Patti LaBelle's Lite Cuisine: Over 100 Dishes with to Die for Taste Made with to Live for Recipes »

Patti LaBelle has enjoyed a nearly four-decade-long career and has won multiple Grammy Awards and earned three Emmy nominations. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Don't Block the Blessings and LaBelle Cuisine. She currently serves as spokeswoman for the American Diabetes Association, the National Medical Association, the National Minority AIDS Council's "Live Long, Sugar" campaign, and the National Cancer Institute. She was recently awarded the Recording Academy's first MusiCares Award for her "deep-hearted commitment to many notable charities and causes."

Laura Randolph Lancaster is a journalist, attorney, and the co-author of Don't Block the Blessings and LaBelle Cuisine. Formerly the managing editor of Ebony, she was the magazine's White House correspondent and creator of its acclaimed "Sisterspeak" column.

Legendary singer and New York Times bestselling author Patti LaBelle reveals her mouth-watering culinary secrets for eating your way to a long and healthy life. "Treat your body like a temple, not an amusement park."

This is the sage advice Patti LaBelle lives by, and in her new book she shares more than 100 original recipes for meals that are not only good for you but taste great, too. She also shares her own personal story of a lifetime of struggling with body image and tells the heartbreaking story of how she lost her mother to diabetes and learned recently that she, too, had the disease.

In her first cookbook, LaBelle Cuisine, LaBelle featured the high-style, down-home cooking she learned from the great Southern cooks in her family. But after she was diagnosed with diabetes, LaBelle had to radically change her dietary habits and food choices. With diabetic exchanges developed and approved by the American Diabetes Association and the American Dietetic Association, Patti LaBelle's Lite Cuisine is chock-full of the kind of recipes that made her earlier cookbook a bestselling sensation. Readers will love the wide array of healthful and heavenly dishes like "Awesome Oven-Fried Chicken," "Sensational Sloppy Joes," "Company's-Coming Crab Imperial," and "Luscious Lobster Salad." Delectable desserts include everything from "Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Raisin Cookies" to "Tastes-Like-Grandma-Made-It Banana Pudding."

One of America's most beloved performers once again creates her special brand of culinary magic. Her new, healthy, and delicious recipes are destined to make Patti's latest cookbook a staple in kitchens all across America.

Publishers Weekly

Diagnosed with diabetes, LaBelle, bestselling cookbook writer (LaBelle Cuisine) and Grammy-winning singer, has had to find ways to control her diet and make it healthier; this newest is the inspiring result. All 100 starters, entrees, sides and desserts are low on fat, sodium and sugar-but definitely high on flavor. Orange Roughy with Roasted Tomato and Olive Relish and Marvelous Minted Snap Peas are stylishly lean and contemporary, but LaBelle also cooks up old-fashioned Southern comfort food like Crunchy Cajun Catfish Nuggets, Down-Home Pork Chops in Guilt-Free Gravy and Chocolate Pecan Pie. All dishes include complete nutritional analyses, with diabetic exchanges and carbohydrate choices developed and approved by the American Diabetes Association and the American Dietetic Association; they also come with "Patti's Pointers" (ideas on technique, equipment and ingredients), along with warm reminiscences of meals with family and friends. LaBelle is wonderful company for someone on a diet regime of any kind (as her friendly family photos further illustrate); she is creative, upbeat, knowledgeable and amusing. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.