Monday, July 12, 2010

Book Review: Hungry Girl Happy Hour by Lisa Lillien

posted by Katie 

Last week I received a review copy of Lisa Lilien's latest book of recipes Hungry Girl Happy Hour.


If you're not familiar with the Hungry Girl brand, you can learn more about the series' author, Lisa Lillien, here.

Hungry Girl Happy Hour, with its promise of "75 recipes for amazingly fantastic guilt-free cocktails & party foods" sounded almost too good to be true...and it sort of was.

Lisa and her team were very creative when it came to thinking up ways to reduce the calorie count in the drinks featured in the book. The problem was, when I read the ingredients for drinks like the Peach Melba Daiquiri Slushie (rum, frozen unsweetened peach slices, sugar-free calorie-free raspberry-flavored syrup, no-calorie sweeter packets, ice cubes), I tend to think Oh, that sounds kind of refreshing. But what if I swapped the frozen peaches for fresh peaches, and pureed raspberries instead of buying syrup, and then threw a little simple syrup in instead of those gross sweeter packets...now that would be really good. And that kind of thinking really just negates the whole point of the book.

So I guess what it comes down to is if you're okay with using powdered mixes and sweetener packets instead of fresh, natural ingredients, then you're going to really love this book.

But if you're like me, and don't like the idea of artificial sweeteners, especially in drinks, this is not the book for you.

As far as the food portion of the book, Lisa basically just takes your favorite party recipes and tells you to use low-calorie, non-fat ingredients anywhere you can. Not that groundbreaking, but again, good for those who are into that sort of thing.

So yeah, I probably will not use any recipes from this book, but I will at least say, it sure looks cute sitting on my shelf!