Tex-Mex Diabetes Cooking

I'm not usually a fan of diet cookbooks of any type, but when I was offered a Tex-Mex geared toward diabetics, I decided to give it a whirl. The book is Tex-Mex Diabetes Cooking by Kelley Cleary Coffeen.

As I browsed through the book, the substitutions to make them friendly for diabetics were pretty simple. Whole grain tortillas were used instead of white tortillas, for example. There were also quite a few lower-fat items that were used. I've got to say that some lower-fat cheeses are perfectly fine, but I've tried low-fat cream cheese and I doubt I'd use it again unless it was well hidden in a recipe.

But ... if you need the low fat versions for health reasons, it's great they exist.

There are recipes for everything from drinks (yes, even alcoholic drinks) to desserts. It even has recipes for making your own tortillas. But to be honest, I was more interested in the main dishes and sides. Chicken Tortilla soup sounded pretty good, as did the pork carnitas tacos. I adore tacos. And I'd be happy with pretty much any of the enchiladas.

The book also includes instructions and recipes for making tamales. I've made tamales, and it can be quite a project if you make them in quantity - which you should, because they freeze really well. The red chile tamales looked pretty familiar. On the other hand, the spinach and asparagus tamales were unusual. I'm still not sure I'd love them, but I'm pretty curious about them.

While there were soooo many recipes that looked good, the one that stopped me pretty quickly was the chopped Mexican salad with lime. It just looked so pretty in the picture. And I adore salad. I might make the dressing all by itself and use it with my usual clean-out-the-crisper salads that happen pretty regularly here, and when I happen to have most of the ingredients for the actual salad, I'll assemble it the way it's supposed to be.

To be honest, I'd probably skip the sweets in this book, since I'm not a huge fan of artificial sweeteners, but that's really the only thing I wasn't fond of. But if you don't mind the taste of those artificial sweeteners, you'll probably be happy with the selections here.

If you're cooking for someone who is diabetic, or you're just looking for recipes that are lighter and healthier, this book would be a good fit for your bookshelf.

Why yes, I did get this book at no cost to me.