Tag: #veggiechallenge (Page 2 of 2)

Adding Vegetables to Breakfast

July 25, 2019 / Jill McCauslin / 0 Comments

So now I’m adding vegetables to breakfast? Really? Why?

Recently, I attended a talk by a local doctor and a health coach. They said most of us need to increase the amount of vegetables we’re eating and said we should get nine to ten servings of vegetables per day.

The only way I can see to do that is by adding vegetables to breakfast.

My typical lunch is a big bowl of salad with a lot of different vegetables on it. I usually start with a bowl of greens, preferably a mix of some kind of lettuce and spinach and then I might add some kale or micro greens in there too. Lunch easily gives me three to four servings of vegetables.

Dinner is when I’m most likely to have some meat or fish. I try to fill my plate with an assortment of vegetables, some raw and some cooked. I might have another salad and roast a variety of vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and sweet potatoes. So, I can again get three to four servings at this meal.

This leaves me a bit shy of the nine servings of vegetables.

So, I am working on adding vegetables to breakfast. There’s a variety of ways to do that. Sometimes I just reheat leftover roasted vegetables from the night before and maybe top them with a fried egg. This is a delicious meal.

I use my blender at times to make a breakfast smoothie and try to include a few vegetables and fruit in that. Here’s a recipe I posted on my current version of a good smoothie. This smoothie is an easy way to get several servings of fruits and vegetables.

Another easy way to add vegetables is to make scrambled eggs with vegetables. Use whatever vegetables you have on hand, saute them, and scramble them with egg. A great way to start the day.

How do you get all of the servings of vegetables you want to be eating? Is it difficult or a breeze? Let me know how you manage it or what you struggle with.

Veggie Salad at Lake Erie – #VeggieChallenge

July 21, 2019 / Chris Brown / 0 Comments

We enjoyed a veggie salad at Lake Erie. This time I cheated a little.

Once again I made my famous fresh chopped vegetable salad with olive oil, lemon juice and cider vinegar dressing. It was the perfect salad for staying cool up at Lake Erie. My sister in law made a cucumber salad was really delicious too. Always great to get your vegetables when you’re enjoying the breezes at the beach!

Salad at Lake Erie

Time was of the essence when I was getting ready, so I decided to “cheat” a little by starting with several vegetables all ready to go ahead of time.

My local grocery store sells a type of broccoli slaw in a bag that contains a chopped blend of vegetables. They called it “Rainbow Blend”.
Broccoli
Carrots
Red Cabbage
Kohlrabi
Cauliflower

Grabbing that bag and using it as the base saved me some time, although I chopped all of the rainbow blend much finer so it would have a better consistency in my salad.

To those vegetables I chopped and added:

onion
celery
red pepper
yellow pepper
orange pepper
cucumber

I opened and drained a can of garbanzo beans also known as chick peas to add some protein. I also added about a cup of cooked quinoa for more protein.

Tossed together with salt and pepper.

Delicious and super healthy!

Snap Peas – Veggie Challenge

April 29, 2019 / Chris Brown / 0 Comments

Snap Peas are crunchy and delicious. Although the peas are inside, you can eat the pea pod as well.

I think their name comes from the way you prepare them. It doesn’t take much. You snap the stem off and pull the thread like fiber that runs down the side of the pea pod to prepare them. I also cut them into four pieces or so to make their size more like a bite size and match the rest of the salad.

I put them in my potluck salad and they added a perfect crunchy texture.

Here’s what is in the salad:

Celery
Carrots
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Blueberries
Yellow peppers
Cucumbers
Olives
Snap peas

Dressing: Olive oil, cider vinegar, and lemon juice. I don’t usually measure carefully, but put enough into the bowl to coat the vegetables without drowning them!

Salt and pepper to taste. I think having it sit in the refrigerator for a few hours made it absorb more of the dressing. The beauty of this potluck salad is that you don’t have to worry about refrigerating it and things going bad. It makes a great salad to put out on the table for the afternoon buffet at a potluck.

Gotta admit I love, love, love this salad! And I think I know why: it has all the taste sensations! Bitter – salty – savory – sweet – sour… Plus zesty, zippy, crunchy, and the blueberries even added a little bit of creamy.

Next time I will consider adding some protein with maybe tuna, walnuts or quinoa.

Vegetables on Easter for the Veggie Challenge

April 21, 2019 / Chris Brown / 0 Comments

While I love vegetables, I wasn’t sure I wanted to try something very new for the Easter holiday.

Loyal readers of the Becoming Elli website may recognize my tried and true Roasted Vegetables:

Wash and slice vegetables
Lightly coat with Olive Oil
Roast in 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes
Turn at least once
Arrange on platter

I also made my favorite potluck salad with lots of raw vegetables. I love how colorful this looks on the Easter buffet.

Chop vegetables into similar sized pieces:

Onion
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Sweet Peppers (red, yellow, orange)
Celery
Carrot
Cauliflower
Broccoli

I added one can of Garbanzo Beans AKA Chick Peas for a little protein in the salad.

Mix together into a large bowl and add the spices and dressing.

Spices: salt, pepper, parsley and basil

Dressing:

olive oil
Apple cider vinegar
Lemon juice

I like to make this the night before so the dressing and spice has overnight to soak into the vegetables.
In the morning, stir several times to recoat all the vegetables. Put into a colorful serving bowl.

We celebrated Easter with the extended family on Saturday as a combination birthday party. My Mom turns 88 years old this week! There were 29 family members (including 8 great grandchildren) and 3 dogs! Very fun and hectic.

Watercress Salad for Veggie Challenge

April 3, 2019 / Jill McCauslin / 0 Comments

Watercress is a green that can be used in salads, sandwiches, soup, and anywhere else where you might use arugula, spinach, and other greens.

I just recently heard what a nutritional powerhouse watercress is so thought I’d give it a try. I found it at a local grocery store in a plastic tub similar to what the other greens I buy come in. The watercress that I bought was grown locally. Given that I bought it in March, it must be grown hydroponically or in a green house. There are no greens growing in fields in northeast Ohio this March.The cost was comparable to buying baby kale, spinach, and spring mix.

I liked the flavor of watercress. It’s has a bit of a bite to it, though not as strong as arugula. It’s good. It stands up against other flavors without being overwhelming. As you can see in the photo, watercress has long stems on it. Recipes all said to remove stems, at least the thick ones. That is a long, slow chore so I sort of skipped it.

According to the USDA food composition datatbase, watercress is very low in calories. Actually, it’s very low in fat, protein, and carbohydrates so you can eat a lot of watercress. It has a lot of vitamins and minerals, including potassium, Vitamin A, Vitamin K, and calcium.

Watercress Salad

Here’s a salad to make with watercress.

Ingredients

juice from one lemon

1 T minced onion

3 T extra-virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup raw mixed nuts

1 ripe avocado, peeled and cut into wedges

4 cups watercress, thick stems removed

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.
Salad Dressing: Mix lemon juice and minced onion. Whisk in olive oil and season the dressing with salt and pepper.
Spread mixed nuts on a baking sheet and bake in oven for about 5 to 7 minutes. The nuts should be golden brown and fragrant. Watch them carefully so they don’t burn. Let the nuts cool and then chop them coarsely.
Salt the avocado wedges.
In a good-sized salad bowl, toss the watercress, nuts, and salad dressing until coated. Add the avocado wedges. Serve immediately.

Note: You can use one type of nut. I had the raw mixed nuts that contained walnuts, cashes, and macadamia nuts so used that.

Vegetable Challenge: Cousa Squash

March 18, 2019 / Jill McCauslin / 0 Comments

I wandered into a local neighborhood produce store, hoping to find something unique for our vegetable challenge. The selection was fine if I just wanted to buy some produce but trying to find something unique proved to be a challenge in itself. After wandering through the produce aisles two or three times, I spied some cousa squash on the shelf above the zucchini and yellow summer squash. I was way too excited to find a squash, let’s just say that.

I knew nothing about cousa squash so I searched on Google for it. Apparently, the cousa squash is from the Middle East and is similar to zucchini and other summer squash. I think it’s a bit sweeter and its shape is shorter and a bit fatter than zucchini but it is indeed very similar. I’m sure you could substitute zucchini and cousa squash for each other in any recipe.

Recipe for Cousa Squash

I saw lots of recipes for stuffed cousa squash. Basically you stuff them with a mixture of meat, rice, spices, and some other vegetables. I didn’t have the ingredients or the patience to make stuffed squash so I opted for a simpler dish.

Ingredients

1 to 2 Cousa Squash, roughly diced

1/2 onion, diced

1/2 red pepper, diced

Garlic (1 to 2 cloves if using fresh. A generous sprinkle if using garlic powder)

Salt and pepper to taste

Oil of choice. You could use olive oil. I chose to use avocado oil because that’s what I had on hand.

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper and add a bit of oil.

Dice the vegetables and mix together. Add a bit more oil directly to the vegetables and mix.

Sprinkle the spices on and then pour out onto the baking sheet.

Bake for about 20 minutes, stirring the vegetables about half way through.

Notes

Even though you’re roasting these vegetables, the squash has a lot more liquid in it than you find in many vegetables. So this dish won’t roast in the same way as the vegetables we often roast such as winter squash, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and so on. Instead, this is more similar to a sauteed dish. The squash will be soft.

Variations

I chose to roast this in the oven but you could make the same dish and saute it instead in a good sized saute pan.

You could also add a bit of cayenne pepper to the seasonings.

Once you’ve cooked this, you can serve it as is for a side dish or sprinkle a little parmesan cheese on it. You can also add this to an omelet or frittata or add it to some rice or quinoa to make a pilaf.

Eggplant Veggie Challenge with Baked Rounds

March 11, 2019 / Chris Brown / 1 Comment

Today’s eggplant veggie challenge uses purple eggplants but they do come in other colors too.

Eggplant is considered a nightshade vegetable, similar to peppers, tomatoes and tomatillos. You can tell it is a nightshade because it has an elf cap on it’s stem. Buying eggplant was intentional for me. It is not the type of vegetable that I routinely pop into my cart during the weekly grocery shopping (unlike carrots, celery, peppers and cauliflower.)

I was surprised to find out that botanically speaking, eggplant is actually a fruit. I guess that makes sense because although I’m calling them a vegetable for the Veggie Challenge, they have seeds on the inside and are the “fruit” of the plant. As a fruit, they are the part of the plant that bears fruit and has seeds in the middle. So I guess other nightshades. as well as cucumbers, peas and pumpkins are fruit too, although, I would classify them as a vegetable. I think cooks and most people consider them a vegetable.

The legal definition of a vegetable tends to lead to what cooks consider the fruit. For example, tomatoes are taxed as a vegetable even through they are technically a fruit.

Vegetables are technically the roots, stems and leaves of a plant.

Eggplant can be a great low carb swap for noodles in lasagna or other recipes. A nutrient dense food, one cup of eggplant, cubed and cooked, has only 35 calories and has good fiber, copper, potassium and manganese.

This eggplant veggie challenge is easy to make:

Peel the eggplant
Slice it into half inch thick rounds
Dip both sides into scrambled egg batter
Bread each side with bread crumbs
Bake in a 350 oven for 5-6 minutes each side

Of course if I skipped the bread crumbs, they would be lower in carbohydrates.

Later, I pulled this eggplant veggie challenge out of refrigerator, sprinkled them with a little parmigiana cheese and shredded mozzarella cheese. Then I microwaved them 30 seconds to take the chill off and to melt the cheese. I added salt and pepper to taste.

Do you have a recipe you enjoy for eggplant? Bake? Saute? How do you prepare it?

Shredded Zucchini – Veggie Recipe of the Week

March 4, 2019 / Chris Brown / 0 Comments

I love zucchini and usually slice it into rounds. Today I used a grater and shredded it into bits. I added it into my salad to bulk it up with more vegetables.

Besides adding it to a salad, zucchini is also good to add to a stew or a soup.

Other people like make it into a side dish. It is easy, just saute the shredded zucchini in olive oil, scramble an egg into it and stir in some freshly ground Parmesan cheese.

I may try shredding some apples and combining the shredded zucchini with a tart dressing for an apple-zucchini slaw.

This week’s veggie challenge brings ways to use the zucchini with several ideas for shredded zucchinis including salads, stews, soups and with eggs.

Fried Riced Cauliflower – Veggie of the Week

February 25, 2019 / Chris Brown / 1 Comment

I prepared my cauliflower in a way I never tried before. I know I tried riced cauliflower last week, but I it was from a package rice and I tried it with a warm riced cauliflower salad. Pretty good!

However this week is special because I riced it myself to make “fried rice” which is actually “fried riced cauliflower.” All I can say is WOW, this is a WINNER!

Start with a beautiful head of cauliflower. It’s still messy to rice cauliflower using a grater, but that’s okay, it’s easy enough to clean up and worth it for the delicious taste.

I even grate the core of the cauliflower to use the whole thing. Usually I throw that part away, but since it is riced so small, it doesn’t need to be discarded.

Chop up other veggies into a small size too. Use what is in your refrigerator, but make the cauliflower the star. By that I mean, don’t use a whole stalk of celery or a whole onion.

Ingredients:

Olive oil
Onions
Green pepper
Red pepper
Celery
Carrots
Riced Cauliflower
Salt & Pepper
Soy Sauce (if desired)

Heat a little olive oil in a large skillet. Add onions. After they get a little translucent, add the other veggies. Toss or flip with spatula. Add the rice, cover for a minute and flip again.

Wisk one egg to scramble it. Drizzle over the mixture. Stir, turn and blend into the veggie mixture while it cooks. The cauliflower cooks pretty quickly since it is riced so small.

Add soy sauce if you need to, but I like it plain.

Serve with stir fry chicken or inside out egg rolls.