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Fixing Fast Food
Cookbook Remakes Fast Food in a Low-Fat Way
By Jenn Director Knudsen
But, she says, "[Fast Food Fix] can help people figure out how to eat right without sacrificing everything they've come to crave or rely on."
Helene Pretsky, a 42-year-old lawyer in Brentwood, Calif., often taste-tests Alexander's food. She says that the recipes are definitely spot-on, particularly the "special sauce" used on burgers at some of the most well-known chains like McDonald's and Burger King. "The special sauce is so good that at one party where she served it, I used it on everything I could find, including as salad dressing and dipping sauce for chips and vegetables," Pretsky says. "I just couldn't get enough. Embarrassing, but absolutely true."
Alexander says her exhaustively researched cookbook is practical for anyone who loves fast food, as well as those who cook for fast-food lovers (read: mothers of teens).
If she had this book as a teenager, she says she would have prepared low-fat versions of her favorites and avoided the 50-plus pounds she put on from consuming too much fast food.
Instead, as she writes in her book's foreword: "[J]uniors and seniors were allowed to leave during our half-hour lunch period, so we'd pile into the cars ... and rush to McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's to avoid the soggy pizza and french fries our cafeteria offered."
"If I'd had this book in high school, I'd have freaked," Alexander says in a phone interview.
"You want to be eating what your friends are eating without getting fat," she says. "Like if you took one of these wraps [from the book] to school, you'd look cool."
