High Fiber, High Flavor: More Than 180 Recipes for Good Health

""The word diet can be off-putting... with its connotations of weight reduction,"" notes home economist and author Moon (The American Harvest Cookbook), so she finds ways to add healthful fiber to everyday meals in ways that don't spare the flavor--or, it turns out, the calories. Soups, Salads and Appetizers, Main Dishes, Desserts and Baked Goods all abound with fresh vegetables, beans, grains and fruit. For example, Ratatouille and Goat Cheese Quiche, Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry, and Fig and Apple Pie demonstrate that using extra fiber creatively can be delicious and ""healthy"" (though no nutritional analyses are provided). Some of the beautifully photographed dishes, though, are accompanied by instructions that are frustratingly vague. Lima beans are to be simmered ""until required"" for Chicken Bourguignon; water must be added to flour and butter in unspecified amounts for pastry crusts; many soups are based on a ""rich vegetable stock"" for which only the sketchiest ingredients, proportions and cooking time are given; and Moon assumes that the reader knows all about making bread and pasta. As she says, including fiber-rich foods in the daily regime can, indeed, be ""pleasurable""--but her suggestions may be most useful to experienced home cooks who are not counting calories. (Sept.)