Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Mediterranean cooking is refreshingly low in salt, fat, and starch, relying instead on fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, and poultry. Nancy Harmon Jenkins provides a delicious alternative for anyone who feels their basic diet needs a change, but isn't sure which way to turn. Jenkins relishes tradition and place, and the vibrant people who bring this style of cooking alive. She circles the Mediterranean, collecting the classic recipes that fall within the defined parameters of the Mediterranean diet (as recognized by the World Health Organization): "plentiful fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains; olive oil as the principal fat; lean red meat only a few times a month; low to moderate consumption of other foods from animal sources, such as dairy products, fish and poultry; and moderate consumption of wine." Simplicity is the key to the Mediterranean diet--simple ingredients and stress-free preparation and cooking. This is more than a cookbook--it is a blueprint for healthier living. --Schuyler Ingle

Average Customer Rating:

I'm unimpressed.	Customer Rating:
The book is boring. No pictures to help visualize the recipes. This book found a new way to tell you, (eat more fruits and vegetables).

Didn't answer my question	Customer Rating:
Recipes are oke, but I already have a lot of those. I wanted to learn exactly what is the mediterranean diet and what exactly are the benefits. I expected more background and scientific information. If you want to know more about foodscience, you better read Good calories, bad calories, written by Gary Taubes.

Great reading but the recipes will bog you down

Customer Rating:

I have a lot of heart trouble and I bought this cookbook specifically to look into The Mediterranean Diet as a means to benefit my precarious health. I cook a lot, every day, as I'm retired and it's my job to prepare a balanced suppertime meal for my wife and me each day -- she's still working full-time and, of course, she's pretty hungry when she comes through the door each evening. (If you want to see what my own chefing skill-level is, go to "Recipezaar" and look up "Bone Man" -- that's me and I have about 300 recipes posted there that you can view and/or print for free). This cookbook is intelligently written, bulging with great and useful advice, and details of The Mediterranean Diet are clearly stated therein; however, one would be very hard-pressed to complete all the tasks which go with owning a home and raising a family, and balancing that burden with cooking the dishes found in here. These are, in fact, fine recipes (I've made several of them), but my point is, they're too complex and ingredient-diverse to pull off every day and that objective is sort of the purpose of any particular diet. An example of the problem is that sometimes, one recipe refers you to yet another recipe, on a different page, for preparation. Another evaluation is that one would need to go to the grocery at least every other day as this author uses a LOT of different ingredients -- while conforming nicely to The Mediterranean Diet requirements, these recipes are very diverse in regard to ingredients. A final comment is that these dishes are not largely all that cheap to make and, over time, this becomes a problem for many of us. One other criticism I have is that, while the book is nicely bound, it's inappropriately bound for a cookbook. It's fairly large and it doesn't lie flat. The paper is not of a "slick" variety and it's of a type of paper that seems to absorb every splash and stain that gets near it. All this is really just a minor complaint but I think that this was a huge oversight on the part of the publisher and certainly represents an inconvenience for the home cook. So, my summary is this: if you have a helper in the kitchen who can also go to the grocery for you on short notice, this cookbook might be okay. I would also say that the recipes are quite worthwhile for folks (even non-dieters) who wish to prepare one of these dishes just once in awhile -- but to stick to the recipes herein, day after day, would be notably difficult and costly.

Wonderful cookbook	Customer Rating:
I read this cover to cover and enjoyed every delicious word! YUM. I love to cook this way anyway, and having just returned from the Mediterranean, I had a great appreciation for the menus and foods (which I just recently ate - double yum). I'm excited to have this in my inventory of cookbooks.

It's all Greek to me!

Customer Rating:

I bought this book because my Doctor recommended a Mediterranean Diet for heart health. It is a big book, full of recipies and asides about living in Mediterranean countries. That part was interesting. However, I found the recipies way too ethnic for our use. They use many ingredients that can not be found in our South-Western community. Also, most of them don't even appeal to me. I did read it cover to cover and tried to glean from it some basics of a Mediterranean Diet that I could try to apply to our circumstances. In that respect, it was helpful.