Buy More Veggies

Let me humbly begin by mentioning that I just used up some extra homemade cream cheese frosting that’s been in the fridge for five days by squirting it onto chocolate teddy grahams and basically making epic makeshift mini oreos. #lifehack

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: vegetables!

Well, actually, first, I need to talk about candy for a second. When I was first married, with no employment except catching up on Dexter and learning how to meal plan and cook, I finally gained the “freshman fifteen” that I had managed to avoid in college. Darn. Sugar is a weakness for me. I quickly learned that it’s WAY easier to not buy candy at the store, than to buy it and then mete it out in moderate portions at appropriate intervals at home. So, I made myself a rule: I don’t buy candy. Because if I buy it, I will eat it, and probably in gross amounts. Hershey’s “Brookside” chocolate covered blueberry flavored whatever those things are…disappeared in one sitting one time. By the way, Justin does not eat chocolate. So, we know who ate the whole bag of them. Oops.

A while after making my “don’t buy candy” rule, I realized that by the same logic, if I don’t buy vegetables, I won’t eat them. So, if I want to eat more vegetables, I need to buy more vegetables. 

If you want to eat more vegetables, BUY more vegetables.

I mean, maybe this is glaringly obvious, and I was just that incompetent at meal planning back then.

In my early days of cooking, I wasn’t comfortable enough with veggies to just cook them up randomly by themselves. I had to have a specific recipe. Every week, I would pick out specific main dish and complementary side dish recipes from my Pinterest collection, make my grocery list, and go buy the ingredients needed for those recipes that week. If I misjudged how long leftovers would last, and ended up with nothing planned for dinner tonight, I had to look up a new recipe and go to the store for those ingredients. There was no, “Hmm, what can I make from what’s already in the fridge and pantry today?” That was way too far outside my comfort zone. That would require culinary creativity, which I lacked severely. So to the store I went.

With this system, I never had extra veggies lying around for snacking, salading, or sauteing. If I forgot to plan a vegetable with a meal, we didn’t eat a vegetable at that meal. Oh well.

No! Don’t let yourself be that me! You need to eat vegetables!

Now, my system is to buy what veggies are on sale, plus the ones I know I need all the time whether on sale or not, and keep them stocked for any day use.

For example, bell peppers are my favorite vegetable, so I typically keep a couple in the fridge. I like them enough that I’m willing to spend the five minutes it takes to wash, dry, de-seed, and cut up a pepper, to snack on, add to salads, or throw into this recipe on short notice.

Zucchini is probably my kids’ favorite vegetable–it’s the one they’ll most reliably eat without a fight, anyway–so I usually keep a couple of those in the fridge as well. Also, zucchini can be prepped and sauteed in about 15 minutes total, making it the perfect last-minute veggie side item for our family.

I love the infographic on this page, which takes the guesswork out of using up whatever vegetable is sitting around. “Roasted” is the best way to eat almost any vegetable, anyway, especially if you think you don’t like some vegetable.

I once roasted sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts together, and a dinner guest declared that he’d never liked brussels sprouts before, but he liked those. I once roasted broccoli, and my friend’s little brother resisted trying them, but after he ate one bite, he proceeded to eat the rest of what was left on the pan. No words were needed in that case.

So the point here is: buy the veggies and then if you don’t know what to do with them, just roast them!

Here’s one: I wanted to eat more salads. I actually really like salad, when it’s thoughtfully constructed with multiple colors and textures and well-balanced flavors. But by the time I was making lunch most days, my window of non-hanger was not large enough in which to make such a salad. So I would either just eat a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich like the kids, or go ahead and make the salad and be losing my mind by the time I sat down to eat it. Neither option was grand.

Washing and drying salad leaves is a huge pain for me. (We don’t own a salad spinner. Side question: if you have one do you recommend it??) So, when I go for the cheapest option, which is a just-picked bunch of whatever green leaves, I can’t make salads on demand, because the leaves require so much delicate prep. That works fine when we’ve planned ahead for Justin to make his famous Caesar salad for dinner; in that case, the wash/dry is a built in step in the dinner prep process. But not for my lunches.

Enter the pre-washed leaves.

Buying prewashed greens was a game changer for me! The first time I let myself pay more for the package that said “washed and ready to enjoy,” I ate a salad for one meal a day for the next week straight, and eagerly.

Okay, supermarket. This is not a scam. This is legit.

So, for several months straight, I was regularly buying a variety of ready-to-eat greens to mix and match at lunch time. All I had to do was grab a few handfuls and tear up the leaves onto a plate. Then I could add the other veggies, crunchies, protein, and dressing, and have a delightful, healthy little lunch, way faster than before.

So the point is: buy veggies in the state you need them in to be willing to use them.

Like I said, I love bell peppers, so they’re always handy. I usually chop them for salad: I put half on today’s, and half in the fridge for tomorrow’s (which saves me a couple of minutes tomorrow!).

Sometimes I also cut them into strips to serve with French onion dip or ranch dressing. I once brought this arrangement to a moms group meeting, and a friend declared it “the perfect mom snack.” I humbly agree. Even Luke will sit with me and eat them raw, if he gets to dip between each bite, and I remind him to fully chew and swallow before taking the next bite. (Otherwise the skins get stuck in his cheeks and end up back on the plate…which is not pleasant for either of us.)

Cherry or grape tomatoes require nothing more than a quick rinse. If I’m not too pressed for time, I prefer to cut them in half, but it’s not entirely necessary.

I peel and then julienne carrots (using a julienne peeler—otherwise I would just chop half-circles, but I like smaller pieces) in four-day batches: about one third cup on today’s, and one cup in the fridge to sprinkle across the next three days’ salads.

Cheese is always on hand. When avocados are on sale, they only take a minute to cut up. Green onions can be chopped directly over my salad plate with the kitchen shears. Croutons are a pantry staple. And I usually keep at least one type of savory dressing in the fridge, plus my favorite infused olive oil and fancy balsamic vinegar in the pantry. Voila! Salad in ten minutes.

For days I’m running low on veggies, I also like to keep stock handy for “sweet” salad: dried cranberries or raisins; fresh strawberries, blueberries, and/or small oranges, whatever we happen to have that week; pecans or sunflower seeds, and chia seeds; avocados go well with this kind too; and a raspberry vinaigrette or something similar in the fridge. Plain olive oil and a touch of the fancy balsamic can also dress this kind beautifully!

Someday I’ll sing to you my praises of the sous vide. It’s how I make mess-free chicken periodically to throw onto any kind of salad. Buying and shredding up rotisserie chicken is also a fantastic option for that.

Unfortunately, something about my pregnancy with Cecily interrupted my Salad Every Day habit. Too much balsamic vinegar one time, and I just couldn’t do salads for a while. So weird and sad. So, salad-for-lunch is no longer a habit, but I do still love me a good salad now and then! Actually, now that I’m typing this, I probably ought to try to get back into that habit. But then again, it’s soup season, so I’m having leftover soup for lunch most of the time. Perhaps in the springtime, then. We shall see.

I am still keeping carrots, celery, onions, bell peppers, and broccoli in regular stock around here, plus whatever happy little veggies are on sale, for roasting up alongside the main course at dinner; and I’m more recently unashamed of spending the extra cents per ounce on prepackaged salad kits to add to the side of any meal, or to serve Justin and myself for lunch, since he’s working from home all the time now.

Again, the point is: buy the vegetables in whatever form is going to best help you get them onto the table, and into your belly. And if you think you don’t like vegetables, try roasting them.

Peace and happy vitamin-getting, y’all.