Tag: #EatTheRainbow

Salad - Eating a Rainbow of Colors in My Meals

My Way of Eating a Rainbow of Colors in My Meals

February 18, 2024 / Chris Fitness / 0 Comments

I’ve been working on eating a rainbow of colors in my meals since 2024 began. Most of the rainbow meals look like a soup or a salad. I’ve noticed that my occasional baked potato needs some healthy foods and color added, because white just isn’t part of the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet mix!

I find myself referring to our Eating the Rainbow download tracker to see if I’m hitting the rainbow each day.

Soup

This is my lunchtime rainbow soup last Friday which was my recent attempt at “eating the rainbow.”

It is a vegetable soup started with 8 cups of water and adding a frozen bag of stir fry veggies with a can of garbanzo beans, a can of diced tomatoes, some slow cooker chicken, sautéd mushrooms, wilted baby spinach and adding a little feta cheese on top. It was yummy and had a wide variety of colors.

Salad

This salad is called a superfood salad from a local restaurant from the first week of February.

The triangles are pita chips seasoned with spices and roasted in the oven. The salad has mujadara, lebanese salata, red quinoa, diced squash and zucchini, peas, walnuts, dried cranberries, and a little parsley. I had never heard of majadara before, but it was delicious. It combines brown rice with lentils and caramelized onions.

I will definitely order this again.

Mussels and Shrimp

On Valentine’s Day my husband made mussels and shrimp with lemons for our dinner.

It was all cooked in a vegetable stew with a base of onions, peppers and diced tomatoes. Quite delicious. I like to have it over some spaghetti. This is a whole grain version of spaghetti but it is out of a box, not homemade.

What have you been doing to add a rainbow of color into your meals? Leave a note in the comments below or a shout out on our Becoming Elli social media. We are on Facebook, Instagram, X – the platform earlier known as twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Vegetable Soup for a Cold Weekend

January 15, 2024 / Chris Brown / 0 Comments

Vegetable soup for a cold weekend seems like a natural for me.

It’s been very cold here in Northeast Ohio this weekend. So making various soups has been my go to response for eating. Here are some snapshots and recipes.

Super Quick Salsa Soup

Ingredients:

1 jar of mild or medium salsa
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon cilantro
2 cans black beans (rinse)
1 bag of frozen vegetables (thawed)
1 can corn undrained
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups shredded cooked chicken

Instructions:

Dump everything into a pot.
Bring just to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Top with shredded cheese, if you like. This is an easy way to get lots of vegetables and especially good if you have “put up” a lot of homemade salsa in the fall. The beans and chicken add protein and the heat in the salsa is enough of a kick for me.

Salsa Soup – Vegetable Soup for a Cold Weekend

I have been trying to get a variety of color in my meals by following the Eat The Rainbow challenge. Here is another soup that I ate but the colors are not rich and beautiful

Vegetable Soup with Chicken

Last weekend I made a vegetable soup with chicken and added a can of kidney beans and black beans. My big mistake was not rinsing the black beans enough.

Vegetable soup with chicken breast – Don’t forget to drain the black beans!

Without rinsing the beans, the broth and chicken, actually all the vegetables too, took on the hue of black beans. It all looked a little suspect and not very appealing.

It still tasted delicious.

Vegetable Soup with Shrimp – No broth

Shrimp and vegetables were also a great way to get a variety of color in my meal. I didn’t actually have a broth going so I shouldn’t call this soup… but it was really delicious too.

I got an air fryer for Christmas from my husband and I’ve been trying different food and meals in it. While the shrimp was cooking in air fryer, I defrosted the vegetables and did a quick stir fry to saute them. So far, I really like cooking the shrimp on it. I missed having the broth, because that is one way I sneak extra water in my system without actually drinking water. I find it hard to drink enough water in the winter when it is cold, so drinking it as a broth really helps!

Shrimp cooked in the air fryer over vegetables. Soup without the broth!

What’s your favorite vegetable soup recipe? Please share it here in the comments or on any of our social media pages using Becoming Elli as the handle.

2024 Eat The Rainbow Challenge

January 2, 2024 / Chris Brown / 3 Comments

Eat The Rainbow is a new 2024 challenge for the Becoming Elli Community and the Fit Strong Women Over 50 podcast!

You can download the Eat The Rainbow checklist and information about why it’s important to Eat The Rainbow.

Eating the rainbow is an easy way to optimize your diet. Why is it important to EAT THE RAINBOW? Because colorful foods contain phytonutrients or plant compounds.

These compounds provide beneficial nutrients to us. They are found in plant foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes (beans), and whole grains.

Teas, herbs and spices also contain thousands of different phytonutrients.

Phytonutrients protect our health. Some phytonutrients help protect our cells from damage and some support the body’s natural detoxification processes. Others have anti-inflammatory or anticancer effects, or promote brain, heart, skin, eye, or liver health. Eating a wider variety of phytonutrients gives you a wider range of health benefits.

The color of plant foods comes from different phytonutrients. For example, red vegetables have different nutrients than green vegetables.

Typically, the darker the color, the higher the phytonutrient content. Once you get proficient at eating the rainbow, you might try to eat darker colors.

Try to eat 9 to 12 plants a day. Remember that the rainbow includes fruits as well as vegetables but also includes nuts, seeds, beans, grains and spices.

Eating the rainbow means to try to eat at least one serving from each color group every day.

the more colors you can eat gives you a greater variety of phytonutrients.

One serving of vegetables is about ½ cup of cooked veggies or 1 cup of raw leafy greens; one serving of fruit is about ½ cup of fruit or one medium sized piece of fruit.