I am so proud to introduce Home Run Cooking, the latest cookbook from Food and Health Communications. Whether you’re a novice home cook or a seasoned professional, this book will give you all the tools you need to prepare hundreds of simple, healthful, and delicious meals.How Did Home Run Cooking Earn Its Name?Why, because each and every recipe is a home run!Here are the 4 essential attributes to a Home Run Meal:

1. Each one is a delicious, crowd-tested hit.
2. Every recipe is easy to make, even if you’ve never cooked before!
3. The only ingredients required are usually inexpensive and easy to find.
4. The meals are all healthful – just take a look at the nutrition analysis!

This book covers all four bases of home run cooking and will help you knock it out of the park with healthful, tasty meals!Why Cook at Home? Here are 3 Compelling Reasons...Save Time:

• Cooking really is faster than dining out when you consider the time that you spend driving to a restaurant, ordering the food, waiting for it to be prepared, then served, and then waiting for and paying the check.
• After all, do you really want to sit in the car and then wait at a restaurant when you could be relaxing at home?
• Even takeout is not necessarily faster than a good 15-20 minute meal. Once you have the ingredients on hand and know how to make a few quick dinners, it will be way more efficient to do that instead of calling up a delivery place.

Save Money:

• Cooking at home is just plain cheaper than dining out. After all, whether you sit down in a restaurant or pick up food for carryout, you’ll need to tip and pay various service charges. Plus, you’ve got to cover your gas expenses if you’re searching for food farther afield.
• Let’s take a look at a sample menu at home and then in a restaurant. If you were to prepare spaghetti and salad for four people at home, you would need to buy a box of spaghetti, a jar of spaghetti sauce, a head of romaine, a cucumber, and a tomato or two. That rings up to about $8.88 (at the time of this publication). Now, a spaghetti and salad meal in a restaurant costs roughly $10.99, not including tax and tip. Multiply that by 4 people and you get a whopping $43.96 for the whole meal. This means that you would save $35.08 by dining at home instead of in a restaurant. Over a year, these expenses really add up.

Save Calories (and Your Health):According to Melanie Polk, RD, at the American Institute for Cancer Research (www.aicr.org), “There are a number of reasons for people to increase the percentage of meals and snacks they prepare themselves. Among these is the need to:

1. Increase the amount of fiber- and nutrient-rich ingredients.
2. Control the type and quantity of fat.
3. Limit the amount of added sugar and salt.
4. Adjust portion size to caloric need.”

From my experience dining out and researching menus and restaurant meals, Melanie is right! Often, restaurant meals have a heavy hand with butter, sauces, salt, and cream. Take a look at the roundup of food comparisons I’ve made by pairing up restaurant and home-cooked entrees.So Why Write This Book?After watching my friends struggle in their kitchens, I realized that what they needed most was a basic and progressive guide to essential and practical techniques that would actually help them cook healthful meals at home. Since I am a certified professional chef with years of cooking under my belt, I do understand the importance of a foundation in classical cuisine  in order to learn how to cook. However, I?have created a new path that marries nutrition to food preparation.I have added new lessons and dishes for today’s cook. After all, one doesn’t need to learn the difference between a Sauce Perigoux and a Sauce Perigourdine or labor over a roux or brunois. But one should learn to use a knife, understand applications of heat, and be able to prepare salads, soups, basic sauces, entrees, and desserts. This book is not just a recipe reference; it will take you on a journey to learn how to create meals that are tasty, easy to make, inexpensive and good for you.What's in Home Run Cooking Anyway?Home Run Cooking is an engaging, accessible, and fun guide to healthful cooking. It starts with the absolute basics, walking you through setting up and stocking their kitchens, learning proper knife skills, reviewing food safety, and learning the proper approaches to cooking with heat. From there, the book moves up to helping you successfully prepare actual recipes yourself. It divides these lessons into approachable, easy-to-understand chapters that are illustrated with fun drawings and charts, and there’s tons of guidance and quick tips thrown in along the way. The recipes that allow you to apply your newfound skills are organized into 7 categories: breakfast, soups and sauces, appetizers and snacks, salads, side dishes, entrees, and desserts.So what are you waiting for? Get Home Run Cooking now! It's perfect for novice cooks, professional chefs, and anyone in between!But wait, there's more!The joys of Home Run Cooking have also been transformed into a demonstration program! The Home Run Cooking Book and Demo Program features a professional edition. The professional edition is full of cooking demonstration guides, more plating tips, and health lesson resources. It will also facilitate engagement and teach key cooking and nutrition lessons. Plus there is a license to copy the materials and a few presentations that can really help drive your points home.The Home Run Cooking Book and Demo Program is a must-have for anyone who teaches cooking, conducts cooking demonstrations, or presents any kind of food demos. It has over 150 recipes and all the tools you need in order to be able to show people how to prepare hundreds of simple, healthful, and delicious meals.Check out the details or simply buy this program now! You can even get discount pricing when you buy in bulk.-- Judy Doherty, PC II