You probably have caught her Food Network show Quick Fix Meals with Robin Miller and maybe her contributions to the Food Network blog Healthy Eats, but you might not know she's written a new cookbook.
Miller will be the guest celebrity at an ASU Alumni Association event November 30, where you can snag some new tricks to cook for your holiday guests. We got a chance to chat with Robin Miller last week.
More about Robin Miller, the "jock" and her no frills pasta that keeps her out of the fast food lines after the jump.
We loved hearing about Miller's experience with food, but were even more excited to learn about her early years as a big-time athlete. She played women's lacrosse in high school, continued through college and went on to play for the #1 U.S. women's lacrosse club team in the country for years after. She says she had a huge upper body which is funny, because she's so slender now.
Fast forward: She's swapped women's lacrosse for boys' soccer. Yep, Miller's a soccer mom. She can be found trekking her boys almost every night of the week to soccer practice. We wondered what she cooks on those nights when she might have not planned a meal and was super hungry.
She chuckles and says that doesn't really happen and that she's always "semi-prepared." If we ever snuck a peek in her fridge in the middle of the night, we'd find a pound of cooked pasta ready for a shaving of parm, tomato sauce or meatballs. Her boys like the combo of parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar. This sounds much better than ultra-processed meat sandwiches and fried potatoes from the drive thru. This meal maker can keep in the fridge for 3-4 days and is made by boiling the pasta in water -- no salt, no oil, no rinsing -- no nothing. Just let drain and cool enough to store in a 11 x 7 plastic zip top bag and in the cold comforts of the refrigerator.
The recipes found in Miller's new cookbook Robin Takes 5: 500 Recipes, 5 Ingredients or Less, 500 Calories or Less, for 5 Nights/Week at 5:00 PM are a bit more involved than straight up boiled pasta. Some of her favorites are the butternut squash risotto with smoked mozzarella, philly cheese calzones, cranberry barbecue pork tenderloin, gingerbread tiramisu and chocolate truffles. Remember, these are all 5 ingredients or less -- very nice.
We finished our talk with Miller asking about some of her favorite cookbooks since we've started keeping up with food books with the Chow Bella Book Club. Her "bible" is Joy of Cooking where she gets the proper ratios, cooking temps and other important recipe building components. As far as other inspirational books, she's been flipping through cookbooks by Marcus Samuelsson lately.
Robin Miller has been on a whirlwind book tour traveling across the country doing cooking demos, TV appearances, book signings and she's headed home to give us some undivided attention at the Sheraton Downtown at 11 a.m., Nov. 30th, at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel, 340 N. 3rd St., Phoenix. The ASU Alumni Association is hosting along with the ASU School of Nutrition & Health Promotion, and the ASU College of Nursing & Health Innovation. There will be a chance to pick up a copy of her new book and even get it personalized with a signature by the author herself.
Tickets are $50 for members of the Alumni Association and $60 for nonmembers. For more scoop on the event, visit http://alumni.asu.edu/services/career-resources/events/quick-fix-robin-miller.
