WomenHeart's All Heart Family Cookbook: Featuring the 40 Foods Proven to Promote Heart Health » (First Edition)

Kathy Kastan, LCSW, MA ED, is the president of WomenHeart as well as the chair of the Northwest Region of the American Heart Association. Author of From the Heart: A Woman’s Guide to Living Well with Heart Disease, she is a licensed certified social worker, Ms. Kastan lives in Cordova, Tennessee.

Suzanne Banfield, PhD, has worked as a dietitian, food scientist, and educator. She heads WomenHeart's North Jersey Support Network and gives frequent lectures on heart health to civic and corporate groups. She lives in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Wendy Leonard is an award-winning medical writer with more than 23 years' experience translating complicated medical jargon into information people can truly understand and use. She lives in Hawthorne, New Jersey.

WomenHeart is the only national patient-centered organization that provides support, education, and advocacy for women living with heart disease. Through a broad coalition of networks, they offer comprehensive services to women with heart disease and empower all women to take charge of their heart health. For more information, go to www.womenheart.org.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women, killing six times as many as breast cancer. What's worse, too few women realize the dire risk they face.

WomenHeart, the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease, is an organization dedicated to helping women heart patients and those at risk for heart disease, whether they know it or not. Through an extensive support group network, they also help women who have heart disease live normal lives. And because dietary changes are often an important part of the recovery process, when their members gather, the conversation naturally turns to food.

To help spread the news of their work, WomenHeart has created this one-of-a-kind collection that focuses on 40 key foods known to promote heart health that features a number of family-friendly recipes from their members.

Packed with plenty of great-to-wake-up-to dishes like French Toast with Orange Cream and Lemon Blueberry Muffins, it also includes dozens of crowd-pleasing dinner favorites like Revamped Chicken Pot-pie, Beef and Vegetable Stroganoff, and Sesame Salmon with Spicy Cucumber Salad. In fact, in this collection there's a recipe for every occasion, as well as 40 enticing photographs.

Even better, this cookbook includes plenty of desserts, like Flourless Chocolate Cake, Summer Fruit Compote, and Raspberry Buckle, making it easy to see that fighting heart disease can mean indulging in the pleasures good food offers.

Publishers Weekly

The introduction explains that "scientists have identified 40 foods that can help reduce, prevent, and even reverse heart disease." Those 40 foods-among them chocolate, red wine, tropical fruits, almonds and avocados-are the focus of this health-conscious cookbook. All 175 recipes include one or more of them, and the first section details, food by food, in easily understandable (even occasionally funny) language, why they're good for you. The recipes are accessible and appealing, if not especially original. The superstar ingredients are marked with a heart symbol; key nutritional information accompanies each entry. The full spectrum of basic food genres is covered, from breakfast foods like Broccoli and Cheese Strata (featuring egg whites), Asparagus Frittata (using egg substitute) and Green Tea-Oatmeal Pancakes to desserts such as Orange Pistachio Cake and an antioxidant-rich but still decadent Flourless Chocolate Cake. In between are plenty of soups, salads (including an elegant Grape and Fennel Salad), vegetable side dishes, grains, beans, pasta and main courses such as Sesame Salmon with Spicy Cucumber Salad, Oven-Fried Fish and Chips, Revamped Chicken Potpie and Make-Over Veal Marsala. The variety and simplicity make this a reliable-and lighthearted-resource for anyone trying to fight or prevent heart trouble. (Feb.)