It seems like every time you turn around today you are bombarded with people telling you to eat healthier and in particular, add more vegetables to your diet. However, if you are like most people, it is difficult to get into the habit of purchasing and then preparing foods which you are unaccustomed to. On the list of the Top 10 Most Nutritious Vegetables are things like kale, spinach and red pepper and it seems like everyone just wants you to eat more salad. While salad is a perfectly good meal, wouldn’t it be nice to simply incorporate these vegetables into foods you already know and love? Well it is. And you can by simply following some of these great tips.
Leafy Greens
Leafy greens are the number one most nutritious vegetable. However, if you’ve never eaten any of these regularly, you can get a little overwhelmed when you find yourself at your local grocery store staring at a wall of what appears to be a leafy tropical jungle. Kale is one of the very best leafy greens and looks a little like very large stalks of parsley. This is great because kale can be used in place of or in addition to parsley in about any recipe. Just chop up the leafy part of the kale and put it into sauce, ground meet, soup, gravy, on pizza or just about anything else. The flavor of the kale is generally not noticeable in small amounts and the nice light crunch adds texture to the meal. Kale also keeps for quite a while in the refrigerator and it freezes well too. To freeze kale, chop up enough kale leaves in a food processor to fill a quart/gallon sized Ziploc bag and freeze it. Then whenever you cook a meal, just take out a handful and add it to whatever you are cooking. There is only one real caution when cooking with kale. Because kale has a slightly bitter flavor and tends to remain intact when cooked, do not add too much in too large of pieces without sampling your dish. Too much of the bitter flavor can ruin dishes with lighter flavors.
Another leafy green which tends to be more familiar is spinach. Chopped spinach can also be added to just about any dish. However, with spinach, it really should be chopped fine as the texture tends to get slimy fast when cooked. Because it dissolves more into food than kale, spinach can also be added to more unlikely food items, such as smoothies. One of the major problems with spinach is its longevity. It tends to get soggy and go bad quickly. One tip for keeping it fresh longer is to buy the spinach in the plastic carton and then put several sheets of paper towel on the top and bottom surrounding the spinach. The towel helps to absorb moisture and the plastic carton keeps the spinach from getting crushed.
Bell Peppers
Number five on the list is red, yellow, orange and green pepper. While they tend to be the same general shape, the color plays a huge role in the taste. The red peppers are the sweetest and tend to be much softer than the more bitter green peppers while the orange and yellow are somewhere between the green and red in flavor and texture. Red peppers are the most versatile of the four different kinds because they pair so well with tomatoes. The sweet flavor of the pepper tends to offset the slightly acidic flavor of the tomato and thus, red pepper can be added to anything that has tomatoes in it. Chop some red pepper and put it in tomato soup, spaghetti sauce or lasagna. Red pepper also adds color to dishes. Dice some red pepper and put it on chicken parmesan, enchiladas or breakfast gravy.
Sweet Potatoes
Number seven on the list is sweet potato. Sweet potatoes can be a little confusing because some people refer to the orange fleshed version as “yams” while they are simply a different type of sweet potato. All kinds of sweet potatoes are very nutritious. However, knowing the difference between some common types helps when trying to add them to meals. The most popular kind of sweet potatoes have a reddish brown peal with orange flesh. They are also more moist and softer than a regular russet potato when cooked. Orange sweet potatoes are great prepared about any way you would prepare regular potatoes: mashed, baked or roasted. But because they are so soft, orange sweet potatoes do not hold up as well in soups or when fried or sautéed. What are needed in these instances are white sweet potatoes. White sweet potatoes have a thinner, lighter brown peal than orange ones. But what really distinguishes the two is that white sweet potatoes have a cream colored flesh. White sweet potatoes tend to be dry and a little stiff when baked but these same qualities make them excellent candidates to be added to soups or fried. The white sweet potato has a truly sweet taste that also adds a great flavor to breakfast foods. Chop white sweet potatoes into cubes and scramble them with eggs or grate them and put them in pancakes, waffles, muffins or biscuits. The choices are almost endless.
As a very nutrition conscious individual, I am always trying to find ways of making healthy food both tasty and easily accessible. I have also spent considerable time abroad and in various parts of this country. I hold a masters degree and three bachelor’s degrees in varying subjects and have worked at so many different types of jobs I’m sure I could not count them all if I tried. In general, I am a very inquisitive individual, spending lots of time researching topics of interest in an attempt to find ways to simplify and enrich my life. Knowledge is power and I like to share my discoveries with others in the hope that too may benefit.
