Oprah’s First Cookbook Has Arrived

You get a recipe! You get a recipe! Everybody gets a recipe!

by Whitney Filloon@whitneyfilloon Jan 3, 2017, 2:00pm EST

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Make room for another title on the ol’ celebrity cookbook shelf: Oprah releases her first cookbook today. It’s already ascended to number one in Amazon’s “U.S. Regional Cooking, Food & Wine” category, ahead of Ina Garten’s Cooking for Jeffrey.

Bearing the rather wordy title Food, Health, and Happiness: 115 On-Point Recipes for Great Meals and a Better Life, it promises “a candid, behind-the-scenes look” into the media mogul’s life and kitchen alongside personal essays. Published by Macmillan imprint Flatiron Books, it includes 115 recipes, with healthy-sounding dishes like “unfried” chicken, turkey chili, and pasta primavera.

Oprah is an investor in Weight Watchers and also stars in an ad campaign for the company, and the book reflects that partnership: In the book’s foreword, Oprah writes about her long-time struggles with her own weight and pushes the Weight Watchers program, and each recipe features Weight Watchers “points” data alongside calorie counts.

“As long as I can remember, I’ve been the kind of person who wants to share the things that make life better,” the billionaire told People in a statement. “When I come upon something useful, something that brings me pleasure or comfort or ease, I want everyone else to know about it and benefit from it, too. And that is how this cookbook came to be. It’s my life story — the lessons I’ve learned, the discoveries I’ve made — told through food.”

And unlike Oprah’s annual “Favorite Things” list, which this year included $165 poinsettia cakes and $195 face cream, all the book’s recipes seem pretty affordable for the average non-billionaire.

Numerous other celebrities including Freddie Prinze Jr., Tom Brady, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Chrissy Teigen have all released their own cookbooks in recent months, with even Lady Gaga penning a foreword for her father’s cookbook.

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