Add in my partner being veggie and you can see I have a more limiting set of circumstances than most.

One thing I liked about the recipes themselves is that they are all fairly simple or at least, contain ingredients which aren't too hard to get. I have a strong preference for recipes I am realistically likely to cook and that tends to mean easy to follow, relatively cheap and ingredients that won't go to waste. This book had plenty of those and a lot of them also provided great opportunity for adaptation and experimentation.

Overall, I would recommend this book if you are looking for a good, all-round Mexican cookbook which also happens to have a healthy skew. I think even if you're not specifically looking for the health aspect, having detailed nutritional information is always a bonus, and the recipes definitely aren't just for people trying to be healthier or lose weight. Advanced chefs might not find enough to offer them here but for most people, it's a great place to start.

Overall Rating: 3/5 stars

Very complete book with hearty nutritional traditional recipes, all reading very easily, no difficult steps. The copy I previewed had sadly no pictures so it makes it a little hard to imagine what the final products are like, only about 1 recipe out of 8, I understand will have a photograph, so this isn't for everybody, but will make people looking for authenticity happy.

Mexican is a mainstay at my house. We eat Mexican at least twice a week. Each time we go to a Mexican restaurant, I think to myself ways in which I can recreate the mouthwatering dishes we just enjoyed. Even better, is when I can make healthy versions that my family loves eating, and I feel good about serving. This book provides exactly those kinds of recipes. There are helpful tips regarding healthier options, guides to cheeses, peppers, and equipment. The only thing that would make it even better would be photographs of some of the dishes. There is so much color and texture to be enjoyed, I would love to see an image the end products. I received a complimentary copy from the publisher via NetGalley and all opinions expressed are my own, freely given.

Hmmm... Your opinion of this cookbook is really going to depend on your definition of healthy. I was excited to read it since I love cooking Mexican food and I'm quite a health nut, but I have very different views of "healthy" from the author. To her credit, she is a dietician with lots of degrees and I am not, but she definitely is from the nutritional camps of several decades ago. For example, in her list of oils to use, she includes canola and spreadable margarine. In oils to avoid, she lists coconut oil and real butter. She also uses lots of processed, artificial ingredients like sugar free jello, lowfat cream of mushroom soup and "light whipped topping" (shudder), plus low-fat and no-fat cheeses and nonfat Greek yogurt in place of things like crema or sour cream. A pina colada pie was made of light whipped topping, coconut flavored yogurt and pineapple in a purchased graham cracker crust pie. Her "mango mold" has two packages of sugar free orange jello, two packages of lemon jello, fat-free cream cheese and mangos stirred in. This is just not what I think of for either healthy or authentic Mexican food. There are some more traditional Mexican dishes, but these are still made in modern ways with altered ingredients for the most part.

I kept thinking that the recipes seemed straight out of the 90's in terms of "healthy" and then I looked and saw that it's an updated cookbook written in 1995.

There is some nutritional information for each recipe, but it leaves out carbohydrate and protein counts, which are two of the most important things I track. There are supposedly photos throughout, but my ARC only had gray pages where I assume photos would someday be, so I can't speak to any photos it may or may not have.

While I appreciate that the author has authentic Mexican heritage and lots of dietary degrees, this isn't a book that I found helpful, healthy or inspiring personally. For those who want low-calorie, low-fat Mexican dishes and don't mind using highly processed, artificial ingredients, this will probably be a good fit.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.