Weight Watchers CD-ROM Cookbook

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Weight Watchers CD-ROM Cookbook 1998

Compton's Home Library
Deluxe Weight Watchers
Light and Tasty CD ROM
Cook Delicious, Healthy Meals

by Steve Holzinger, a.k.a. The Prof

The Deluxe Weight Watchers Light and Tasty CD-ROM has 2,250 light recipes from ten Weight Watchers cookbooks! I tried it because I know a cook in the Weight Watchers test kitchen, and she told me how carefully they check each and every recipe. I have made Greek Spinach Pie, Spanakopita, many times, and eaten it made by authentic Greek cooks, so I know what it should be like. Astonishingly, for me, when I followed their recipe, it was as good as mine! I loved it. My wife, my son and his wife all loved it. The truth is: it was even better than mine. It looked and tasted just as good, but it was lighter, nutritionally more like what I need to eat. All the laborious test kitchen work had been done for me, like seeing how much salty feta cheese could be replaced with low fat cottage cheese, how few eggs would hold it together, how to use phyllo pastry with as little fat as possible. I didn't have to give up good taste or great appearance. All I was giving up was too much of the wrong things that had made me sick. I still had the joy of cooking for my family and serving up the kind of tasty food they expect of me. More joy still, this food was better for all of us.

I found Deluxe Weight Watchers Light and Tasty CD-ROM very easy to use and install. I suggest that you take five minutes to take the guided tour on the CD-ROM before starting, and you will have no trouble with the program. The interface consists of eight buttons across the top that takes you to each major part of the program, and three frames. A picture frame, where you can see the 600 pictures or 100 videos, a list box from which to choose recipes (2,250 of them) or categories, and a text frame that shows the complete recipe. You can customize this interface to suit yourself. One feature I liked was the ability to choose small, medium or large fonts. I choose large fonts for ease of reading. When I want to see the whole recipe at once, I switch to small fonts.

The user, with intelligent sizing can scale recipes to any size. Triple a recipe that has 3 cups, and get "2 quarts, 1 cup"-- not 9 cups—and odd amounts are rounded out. From the recipes you can print shopping lists. If you have recipes of your own, you can add them to your personal cookbook. The format used for writing these recipes has smart lists. When in the unit column, type a 'c', and a list pops up with units and selects the one that starts with 'c', like cup. It is very easy and quick. This is very similar to the MasterCook recipe format. There is no way to categorize your own recipes. They are just in your personal book, so they do not show up in the list of all recipes, but can be found with a word search, a very fast and convenient feature when you are looking for a recipe or an ingredient.

The nutritional information at the bottom of each recipe is a big plus. As well as the amounts of significant ingredients, the food exchanges for each serving are shown, so you can plan your food easily based on exchanges. For example, in Spanakopita, Spinach Pie, a serving provides 1 bread and 4 Fruit/Vegetables, 1 Protein/Milk and 1 Fat exchange, as well as telling you it contains 264 calories, 12 g Total Fat, 5 g Saturated Fat, 127 mg Cholesterol, 676 mg Sodium, 24 G total Carbohydrate, 4 g Dietary Fiber, 17 g Protein, 220 mg Calcium.

The recipes can be printed out on regular paper, 3x5 or 4x6 inch cards, and can be sent by email from the program. The color pictures can be printed out, and on my Epson Stylus color printer they look great.

At a $39.95 street price this program is a great buy, and a Must Have. Most computers running Windows 3.1 or Win95 can handle it easily. In Win95 you can email recipes right from the program, assuming you are hooked to the net.

I give this program 3-1/2 Toque Blanche.

* The ten cookbooks in the Deluxe Weight Watchers Light and Tasty CD-ROM include:

Weight Watchers Quick Meals
Weight Watchers New 365 Day Menu Cookbook
Weight Watchers Versatile Vegetarian
Weight Watchers Complete Cookbook
Weight Watchers Cut the Fat
Weight Watchers Slim Ways Italian
Weight Watchers Slim Ways Chicken
Weight Watchers Slim Ways Grilling
Weight Watchers Slim Ways Hearty Meals
Weight Watchers Slim Ways Mexican