The appeal of "Eat, Shrink & Be Merry" is the clever if cutesy way the recipes are presented. And here I have to warn you, the recipe titles are groan-inducing. All of them: In Cod We Trust, Florets Nightingale, Kentucky Freud Chicken, Lord of the Wings, and so on. Even the chapter titles are corny: Poultry in Motion, Beyond Beleaf, Best Side Story... OK, I'll stop. For some, though, the puns may get a bit wearing after a while.
Lest you think the book is entirely trivial, there's plenty of useful information buried beneath the humor, and all 150 recipes have straight descriptions plus key nutritional information.
This kind of cookbook, like its predecessors from the Podleski sisters, certainly takes on the criticism that low-fat recipes are bland or boring. "Eat, Shrink & Be Merry" delivers perfectly flavorful, satisfying low-fat recipes in an accessible, fun way. Packed with tips, trivia and 'funky factoids,' "Eat, Shrink & Be Merry" is as much a humorous comic-book read as it is a cookbook (with about 200 cartoons compared to just a dozen photographs).
The biggest laugh of all, though, is its last recipe, the "Died-and-Gone-to-Heaven Chocolate Layer Cake." Look at the ingredients, the inviting photo, then closely at the nutritional information, and you'll see what I mean. This is one occasion where ignorance is truly bliss.
