Photo by Sanja Gjenero at RGBStock.com.
One of my resolutions for Nutrition Month is to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. That’s pretty easy for me, because I eat so much fruit!
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m definitely cutting myself some slack by including fruit in my five servings. And it’s not really a challenge…
Hence, I’ve decided to update my resolution to five servings of vegetables per day.
Now that will be a challenge!
Because I find it hard to muster up the energy to prepare vegetables – especially if it goes beyond peeling a carrot or rinsing lettuce. I honestly don’t know how to cook a lot of vegetables and make them taste good.
But I want to learn! Give me a well-prepared, tasty vegetable dish over a slab of meat any day.
Here are some ways I’m going to attack this vegetable challenge:
Prepare New Vegetables
Last year, we bought a CSA share, which forced me to learn to prepare formerly unheard of vegetables. It was a great challenge. however, I didn’t buy one this year, because it was just too much for our little family (and we also travel a good bit during the summer).
So now I have to find another way to encourage branching out in the vegetable department. It’s a pretty simple process:
- Find family-friendly recipes that involve vegetables I haven’t used before.
- Procure required ingredients.
- Prepare the new dish!
And I’m also going to try this black bean brownie recipe – even though I have cooked black beans before (dump out of can into pot and heat – yep, I can do that).
Resource: Happy Herbivore
Eat Vegetables at Every Meal
Somehow, vegetables and breakfast don’t go together in my mind. Breakfast is oatmeal and fruit and milk (or almond milk, in my case). Or bacon and pancakes and scrambled eggs.
I know there are people who eat salads for breakfast and think it’s the best thing ever. Or green smoothies…
I can do smoothies every now and then (and now that it’s getting warmer, perhaps this would be a good thing to try again).
But there are other ways to work vegetables into the breakfast meal:
- Vegetable Pancakes
- Vegetable Omelet
- Mashed avocado on toast topped with tomato and cucumber
- Raw vegetables with hummus (I can eat that any time of the day)
Resource: Find more ideas in the article, Sneaking Veggies Into Your Daily Diet.
Understand Vegetable Serving Sizes
I won’t be able to eat five servings of vegetables each day if I don’t know what a serving is, now will I?
I’ve heard that the rule of thumb is 1 cup of raw vegetables or 1/2 cup of cooked vegetables is one serving.
There seems to be a bit of confusion on the Internet on this topic (no surprise there), so I’m going to go with this rule of thumb. Seems reasonable.
Resource: The USDA’s ChoseMyPlate website has some good information about what constitutes 1 cup of vegetables.
Over to You!
Do you have any amazing vegetable recipes to share? I’m all ears!
---
Am super excited about some of the tips and new recipes to try from today’s blog, Tabita! Thanks. Was trying to think of a tip or two in response:
1) Did you know that our bodies get more out of carrots if they are at least steamed soft/boiled a few minutes? And I try to stay away from the baby carrots, too, now that a friend pointed out something I had never stopped to think about: notice how long they “keep” … and that they get slimy, whereas regular carrots just dry up? Hmmm. Something’s off there, eh?
2) As a quick, easy, post work-out or regular snack: combine black beans, sweet corn (I prefer white), chopped bell pepper, cucumber, green onion, lightly cover/mix in zesty Italian dressing. I first had this, served in small cups, after a day of cycling in a MS-150 bike ride. Yum!
3) Picked this up in grad school: the perfect time for boiling asparagus is 4 minutes. No more no less. Perfection. tasty. Salt the water before beginning the boil and you won’t even feel the need to add butter or lemon juice.
Hi Jen,
Thanks for those awesome tips! I did not know about getting more out of slightly boiled carrots. I love learning these kind of tidbits.