Reviews For Cooking Light Magazine

I have been getting Cooking Light Magazine off and on for well over 15 years and have always found a lot of helpful information, tips, and recipes. The magazine is well-written, and very attractive with plenty of pictures.

Some of my all time favorite recipes have come from Cooking Light, in the past, and I still use them regularly to this day. One favorite, from the 90s, was the Shrimp and Orzo with Feta. So so so good and easy to make! Another favorite that I've used for years is the Asparagus with Balsamic Browned Butter.

My only complaint has been that they are not big on low-carb AT ALL, which is something that I use in my every day life and I would love it if they did, at least, SOME low carb. I still, however, find that I can use many of the recipes in Cooking Light and find them very enjoyable.

For those who are less experienced in the cooking department, the recipes are always easy and use ingredients readily available.

I love the recipes in Cooking Light. Nothing is too "diet-y" and most of the recipes use great, real, whole foods. The only drawback is a limited amount of vegetarian recipes. They usually include substitutions, but it seems that most of the recipes focus on meat and fish. As I've been starting to transition to a more vegetarian/vegan diet I've found the recipes in Cooking Light to be less helpful to me personally, but if you're an omnivore then this is a great magazine with good food related articles and health advice as well as soon amazing recipes.

This magazine features many recipes for those of us who are trying to loose weight and make healthy choices. It's a good source of fresh ideas when you tire of eating the same old things. Great pictures and interesting articles.

This is a great magazine. It has both recipes and exercises to keep you fit.

Wonderful magazine! These are keepers, which makes it a good deal whatever the price, but at this price, it's a gift giver too!

This is a good, solid magazine for cooking light and quick. I usually like the readers' recipes better than the magazine's, but the photos are great and the food turns out tasty.

I've been a subscriber for many years. The recipes make it easy to provide delicious food with nutritional balance.

I ordered this magazine for my daughter. The recipes are very easy to understand and use. The articles are interesting too.

Equal to the best price I found anywhere. My wife is a regular subscriber to Cooking Light.

As I've stated in other reviews, there's a market out there for just about every magazine. I know there's one out there for Cooking Light -- and a big one, at that -- but I'm not sure it's the one they're going to attract by calling the magazine "Cooking Light". I found the magazine to be very heavy on articles having to do with healthy lifestyles (and on related ads) and rather light on information about cooking of any kind. I was looking for a magazine about cooking with a focus on healthy recipes; instead, I got a magazine about healthy lifestyles with a focus on cooking.

With that said, they're very good at what they do. The pictures are gorgeous, and most of the recipes are simple enough for novice cooks and use ingredients that can be found just about anywhere. If you don't mind sifting through articles on exercise equipment and houses designed around healthy lifestyles to find your recipes, you'll like this magazine just fine.

Here's an overview of the March 2002 issue, both features and regular columns:

- "Let's do lunch": An article on how to make the most of your lunch break, with suggestions like eating food you like with people you like (Duh? Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
- "Helping hands": A short piece on taking care of your hands
- "Easy riders": A product review of comfort bikes
- Other food and product (i.e. a sweatshirt, gourmet meal kits) reviews
- "Some culinary rules are made to be broken": An interesting article debunking such myths as having to soak beans overnight. I enjoyed reading this one and even learned a few things.
- "Down on the goat farm": An article on why milk and cheese from goats is better than that from cows
- A beauty column focusing on things like products for chapped lips
- "Good moves": A regular column on strength exercises
- "Cooking Light's fit house": A 14-page (interspersed with ads) article on a house designed to be friendly both to the environment and to the health of its inhabitants
- "Charleston's grace": - An article on things to do in Charleston, SC
- "Person-to-person": A regular column, this one on financial planning for couples

Still reading but wondering where the articles on cooking are? Finally -- they start on page 104 of this 228-page issue!

- "Home bistro": This article gives a healthy spin to the down-home, comforting goodness of traditional bistro food and includes quite a few recipes.
- "The world in a bottle": This article introduces readers to the up-and-coming, hot (meaning popular, not palate-burning) spices of today's cuisines. It also includes recipes using the featured spices. This was my favorite article in this issue.
- "Three's a charm": This article takes a look back at recipes from last year that won Cooking Light's coveted 3.0 rating. It not only includes the recipes but also explains how the recipes were continually tested (read "tasted"), reworked, and tested again until editors gave them the highest possible score.
- "Back to health": This is one of those "special advertising sections" that, in this case, runs for 12 pages -- and that's not counting all the other advertisements sprinkled in there.
- "All about rice": This one's pretty self-explanatory, but it does go into depth and covers lots of different rices.
- "Inspired vegetarian": This column, as the name suggests, features light vegetarian recipes. The focus this month is on soups and the side dishes that go with them.
- "Lighten up": This is one of the magazine's best regular features. Readers send in recipes that they love but that make them fear for their waistlines and cholesterol levels, and the magazine's editors go to work lightening them up -- the challenge being to do that without sacrificing taste. This month's guinea pig: broccoli bread.
- "Reader recipes": As the name implies, this column is for light, healthy recipes sent in by readers.
- "Dinner tonight": A selection of menu plans for any night of the week (as opposed to those really complicated dishes you can make only on weekends)
- "Happy endings": Finally, dessert! This is my second-favorite column, sweetaholic that I am. They do a really good job of creating wonderful desserts on a budget of very few calories and fat grams.
- "Superfast": This column has to be a favorite of busy cooks everywhere -- nourishing recipes you can make in about 20 minutes. (I've yet to test that claim to see if it's true.)

When Cooking Light focuses on cooking, they do a great job. But this issue contained fewer than 100 recipes in 228 pages. That balances out to not quite a recipe every other page. My latest edition of Light&Tasty (from Taste of Home), on the other hand, racked up a few more recipes in only 67 pages. So it all comes down to what you're looking for in a cooking magazine. If you want lots of healthy recipes and, on top of that, would like to learn more about healthy cooking techniques, you'll be disappointed in Cooking Light. However, if you appreciate good writing and photography and are looking for a magazine that covers the whole healthy lifestyle, you'll appreciate the articles on fitness, fitness equipment, etc., sprinkled in among the recipes and will probably like the magazine. But I'd pick up a single copy at the grocery store before ordering a subscription, just to make sure you're really getting what you want.





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Recommended For: Hobbyists/Enthusiasts