Focus on the VEGETABLE first and then the rest of your meal.
I really thought that I was brilliant. I'm so humble aren't I? Anyway, last night I spent an hour...YES AN HOUR...preparing dinner. Along with dinner, I was going to serve cut carrots. Unfortunately I ran out of energy to cut the carrots - I'm almost embarrassed to type that, but not really...I'm sure most of you can relate. It's just one more thing to wash, one more thing to cut, one more thing I just couldn't do. Why oh why didn't I just buy the baby carrots?
I have to remember that I have come a LONG LONG LONG way. Here's what dinner looked like last year at this time:
- Spend an hour fixing dinner. Most of the time I would serve one vegetable. However, if it was spaghetti, I would serve homemade bread "to fill everyone up." I figured there were enough veggies in the sauce - onions, garlic, shredded carrots, tomatoes.
- An hour before dinner, I would HAVE to give my kids a snack because they were falling over from hunger...this would have been a homemade goodie...cookie or granola bars. If I was thinking, I'd give them a scoop of peanut butter for the protein. You know the peanut butter with a lot of added sugar. Yes, that kind.
- Right before bed the kids would have a treat, thus making bedtime take a long time. A really long time.
Shhhhhhh....don't tell anyone that I threw most of the bok choy away and I still have not used the turnips in anything.
I think I'll stick to fixing the vegetable first and focusing on one veggie until I can use it all up without throwing it out. Spinach comes to mind. Yes, I douse it in ranch because I really don't like it, but I'm hoping that over time I'll find a better salad dressing to put on it. We put it in our smoothies all of the time and nobody can tell. Well, technically if you look really really really really really really really hard (I got really really really tired of typing really) you can see teeny tiny green bits of spinach.
So these tips come to mind:
- Focus on the VEGETABLE first and then the rest of your meal.
- Buy baby carrots/pre-washed and cut vegetables until you do #1. It's better than NOT having a vegetable.
Works for me Wednesday at We are THAT Family
Pennywise Platter at The Nourishing Gourmet
Thanks for the tips! We had chicken over tossed salad tonight, and I wondered why I don't make vegetables the base of meal more often?
ReplyDeleteThis is a great tip! We learned this, too. Buying the ready-to-eat salads and veggies IS cheaper than throwing away vegetables that I forgot or was too busy to clean and prep for eating!
ReplyDeleteI was so good about the veggies and homemade food for a good long time. Then I got tired of the teenagers' whining about the food all the time. So, I let it go pretty much all summer. Let me tell you, that sure makes you feel guilty. It's been hard getting back into the swing of vegetable-izing. The lack of veggies has not been good for any of us. (My almost 17-year old just suffered his first bout of constipation. I try to make him see the connection...but I might as well be talking to a wall).
ReplyDeleteMy favorite comment from my kids is "is this a new recipe?" said with a grimace on their face!
ReplyDeleteSometimes I too want to just forget healthy and go the easy route!
I wash, peal, cut my veggies ahead of time. I do it at night after our little one is asleep. I wash the veggies and then sit down to watch my show/movie. I bring the veggies, cutting board and containers. The rest of the week all I have to do is dump them - or grab and eat.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea Nessa!
ReplyDelete