Heart Smart Cookbook:Third edition. A guide to healthy eating

A diet low in saturated fats and high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables can decrease your risk for heart disease. Henry Ford wants to help you and your family follow a heart-healthy diet, which is why we offer the Heart Smart Cookbook it can help play a powerful role in keeping cardiovascular disease in check. This third edition of our popular Heart Smart Cookbook series offers 200 new recipes as well as a color photo section! Find directions for creating tasty and healthy snacks, meals, desserts and more. The cookbook also includes information on meal planning, health and fitness, dining out and reading nutrition labels. The recipes included in the Heart Smart Cookbook have been developed by our Heart Smart dietician in association with the Edith and Benson Ford Heart & Vascular Institute. Many of the recipes are favorites from more than a decade of weekly appearances in the Detroit Sunday Free Press with many new, never-before-seen recipes.

Susan M. Selasky has worked at the Detroit Free Press since 1984. A self-taught cook, her approach to food and cooking is keeping it simple and doable.

For the last 16 years, she has been the Free Press Test Kitchen director and a food writer. She oversees the food coverage, develops and tests recipes and new products and conducts taste testings. She counts writing clear, succinct recipes and answering reader questions about cooking and recipes among her best attributes.

Selasky created and writes the popular Sunday Supper column that appears in the Health & Food section of the Sunday Free Press. She also writes a weekly column, Cooking with Susan Marie, that appears in the Life section of the Free Press every Thursday.

When it comes to heart-healthy cooking, she enjoys salmon because of its rich omega-3 fatty acids. In 2009, she received the Distinguished Service Award for Food Journalism from the Michigan Food and Beverage Association and the Detroit Association of Grocery Manufacturers Representatives. She lives in Grosse Ile with her husband, Doug Mickels, and dog, Arby.

She dedicates the work in this book to her late parents Joseph T. Selasky, who was well-known for his homemade fresh Polish kielbasa and a chicken soup that would soothe any soul, and Mary Selasky, who made Sunday supper a priority.

Darlene Zimmerman is a registered dietitian who has offered practical, heart-healthy nutrition education in southeast Michigan for more than 20 years. She s been with the Heart Smart® Program at Henry Ford Hospital s Edith and Benson Ford Heart & Vascular Institute for nearly 11 years.

Zimmerman writes a weekly nutrition and recipe column that appears in the Health & Food section of the Sunday Free Press. She believes that healthy eating, combined with regular exercise, leads to a healthier lifestyle. She merges her knowledge of nutrition and her love of cooking to create healthy, affordable, easy-to-make recipes. Her motto: Good-for-you food should taste great.

Zimmerman lives in Novi with her husband, Don, and son, Nate, whom she credits for being the first taste-testers on several original recipes in this cookbook. Among her favorites are: Roasted Vegetable Lasagna (see the Meatless chapter), Slow Cooker Pepper Steak (see the Meat chapter) and Mediterranean Potato Salad (see the Salads chapter).

The duo's work appears in the Sunday Free Press each week. They are also blogging about this book project at heartsmartcook.com