Hi y’all!
I have been on a quest to encourage us as a family to eat more vegetables (as much organic as possible!) for quite some time now!
Hubby thinks he could survive on bread and potatoes alone, but I beg to differ. 🙂 Plus I want to raise Kerrington to have a wide palette and appreciate vegetables. Once it cools down around here there a few farms that are open to the public for picking seasonal vegetables and fruits. I am SO excited to check them out, and teach Kerrington where that they don’t really come from the grocery store!
There was a time when I just had good intentions, would buy a lot of vegetables, but ended up letting them go to waste. I didn’t know how to prepare them other than roasting them or steaming them, and that was just wasn’t exciting for me. Plus it was an extra step.
However, I finally realized there were really easy ways eat more vegetables, so I proclaimed to husband that I was for sure going to be incorporating a lot more vegetables into our meals!
His response? “Just hide them in there, and don’t tell me what they are! I won’t notice!”
I’m not one for wanting to be secretive, so I’m not, but I have found ways to get them into mainstream dishes without having to prepare them as a “side” dish, and husband “doesn’t notice.”
I have some actual recipes coming up with gorgeous images by Ryan Price Photography, but I wanted to introduce them with a broader post with quick simple tips!
Breakfast
Smoothies: Smoothies are one of the easiest ways to eat more vegetables. There are countless recipes and even entire books at the bookstore dedicated to healthy smoothies. My favorite vegetable ingredients are spinach, kale, and broccoli, but I have also put carrots and radish in them too.
Muffins: Carrots and zucchini are my favorite too add in to muffins!
Scrambled eggs: Spinach and kale! Simply add them as you cook the eggs so they wilt down and cook.
Lunch
Sweet potato tots, spinach cakes, or broccoli tots: If we don’t eat leftovers for lunch, we usually do pretty simply lunches like grilled cheese, or pull out some pre-made (and frozen) homemade fish sticks or chicken nuggets to go along with the veggie tots or cakes above. I love being able to make big batches of certain things and then just pulling out what we need for lunch and popping it in the oven!
Dinner
Casseroles: The simplest of casseroles (even breakfast ones!) can become chock full of veggies! Use a vegetable chopper to get them really small if you want them to go unnoticed.
Spaghetti sauce and lasagna: I add shredded or finely chopped zucchini, squash, carrots, and pumpkin (puree) any time we have either of these dishes.
Meatballs: I make turkey meatballs that have shredded zucchini and carrots mixed into the meat and egg before frying them in organic olive oil
Quesadillas: I shred sweet potato, zucchini, and squash and add to tilapia or ground chicken when I am cooking to cook the vegetables at the same time so it makes one big “mixture.” Then I fire up the griddle lay out tortillas, shred some cheese, add the meat/veggie mix, then shred a little more cheese put another tortilla on top, and heat until the cheese is melted and the tortillas are kind of crispy on both sides!
So there ya have it, my current favorite ways to incorporate more vegetables in each of our meals. Vegetables don’t just have to be for dinner, and they don’t have to be dreaded and choked down while drowned in ranch. They are easily added to traditional everyday recipes to get an extra dose of all the goodness there is in each type of vegetable.
What are you favorite ways to eat vegetables?! Let us know!
xoxo, Tamara