Mediterranean Diet for Two

Chapter 1: Getting Started: Your Mediterranean Kitchen for Two

If you have cooked for two for any length of time, you already know the problem. You find a promising recipe for, say, a lemony chicken with olives and oregano. You gather your ingredients. You cook. It tastes wonderful. And then you are eating the same chicken for the next four nights, packed into lunch containers you are already tired of, wondering if it is possible to freeze yet another portion of rice.

This book is the answer to that problem, but it is more than a collection of scaled-down recipes. It is a way of thinking about food that fits naturally into a small household. The Mediterranean diet, at its core, is not a complicated set of rules. It is a way of eating that emphasizes vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and olive oil, with moderate amounts of fish, poultry, dairy, and eggs, and very little red meat or processed food. It is not restrictive. It is abundant. The challenge for two people is rarely about finding foods you can eat; it is about buying, storing, and cooking those foods without waste.

That is where this book comes in. Every recipe here was tested, written, and rewritten specifically for two eaters. You will not find a recipe that calls for a quarter of a head of cabbage and leaves you with three pounds of the stuff. You will not be told to "season to taste" when what you really