Review of Grill It, Braise It, Broil It by the American Heart Association

Nutshell: A cookbook filled with 175 heart healthy recipes that feature 12 different ways to prepare your main dishes. This book contains recipes for your crockpot, the grill, broiling and even microwaving along with many more options.

Pro's: The color pictures! I love cookbooks with pictures as I am a very visual person and like to see what dishes look like. There was a variety of cooking styles that may suit those looking for a different slant of how dishes are prepared.

Con's: Not many recipes were appealing. We are not a tofu family and the majority of recipes use tofu. I found very few healthy sweet recipes and very few recipes that contain main staples in the kitchen. I may be more tempted to prepare some of the recipes if it was just my husband and I, but with two growing kids, I know they may not particularly care for the unusual recipes. (Yes, they do try everything I cook). My pantry does not contain a lot of the buy-once ingredients, not would my budget fit the unusual assortment of items I would need to buy for one recipe.

Recommendation: If you are an adventurous cook, this is the book for you. If Beets with Orange Gremolata to Stuffed Chayote Squash make your fingers itch to get cooking, get this book and you may just enjoy some of the interesting dishes it has to offer.

The recipe I tried was Stuffed "Baked" Apples. The recipe is found below:

2 T light brown sugar
2 T sweetened dried cranberries
2 T gold raisins
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp olive oil
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice
4 small Granny Smith, Fuji, or Gala apples, halved, cored scared
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
2 T chopped walnuts, dry roasted.

In a small bowl, stir together the brown sugar, cranberries, raisins, cinnamon, oil, nutmeg, ginger and allspice.

Put the apples in a shallow 1-quart microwaveable baking dish with a lid. Spoon the stuffing in the apples. Pour the orange juice around the apples.

Microwave, covered, on 100 percent power (high) for 6 to 7 minutes, or until the apples are soft.

Carefully transfer the apples to serving plates, leaving the juices in the dish. Microwave the remaining juices, uncovered, on 100 percent power (high) for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the mixture is reduced by half (to about 1/4 cup).

Just before serving, drizzle the juice mixture over the apples, Sprinkle with the walnuts

*I served with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. I also omitted the walnuts as they are not a favorite in our household. This tasted really good, but hard to eat the skins - they were used more as a bowl to hold the softened apple in.

Waterbrook Multnomah sent me this complimentary book to review for them. Opinions expressed are my own, as is the photo of the dessert.