How to: veggies & Fruit
It takes time to learn one or more ways of preparing each piece of produce. The good news is, once you know how, you won’t unlearn it, and a lot of the ways to prepare one thing can be applied to another! Ways to prepare and enjoying veggies include:
Sautéing: I recommend this is done with a healthy fat: olive oil, grass-fed butter or ghee, avocado oil, sesame oil, or coconut oil. Avoid misleading “vegetable” oils like canola, soy, safflower, sunflower, and peanut because they promote inflammation and often rancid.
Roasting: using the same fats but be mindful of the lower smoke point of olive oil
Steaming: you can purchase a steamer basket for $5.99
Throwing into soups
Blending into smoothies
Consuming raw in a salad, sandwich/wrap, by itself or with a dip
Feel free to jump down to my tips for produce specifically because for now I’m called to get a little woo-woo about veggies:
We are creatures on the earth, this means we are part of nature and therefore we are subject to the very same forces of seasonal change as other animals and plants who live their lives outside. There are thousands of years of wisdom and experience that demonstrate that we must adapt our lifestyle to the environment and season. We can look to Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine to inform us about the importance of staying warm and eating easily digestible foods in colder seasons. It’s also common sense! But yet with the messaging about what it means to be healthy, we often do succumb to external advice even if it’s against our body’s messaging. While a raw foods diet may work year round for someone living in the tropics, it’s VERY rare to be someone whose needs don’t shift in a place with variable temperatures and climate. Most of us do need to know how to cook because this is what it takes to be nourished. We have to be flexible and in tune with the quiet voice in our body that says, “Soup, please! Not salad!” on a cold, damp and windy day. TCM and Ayurveda both suggest that the less we honor our needs, the more susceptible we are to illness. Professionally, I’m not going to stand behind that necessarily, but check in, how did that salad feel on a cold rainy day? Do you feel unsettled, tired, cold? These experiences add up and can make a difference in your symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Start small and feel for yourself. During colder times, ditch the salads, smoothies and sandwiches and choose soups, stews, casseroles, etc. Be consistent. Then check in with yourself. How are energy levels? How is digestion? How much are you enjoying your food? How is your state of mind? Nourishing food also improves mental health because certain foods are grounding, others stimulating or even “agitating” – which there is a time and a place for as well. There’s no rule book here, but there are trends. Continue to explore what works well for YOU and observe the outcomes.
*IDEAS *
Broccoli:
roast or sauté with loads of garlic as a side
or tossed with pasta and a can of fish or leftover chicken for an easy night
throw into a beef or tofu stirfry
frittata
steamed with olive oil and lemon
Carrots:
in stew
roasted with fresh herbs and goat cheese or feta
for dipping into hummus or guacamole
for juicing
for broth (often chop it up and toss it in the freezer bag with bones)
Celery root/celeriac
chopped small and roasted with other sweeter root veggies because it’s bitter
boiled with potatoes and whipped for “mash”
Apples & pears
almost every day I eat an apple with sunflower seed butter with 100% dark chocolate
cooked as a side with pork chops
stewed for oatmeal or chia pudding
Oranges
hits the spot before bed – I love cold fruit at the end of the night!
fresh squeezed for a sick day or brunch
Ginger & turmeric
stewed fruit with ginger
grate into stir-fry
throw into soup
for juicing
Green or red cabbage
stir-fry
coleslaw
Radish
for salads
small garnish for chicken soup
roasted
Dark Leafy Greens (chard, collards, dandelion, kale, mustard greens, arugula, spinach)
sauté with garlic for a side
toss into literally anything else: soup, stew, pasta, hash, with onions and sausage
salads with a sweeter dressing
Pomegranate
with yogurt for breakfast
on pancakes
on salads
in cocktails or mocktails
Green onions & chives
garnish for anything and everything
Cilantro
as a garnish for enchiladas, tacos, nachos, rice
in salads
on soup
in a smoothie
Parsley
garnish for pasta, soup
for juicing
Green beans & asparagus
steamed w/ olive oil, acid and salt
stir fry
sauteed with garlic, white wine
Brussel sprouts
roasted, for sure! Salt. Maybe with bacon
Cauliflower
roasted with curry powder
processed into “rice” (I usually buy this prepared these days)
steamed for substitute for potato salad with capers, etc
Plums, peaches, nectarines
solo snack
stewed for breakfast
sliced into salad
baked into a tart
Avocado
Nachos
on toast with flakey salt & red chili flakes
in salads
in smoothies
for chocolate mousse
Bananas
freeze for banana-nice-cream
bedtime snack with sunflower seed butter (or probably almond or peanut butter for you)
on toast
smashed with eggs for banana pancakes
blended into waffle batter
in smoothies
Plantains
fried with salt for a side
Sweet potatoes
baked fries
sautéed with sausage or eggs
in soups
mashed
diced and roasted with thyme or curry powder
Delicata and other winter squash
roasted to top a salad
or as a side with wild or black rice
pureed into soup
Garlic & onion: for everything, obviously
Bell peppers
stir fried
grilled
roasted and pureed as sauce
White potatoes
mashed with celery root
fried breakfast style with mushroom salt
