More Veggies!

50 Ways to Love Your Fruits and Veggies!!!  

1. Be adventurous, try new veggies you have never cooked or tasted before.  There are so many more than the tried and true potatoes, carrots, lettuce, broccoli (cukes, peppers, tomatoes are really fruit)

2. Find local farm stands, farm markets and farmers who grow food sustainably.  The food will be far more nutritious and you will be eating local, seasonal produce, not food shipped from thousands of miles away.  Produce loses its nutritional value and vitality the longer it takes to get to your plate.

3. Grow your own, even a small raised box or potted veggies to enjoy fresh from the plant. Perhaps some berry plants or a fruit tree or two??

4. Make the commitment to eat at least 2-3 servings per meal and snack on veggies & fruit when you need a between meal lift.

5. Make your plate mostly vegetables with high quality, locally raised, grass fed protein as the smaller portion on your plate.  Add beans instead of the animal protein for another plant and fiber boost to your diet.

6. Add shredded carrots, beets, parsnips to your whole food baked goodies.

7. Add beets, carrots, squash & parsnips to pancakes & waffle batter.  I even add spinach, kale, collards, etc. to my kids’ pancakes.  They used to call these “green” breakfast pancakes Shrek pancakes, now they are just mom’s wacko healthy foods. 

8. Make scrambled, poached or fried eggs, beans & greens for breakfast.  Get those eggs locally from a farmer who lets their chickens feed naturally.

9. Make omelets with lots of veggies, different than the typical ones put in omelets, be creative & adventurous.  Add fun herbs!

10. Make a breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs (natural raised ones, of course) and/or refried beans.  Add plenty of veggies and herbs and roll into a sprouted grain tortilla (Nature’s storehouse in Canton carries them)  Also, try rolling in large leaves of kale, collard or Swiss chard and really up the veggie intake!

11. Make vegetable curries for dinner and use the leftovers for lunch or breakfast.  Curried veggies and beans, eggs, meat is yummy for any meal.  Think past the typical refined grain breakfasts that most Americans eat: processed cereals & milk, doughnuts and coffee, toast and juice.  Start putting real food & veggies into every meal.

12. Add hardy greens to soups, stews, stir fries: kale, collards, swiss chard, dandelion greens, beet greens, spinach, arugula, mustard greens, endive, escarole….  Cut them into small, fine strips to make them more palatable to those persons new to eating greens.

13. Make fruit smoothies for breakfast or snacks.  If you avoid dairy, email me @ pyoumell@gmail.com and I will send you recipes for making fresh nut & seed milks.  This avoids the packages processed ‘milks’.

14. Buy large carrots and make your own sticks.  Avoid baby carrots.  These are actually large carrots that were going bad, carved into baby carrot shapes and soaked in chlorine to kill fungus, not a healthy option.

15. Make ‘sticks’ out of any root veggie that appeals to you and eat plain, dip into hummus or other whole food spread or dip.  I have recipes for salad dressings and dips that are whole food, avoiding the commercial, cheap vegetable oil varieties.  Root veggies: parsnips, celeriac, turnips, daikon radish, rutabaga, carrots, beets…….

16. Snack on red pepper halves filled with hummus, yummy!

17. Make fruit salads with local, seasonal fruits.

18. Add veggies to your raw, green salads that you never have before.  Try anything!

19. Skip desserts and eat fresh. Local, seasonal fruit.  Off season?  Try fruit you froze or canned or organic frozen fruits.

20. Make homemade pizza with whole grain crust and load it up with veggies.  The Potsdam Coop makes pizza crust dough for purchase, in the cooler where the fresh feta cheese is. Buy the whole grain dough, skip the refined flour dough.  Have that fruit salad for dessert.

21. In the fall & winter, bake quantities of squash, sweet potatoes or yams and keep the extra for quick meals and snacks. 

22. Add extra squash and sweet potatoes to pancake and waffle batter.

23. Extra squash is also yummy added to an ‘egg nog’ smoothie.  I even add cooked beets to get veggies into my kids.  Yes, I have recipes!  Email me!

24. Avoid ready to eat packaged veggies and fruit.  Sure they are convenient but once cut up they lose nutrients and start to decompose faster.

25. Skip the ‘greens’ in a salad and make a salad out of all kinds of raw chopped veggies, grated root veggies and shredded cabbages.  Mix it up and use a simple oil & vinegar dressing.  Again, I have recipes!

26. Grill veggie chunks on kebabs.

27. Roast veggies in the oven for fall and winter warming dishes.

28. Make big pots of soups and stews and eat all week, think lots of veggies.

29. At restaurants: Skip the bread (it is just refined crap)  and ask for extra veggies in your salad, as a side dish, order pasta dishes without the pasta and have them put the pasta sauce on a pile of steamed veggies.  You will avoid the refined flour pasta and get the benefits of veggies.  Skip any flour based food when eating away from home (crackers, noodles, pasta, bread, desserts, white rice too) and opt for extra veggies instead.

30. Skip the factory farmed meat at fast food restaurants (skip the fast food altogether but if you find yourself with no other option……) eat a salad and baked potato with beans and salsa.  Hopefully there is a salad bar with beans to add some staying power to your veggies.

31. Use whole grain quinoa, millet, amaranth, teff, brown rice to make a “pasta” salad.  Skip the pasta obviously and add far more veggies than most people do to the summertime pasta salads.

Think about veggies that are cooked in soups, stews or stir fries.  The combinations of veggies can be the same; the cooking method is just different.  Keep it simple; do not get caught up in gourmet ideas.  Simple is good!

I will end here before I do hit 50!  I hope this helps you add lots more fruits and veggies to your daily diet.  I find fruits are easy to add in anywhere, veggies are where people get stuck.  Fruits and veggies make for good cell replication, referring back to the whole food slide show and cell biology.  Enjoy!  Paula