Heather Crosby - YumUniverse Pantry to Plate: Improvise Meals You Love—from What You Have!—Plant-Packed, Gluten-Free, Your Way!

YumUniverse
Pantry
TO Plate

Improvise Meals You Love
from What You Have!

Heather Crosby
Author of YumUniverse

This book is for YU. (yes, you!)

I was raised on comfort food and sweetsits in my DNA, and in the bedrock of my memories and traditions. For most of my life, I avoided vegetables of any kind (except white potatoes) and it wasnt until I got sick in my early twenties and was told meds for the rest of your life that I decided something had to changemy terrible diet was a good place to start. I had to be able to enjoy delicious food without compromising my health, but I had no clue how it was done.

At that time, I assumed healthy foods were bland, boring, a hassle, and pricey. But since I wasnt familiar with whole food ingredients, that meant that I had no real rules for how they should be prepared and incorporated into mealsI had free rein. So, I freestyledmaking changes I could manage and be excited about. Eventually, small daily efforts compounded and became health-boosting habits. By finding delicious whole food substitutions for my comfort-food faves, I realized that smart choices and tasty choices dont have to be mutually exclusive.

Cashews are buttery and creamy. Can they be blended to make a velvety, cheese-like cream sauce? Yes. Cooked buckwheat is similar to the texture of the sausage patties my grandfather used to makeperfect for veggie burgers. In this book, youll find a version of my grandmother Maudies tomato sauce, sans bacon but with all the smoky flavor. See, I know you have tradition and memory attached to food, too. And we dont have to say goodbye to these important parts of life for healths sake. Its a miracle (just ask my mother), but I love vegetables now, and I want to show you how versatile, delicious, and freeing they can be.

Hearts, Heather

Fact: Im no good at following recipes. This gal needs freedom to play, change her mind, explore, color outside of the lines, and make it up as she goes along. I didnt realize that this was actually my real-time approach to cooking until I heard myself answering questions like How do you cook for yourself on a daily basis? with A lot of the time I just throw a bunch of colorful ingredients into a skillet, season to taste, and Im done. Boring? Maybe. But real? Definitely. A lot of the time, meals in my home are created using a template Ive committed to memory, then I change the players based on everything from my food mood to whats in season to what I simply have in the pantry, fridge, or garden. I dont think Im alone heremany people cook without a recipe on a day-to-day basis. Were a busy lot.

Now, with that said, many folks also cook using recipes, too! Recipes show us whats possible, they give us structure when we want to follow instead of lead, they introduce us to new techniques and tastes, and they reward us for our efforts with each tasty bite. Recipe cooking requires us to shop, prepare, slow down, spend the time. Its a special practice because weve been inspired by something we want to try, and to try is to grow. A recipe is designed to be sharedthe developer of that recipe put love and care into it, no doubt thinking of a happy eater enjoying it at some point. Its a beautiful ripple effect.

This book provides the tools for both approaches to cooking because sometimes were prepared for a recipe, and sometimes not so much. Sometimes we love the look of a recipe, and sometimes theres one pesky ingredient that keeps us from giving it a go. Sometimes mealtime arrives and we dont have a clue what were going to cook. And if we do, we may not have all of the fixings, or were not up for anything super involved. Sometimes we have a fridge full of vegetables that we arent used to using, or theres just too much of it to use before it goes bad. Maybe we have a mixed-diet table to feed, or we had a grand plan to make a new Mexican recipe on Wednesday, but that day arrives and weve changed our mindwe want Italian. No, Indian.

This is life. And Pantry to Plate is an approach you can return to again and again for countless impromptu and customized meals. Reclaim the freedom to make it up as you go along and build confidence to wing it in the kitchenwithout compromising your health.

In these pages, youll find thirty templates to mix and match and create meals you love. From those thirty series of steps, almost 100 recipes have been developed to show you whats possible using those simple guidelines. You can follow a recipe to the letter, or you can riff off of the template it came from to make it your ownthere are infinite possibilitiesYumUniverse style.

Pantry-to-plate cooking provides myriad choices for those who want them, inspiration for those who need some, and boundaries for those who find comfort from them. This is your playbookwrite down what you create, dog-ear the pages, give it some colorful character with a spill or splatter.

Healthful meal preparation isnt about deprivation, spending excessive time, or pricey ingredientsits about making it work. So, go ahead and buy the wacky-looking heirloom veggies from the farmers market, and use last nights tacos to make a breakfast scramble, wrap, or soup. With the tools in this book, meal creation begins from where you are, with what you have, right now.

This book is organized by meals we love to eat, but the templates will work whenever. Nothing taps into childhood feel-good feels like waffles for dinner, right? So you can make the rules; there is one master template for on-the-fly pantry-to-plate creations, followed by recipes that are inspired by that template. Were celebrating a keeping-it-real approach to cooking here that takes the pressure off being healthy and ultimately adds more color, fun, and flavor to our life. And by life I mean the long haul and overall health and well-being.

The creations in this book happen to be gluten-free and veg-inspired because I love the variety these foods bring to my menu rotation, the flavors theyve introduced to my taste buds, and the healing theyve helped me achieve. But this book is for anyone who simply wants to eat more clean, whole foods. Im not here to judge or tell you how to live your life. Im here to share whats possible.

If you eat animal or gluten-containing products, these ingredients can easily be added to the templates and recipes in this book. Lets just move veggies from the side of the plate to the center while youre here.

Planning doesnt have to mean writing up meal plans, organizing shopping lists, or collecting recipes. It can be as simple as soaking some grains while you sleep, freezing leftover soup into flavor cubes, or doubling the batch of pancakes you made Sunday morning to freeze for popping in the toaster throughout the week. If we just squeak out a bit of forethought, we set ourselves up for smart choices. Keep the pantry stocked, fresh aromatics like onions and garlic on hand, and prepared ingredients like beans and grains in the fridge, but dont overthink it.