Cooking for Just One or Two? Lori Shows how every Wednesday

By Lori Powell

All this week, we will be re-introducing our bloggers by re-posting their very first post for Special Fork. Next week we’ll be back blogging with more cooking insights, helpful tips and delicious recipes that take no more than 30 minutes of prep time, all to solve your daily dinnertime dilemma: what to cook now!

Today we feature Lori Powell’s introductory blog. Lori posts every Wednesday focusing on cooking for one or two people.

Lori Powell is a chef, food editor and stylist with more than 18 years of experience at the country’s top food and lifestyle magazines. She is currently Food Director of Prevention magazine. She has been Food Director at Real Simple, Food and Entertaining Director at Ladies’ Home Journal, and Deputy Editor of Food and Entertaining at Martha Stewart Living and Martha Stewart Weddings.

Lori worked at Gourmet magazine for 13 years. As a food editor and stylist, she worked a number of those years under industry legend Ruth Reichl. For the first three years, Lori was sous chef of Gourmet’s executive dining room, working with Executive Chef (and Food Network host) Sara Moulton. Lori was a recipe developer and stylist of more than 15 Gourmet cookbooks, including the acclaimed Gourmet Cookbook: More Than 1,000 Recipes, and Reichl’s biography, Comfort Me with Apples.

Lori is a graduate of Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School (now the Institute of Culinary Education). She was inducted into the first Hall of Achievement for the Institute of Culinary Education, When she started blogging for Special Fork, she lived in New York, but has since moved to Pennsylvania.

For more of Lori’s stories please follow this link to One or Two Bites.

Sandy Hu
Co-Founder, Special Fork

One or Two Bites
I am the gatherer…Lori Powell.

I divide my time between New York City and the Hudson Valley in upstate NY, where I reside in a 170-year-old farmhouse complete with 18 heirloom chickens (5 varieties) and my since-passed-on honey bees. Still recovering from the sudden departure of the honey bees (no note, no goodbye) and the bear that enjoyed the final sweet remnants that they left behind.

Oh and 2 foster kitties as well, that I guess can no longer be  classified as foster kitties, since they have now been with me for almost 3 years and run the house. Kind of like small dogs since they are big cats, not overweight just big, at a healthy 16 lbs each.

I spend my time as a chef, food editor/stylist for magazines, cookbooks and the web (developing recipes, story/menu concepts, writing recipes, editing, and styling food in front of the camera); tester of kitchen equipment and appliances; caterer; and volunteer chef instructor for Americorps, teaching children food and nutrition.

What all this means is basically I am a gatherer of all information and ideas regarding food and giving them a personal spin. I hope!

I am not a fan of processed foods and even when I have cooked all day on a shoot, I still like to have my own time in the kitchen to create and not write anything down or follow a recipe. If I do not get to cook on a regular basis, watch out.  I am like the runner or the tennis player who had not been outside playing in a while…cranky!!

Food and its preparation, every part of it, including the shopping, feeds my soul. My personal motto is “Good Food, Good Life” and is basically what I live by….

I love to feed people, lots of people, and since it is really just myself and another that might be stopping by, it has become a challenge to scale down my shopping, cooking and well, eating, to fit that lifestyle . My mission is to share with you some of my insights into how I make cooking for one or two, on most days, fun, delicious and with a bit of ease.

My simple healthy Spinach Sauté:

Sauté a 5-ounce container of fresh baby spinach in a large skillet over moderately high heat, with 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 finely chopped garlic clove and ¼ teaspoon hot pepper flakes, stirring constantly, until just wilted. Transfer to a serving bowl and drizzle with freshly squeezed Meyer lemon or regular lemon juice and sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Serve topped with shaved Parmesan. Makes about 1 cup of cooked spinach.

Special Fork is a recipe website for your smartphone and PC that solves the daily dinnertime dilemma: what to cook now! Our bloggers blog Monday through Friday to give you cooking inspiration. Check out our recipe database for quick ideas that take no more than 30 minutes of prep time. Join the conversation on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.