Michelle Smith - The Whole Smiths Real Food Every Day

Copyright 2020 by Michelle Smith

Food photography copyright 2020 by Michelle Smith

Lifestyle photographs copyright 2020 by Jennifer Skog

Endpaper illustration by Rolau Elena/Shutterstock.com

All rights reserved.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Smith, Michelle, 1980 author.

Title: The Whole Smiths real food every day : healthy recipes to keep your family happy throughout the week / Michelle Smith.

Other titles: Real food every day | Whole Smiths.

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020016341 (print) | LCCN 2020016342 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358164463 (paper over board) | ISBN 9780358164517 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Quick and easy cooking. | Make-ahead cooking. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX833.5 .S6436 2020 (print) | LCC TX833.5 (ebook) | DDC 641.5/12dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016341

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016342

Book design by Toni Tajima

Cover design by TONI TAJIMA

Cover photography by JENNIFER SKOG and MICHELLE SMITH

Watercolor illustration by Rolau Elena/Shutterstock.com

v1.1220

To Brad, the hunkiest dishwasher a girl could ask for

I f youve picked up this book, its safe to say youre interested in cooking, healthy food, feeding your loved ones, or all of the above. Or maybe you think healthy eating is for the birds, but a friend gifted it to you and you feel obliged to at least flip through it.

Either way, youre in the right place, and Im happy youre here.

For the majority of us, eating healthy can oftentimes feel pretentious and unapproachable. Were bombarded with images that portray highly regimented, restrictive lifestyles, leading us to think that the road to health and wellness is through six-pack abs, calorie counting, and a raw-food diet. While all those can be part of a healthier way to eat and live, they dont resonate with most of us, who are simply looking for vitality and balance, and for a way to be healthy without being extreme.

You can still enjoy your favorite foods while living a very healthy lifestyle. In fact, I venture to say, an even healthier lifestyle, because you can release the mental traps that come with the extremes. Theres a wide array of healthy that falls between a strict one-thousand-calorie-a-day diet designed to maintain a certain size and continually consuming processed fast foods and shotgunning sugar-laden sodas.

This book represents that healthy. The healthy that still loves to have pizza every now and again but is mindful of how it affects your body. The healthy that is more than happy to sneak some of your kids Halloween candy but knows better than to stock it in the pantry year-round. The healthy that knows it isnt just about a clothing size or the numbers on a scale. The healthy that enjoys an outdoor run but isnt training for an Ironman. The healthy that loves food and doesnt want to give it all up.

If that sounds like you, youre in the right place.

Its time to get back in the kitchen and fall in love with real, whole, delicious foods all over again.

I created this book with you in mind. The home cook, student, mother, plumber, or dog walker whos interested in feeling good and eating well. Chances are, you have a bustling life and dont have hours to spend in the kitchen chopping, canning, and butchering each and every day.

I get that. Neither do I.

I want to bust the myth that eating well and fueling your body needs to be a time-consuming, laborious, over-the-top process full of hard-to-source items you may never have heard of. You dont need to be a classically trained chef to cook delicious meals on the regular, and you dont need to live next door to a specialty grocery store to make it happen.

My job is to get you into the kitchen and cooking whole-food meals for yourself and your loved ones in an easy and approachable manner. To do this, I want to provide you with simple recipes that use foods and techniques youre familiar with.

Each chapter is dedicated to a mode of cooking or a method of keeping things easy in the kitchen. Ive consciously kept the cooking techniques simple and the ingredients easy to find. Some of the concepts may be new to you, but they are by no means difficult to master or inaccessible.

The recipes in this book are composed of whole, minimally processed foods. They arent loaded with grains, dairy, sugar, or soy, although they may use these ingredients sparingly.

While a few ingredients, like coconut aminos and collagen peptides, may not be found in every grocery store, theyre easy to find online, and you can usually have them on your doorstep in two days. In the event you cant find an ingredient or are looking for a swap to accommodate a food allergy or preference, Ive also given simple substitutes for ingredients throughout the book. (Please note that I use kosher salt and salted butter in all the recipes here, unless otherwise noted.)

The majority of these recipes are designed to feed four to six people, with the hope that you will have leftovers available for lunch for the next day or two. Portion sizes are hard to determine because everyone is different in their dietary needs. The four to six portions represent an average. How far a recipe stretches for you and your football-playing teenagers is going to vary wildly from how far it stretches for me and my elementary schoolers.

Each recipe indicates the dietary guidelines it follows, such as Paleo, gluten-free, and so on, or can be made to follow with reasonable substitutions, so you can make the recipe or skip it based on your personal food preferences. At the end of the book, the index lets you quickly browse to see which of the recipes fall into each category.

And finally, Ive indicated which of the recipes make for exceptionally delicious leftovers. That means they reheat well and taste just as delicious (if not better) the next day.

Like I said, this cookbook was designed for you. The greatest compliment I can receive is that the recipes in this book inspired you to get in the kitchen and cook delicious, healthy foods for yourself and your loved ones.

H ere at The Whole Smiths, we dont label ourselves based on the kinds of food we eat. Were not Paleo or keto or any of the names that have been created for diets that we try to adhere to. Were human beings. And chances are, you are too. (If not, call me. Im dying to find out more!)