This is the necessarily authoritative cookbook to go along with The New Atkins for a New You: The Ultimate Diet for Shedding Weight and Feeling Great. If you don't have that book, don't worry; pages 1-6 will briefly tell you the basics to get started. Then visit the website, if you haven't already done so.

So, your shopping list. You'll need lots of heavy cream and butter. There are several recipes in which their use is generous. That theme of old, though, does not run nearly as rampant in this book as I had expected. The fatfest of yesteryear has been scaled back. Olive oil is the preferred flavor carrier, with butter and/or cream as accents on occasion with it. A little bit of cream cheese, a little bit of sour cream, again, as accents. Various hard cheeses appear as accent notes, too, mostly. Some nuts. Less than a cup, usually. The only sweetener used in this book is "granular sugar substitute." Buy your eggs in the eighteen-count carton. Steak, poultry, seafood, lamb-but you knew that. Vegetarian dishes use tofu, soymilk, TVP, tempeh, seitan, and beans.

For optimal use of this book, it is mandatory-not optional-to make friends with your farmers' markets and produce department at the grocery store. Lots and lots of fresh vegetables and herbs appear throughout the book. At a bare minimum, keep lemons and garlic handy. Basic chopping-no fancy de-boning a whole chicken or such. Remember that fish sauce you bought that's lurking in your refrigerator door? You'll need to excavate it. Get some almond flour. Not a lot-the small bag will do. Also, there's an online company (Dixie Diners Club) that sells a thickener for gravies and soups (yes, they're still around).

DO KNOW THIS: the breakfast and dessert sections rely WAY HEAVILY MUCH upon the use of Atkins Cuisine All Purpose Bake Mix. Although there are recipes that DON'T call for it in those sections, they are precious few-especially in desserts. A handful of the entrees use it, too. A strong push for the bake mix, indeed. If I bought a bag of that stuff, I'd sure want to know how to use it! I'm aware that it is entirely appropriate. There is one recipe calling for their penne pasta-it's a mac-n-cheese sort of dish. Atkins Cuisine Bread appears in a sneak or two, as well. For this, I knocked off a star anyway. I don't want to use such products, and I don't want to invent substitutions (none are available in a local store). Aside from that, the lush, fresh, and pretty dang easy-to-prepare recipes in the middle make those three stars burn brightly! There is no lack of flavor or actual nourishment from the entrees, vegetable dishes, sides, and soups. There are no recipes calling for their ready-to-eat products, BTW.

There are thoughtful features, such as a tag at the edge of the page indicating whether the recipe is a weekday (quick) recipe or a weekend (takes a little longer) recipe. None go over an hour twenty in cooking time. When a recipe takes longer, it's passive preparation: for example, waiting for ice cream to harden. As you can see in the "Look Inside" feature here at Amazon, there's a great chart in the back which informs you as to which phases you can use a recipe. Each recipe heading states appropriate phases, anyway. "Looking Inside" will also treat you to a good sampling of the author's conversational style of communication. I like the Tip Time boxes that appear throughout. The information is really great. I didn't know there were four types of salmon! Only thirty-odd recipes have full-color glossy photos, and they are located in the center of the book.

Although there are numerous recipes appropriate for induction, consider waiting until you're past that challenging stage in using this book. For "official" induction recipes, I recommend their website. Inductees going through this book might be too tempted by the recipes for later phases. Amongst them you'll find lentils, soba noodles, sweet potatoes, wild rice, garbanzos, barley, butternut squash, corn, carrots, beans, a touch of whole wheat flour, and one lonely little dish with POTATOES! I'm so profoundly starchophobic that I knocked off a second star. I freely admit that's from my quirk and not reflective on how enticing the recipes are. I personally was looking for more hand-holding for induction and phase 2. By the time you're in later phases and into the starch as presented in this book, you don't need this book as a template anymore-follow me? By the way, my copy has printer ink streaks on pages 188 and 189. I can still read those pages clearly.

I'd go so far as to say that eating "low-carb" and following Atkins really aren't the same thing anymore. I do want to say that I've enjoyed cooking from it thus far. Cleanup has been tolerable after preparing what I've made up to this... Read more

Been making recipes from this book for a week now. I was afraid that I would be too deprived starting with Atkins induction, but there is a great variety of recipes for every stage. Everything I've made so far has been delicious. It's easy to find all the ingredients in the grocery store (except the Atkins baking mix, which you can order on Amazon as well). But I don't intend to have a baked good at every meal, so that's not a big deal, since your diet should consist of mostly veggies anyway and not bread, pancakes, and muffins all the time.

Several recipes call for this one brand of low carb thickener (a cornstarch substitute); I don't even bother, if the recipe calls for cream, that thickens it up just fine. Or get guar gum, which many grocery stores carry in the gluten-free or organic section; it's got more carbs, but just use a tiny bit.

Several recipes also give you variations on either seasonings or a few ingredients, to easily change them up and have something different. Plus, they are adaptable to different ingredients of your own choosing - if you don't want to use a chicken breast, try it with a lean pork chop.

The recipes help you to figure out how to combine ingredients to make your own low carb dishes, they are inspirations for going "off the book" and creating your own fantastic meals.

At least half my meals in the past week have been from this book, and I've already lost 6 lbs. I'll update later as I go through further stages, but I'm thrilled with this purchase.

The book does have some great recipes but not easy to use. Don't like the way the recipes are set up into "Weekday" or "Weekend" sections. In the back there is a chart showing you what phase each recipe is good for but then you have to look it up in the index to find out what page it is on instead of putting it also in the chart.