I just saw The Muppets movie the other day so Kermit's on my mind. I absolutely loved the Muppets as a kid and really enjoyed the movie. Now the green I'm talking about isn't our favorite frog, it's the super-powered, medicinal, delicious green vegetables that we should all be eating every single day (if not meal)!
If you're trying to make some small changes to your diet, adding more vegetables will serve you well. I think we all know they are good for us, but our society doesn't seem to give veggies the proper attention they deserve. I plan on doing some veggie profiles with this blog (I seem to have a lot of plans...hopefully I can execute them eventually! But I won't beat myself up about it, this year is all about baby steps). For now I'll give you some tips to incorporate more of these nutritious building blocks into your diet. Vegetables can be intimidating for people new to a healthy way of eating, so this is a list of ways to "sneak" them into your meals.
I don't like to break food into meal categories. I feel like you can eat any type of food at anytime of the day, but I know most people look at me weird when I dish out my dinner for breakfast so I'll try to categorize these tips into the three meals we are accustomed to:
BREAKFAST:
1) Add them to your eggs in the morning. Eggs are such an awesome food. They are a fantastic base for a myriad of flavors, and their already mushy texture allows you to add all sorts of things that blend well as you're chewing. On any given morning I put onion, peppers, mushrooms, a dark leafy veggie (kale, spinach, chard, collards...), broccoli, and/or zucchini into my scrambled eggs. Or I fry up some eggs and serve them next to quinoa or rice that has been combined with the above veggies. If I have left-overs from the night before I throw them in. That's actually usually better because they are already cooked (saves time) and are already drenched in either butter, olive oil, or coconut oil, mixed with garlic, and seasoned with herbs and salt and pepper.
2) Add a heaping spoonful of cooked sweet potato or some sort of winter squash (acorn or butternut) to oatmeal in the morning. These root veggies pair well with cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, and apples. And those are usually what you'd put in your oatmeal anyway.
LUNCH:
1) Salad....duh! We all know salads can give us our vegetables, but few of us put anything in besides lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers. Now lunch is a meal that I struggle with a lot. But something I have started doing to incorporate a little more variety to my diet is making grain-based salads. I use quinoa or millet and then add things like zucchini, broccoli, asparagus (usually cooked) and then use some sort of a vinaigrette for a punch of flavor.
2) Cut-up veggies with hummus or guacamole. This is something you can add as a side. Carrots, celery, peppers, broccoli, and cherry tomatoes are obvious choices.
3) Stuff your sandwiches with vegetables. Whether you like wraps or thick-cut bread make sure whatever you are eating has vegetables stuffed in. You can buy a lot of vegetables pre-cut or shredded and this makes it even easier. Shredded carrots, broccoli slaw (they have this at Trader Joe's), peppers, cucumbers and celery add a really nice crunch to a normally mushy sandwich.
DINNER:
1) Add dark, leafy greens to pasta sauces. And while you're add it, add broccoli, zucchini, carrots, peppers, whatever. This is a great way to introduce yourself to some vegetables you may not be too fond of or familiar with (kale, collards...). Pasta sauce masks the flavor a bit and food sticks to slippery pasta on its way down so you don't have to adjust too much to the textures. This is how I first started eating kale years ago.
2) Add to soups. If you ever make a soup like chicken noodle, or some sort of stew, just add greens to it. Again, the flavors of the soup will mask the bitter taste of the greens, and they will just slip down your throat with the broth.
As you get more comfortable with vegetables and get used to the bitter taste of greens you'll start to enjoy them on their own as well. And then some day you may even make yourself a kale, celery, cucumber and parsley green drink and enjoy it!! The ultimate right of passage to health nut : )
No comments:
Post a Comment