Trisha Yearwood - Trishas Table: My Feel-Good Favorites for a Balanced Life

Copyright 2015 by Trisha Yearwood
Interior photographs copyright 2015 by Ben Fink

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

All photographs are by Ben Fink with the exception of , which are from the authors collection.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yearwood, Trisha.
Trishas table : my feel-good favorites for a balanced life / Trisha Yearwood.
pages cm
1. Cooking, AmericanSouthern style. I. Title.
TX715.2.S68Y433 2015
641.5975dc23
2014029104

ISBN 978-0-8041-8615-5
Ebook ISBN 978-0-8041-8616-2

Cover design by Michael Nagin
Cover photograph by Perry Hagopian

v3.1

We learned to cook, laugh, and love in all those years growing up around the Yearwood table. We shared lifes triumphs and disappointments over many a suppertime, and we learned the value of that simple daily ritualthe family meal. No matter what our days were like, we gathered for supper every night. As we got older we would find ourselves sitting at the table long after the meal was finished, just talking and laughing. The family meal brought us together, and its time that we will cherish forever. This book is dedicated to our parents, Jack and Gwen Yearwood, who were the best teachers any child could hope for. Thank you for sharing your passion for food with us, and for teaching us the importance of family. You fed us body, heart, and soul. No matter what we do or where our lives take us, we are most proud and grateful to be your daughters.

Love,

Miss Yearwood and I have known each other for twenty-five years. We both moved to Nashville in the mid-1980s, we both signed record deals at the turn of the decade, and my first headlining tour was also her first tour. I have watched Trisha through many phases of her life, and I can tell you that she is in a great place right now. She is balancing her home life with her professional life, her cooking career with her singing career, and indulgence with intelligence. This book reflects exactly where Trisha is in her life. She has found the balance between food that is good and food that is good for youand she is determined to make meals that are both.

After releasing her first two cookbooks, Trisha noticed a common theme in the questions she would get from people who owned them. Folks were very concerned when it came to the food they were serving and how it affected their familys health. I would overhear women say, My husband loves your dishes, but he has high cholesterol or high blood pressure. Then they would ask the question: Do you have any suggestions on how to make these dishes healthier without making them taste any different? I would watch her walk with each woman and take her to different parts of the store and pick out products, read labels, discuss the options it was really cool to witness. It was as if she were on a mission. Much later it finally hit me. The reason Miss Yearwood was on this mission was because she knew it would not be long before she was that woman, and the man she would be worrying about would be me.

So she decided not to wait until we were older, but to start planning for a healthier life now. What has happened in the past five years has been a miracle for me. I have always had problems with high cholesterol and high blood pressure always. But on my last checkup, my doctor came in, put the results down on the desk, and jokingly said, These results cannot be yours. I smiled. I have not had a report like that in my life ever. I know it is because Trisha has found ways to replace ingredients that create a more unhealthy experience with ingredients that, I believe, actually fight and repair the damage caused by my own poor choices and I have yet to sacrifice taste! Once you find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, your only enemies are time and the quality of life during that time. Miss Yearwood is trying to make our time the best it can be, and I am very proud to know she is doing the same thing for all of those you and I love.

Garth Brooks
(aka Mr. Yearwood)

In the five years since Home Cooking with Trisha Yearwood came out, a lot has changed in my life. My experiences have definitely altered the way I look at food. I still agree with the famous quote Everything in moderation, including moderation, but I have adopted an 80/20 rule when it comes to my delicate relationship with food: 80 percent of the time I make good choices; 20 percent of the time I let myself splurge a little. Growing up enjoying my parents and grandparents comfort foods taught me early on about taste. It was always hard for me to go on a traditional diet because I had been led to believe I had to sacrifice flavor to shed a few pounds, so that effort never lasted very long. This girl likes good food! I am not one of those people who gets so busy with my day that I suddenly think to myself, Wow, I forgot to eat lunch! That never happens to me. Never . I think about food all the time, so making peace with eating is a daily battle for me. I wont say Ive completely figured it out, but I will say that right now, I win that battle more days than I lose it, and I believe thats the key.

In my first two cookbooks, my mom, my sister, and I wrote about our family historyrecipes that have been passed down for generations. My life now focuses on finding new recipes that feel like classics and on applying healthy twists to foods that my family already loves. I dont want my family or yours to feel like theyre sacrificing flavor in order to eat better. I cant imagine not having great comfort foods like , a plant-based veggie pot pie that my mama created for herself while battling breast cancer.