Knowing how important vegetables and herbs are for adding nutrition to meals and wellbeing, I wanted to share some ways I add them to my meals. As a heads up, I plan to do facebook live videos to explain how I technically add them to my meals, so check me out on facebook too.
In the meantime, I wanted to write up a quick post summarizing ways that I add vegetables and herbs to my meals.
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1. Buy pre-made cut salad mixes. Keep it simple or get creative with the additional ingredients!
I like to add herbs (ex. oregano) to my citrus dressing.
I use raw or roasted fruits (ex. sliced roasted stone fruits, oranges, and apples) and vegetables (ex. radishes, green beans, squashes, and brussel sprouts) in salads.
Salads are the fastest and most convenient way to prepare and eat vegetables that I could think of as part of a balanced meal.
I like mixing baby arugula from precut mixes with watercress. Radishes and seasonal fruit adds more flavors and nutrition to this mix.
Different colors add beauty, flavor, and nutrition to my salads. Here, I added purple cabbage to my collard greens in citrus dressing.
2. Roast your vegetables in large batches and cook with the seasons.
You can roast zucchini, fennel, green beans, cauliflower, radishes, carrots, Brussel sprouts, broccoli, kale and more!
I like to cut vegetables into 1/2 inch pieces, douse them in fat (ex. olive oil, duck fat, lard, or coconut oil), and a dash of sea salt.
I place these types of vegetables in an oven for 30-45 minutes at 350 F [exception are greens (ex. kale), which take less time, about 7-12 minutes - depending how much fat you add to them].
I like to add herbs and citrus dressing to my vegetables.
KISS. I keep it simple by roasting full beets on a cookie sheet. Then I cut or slice them into smaller pieces after they have cooled down. I normally roast full medium sized beets for 350 F for 1.5 hours.
I add roasted vegetables to my breakfast meals. Adding them to my breakfast patties makes for a quick breakfast with vegetables.
It is summer time, there has been a lot of zucchini and why I have a lot of pictures of them in this post.
3. Steam your greens (ex. kale, beet greens, and collard greens)
In an Instant Pot, set the steamer to 0 minutes; 1 minute if you like them super soft. The Instant Pot doesn't starting counting time until it has reached the appropriate temperature; by this time, the vegetables in it may have already been cooking - shortening the normal steaming timing of them.
In a stove top steamer, I normally wait for the water to boil. Then I add and cook my greens for about 4-5 minutes.
Make sure you drink the leftover juices you cook your greens in, since the nutrients from the greens may have wandered into this liquid.
Kale is a hearty vegetable I like steaming kale with a bit of water in heavy pot. I then add them to more vegetables and some citrus dressing for taste.
4. Sauté your greens.
Melt some fat (1/2 tbsp of fat per a cup of vegetables) on the pan before adding the vegetables.
I normally sauté for 3-4 minutes a full pan of greens.
Bacon is a great tasting fat to add to collard greens when sautéing them. I like to add them as small bacon bits (tablespoon per a cup of greens).
I added avocados and dried olives to this sautéed brussels sprouts and collard greens.
I like batch cooking my greens, so I can easily add them to my meals. I make citrus dressing in batches so that I can easily add it to my meals, making eating my vegetables a more tasty experience. IN addition, a citrus dressing will help aid me to digest the nutrition in them even better.
5. Add seaweed vegetables to your meals.
I stock up on wakame, dulse, nori, and other seaweeds.
I use using nori wraps (what is used for sushi) like a tortilla. You can use them to pick up rice, scrambled eggs, bacon, and more. The possibilities are endless!
I use dulse in my porridge (ex. oatmeal).
Wakame is super fun and easy to use in a lot of dishes. I add wakame to my salads, eggs, meats, and soups. Wakame adds saltiness to my dishes, so adjust the amount of salt you use when you add wakame to your dishes accordingly.
I added pieces of dulse to oatmeal. It adds a bit of a salt flavor and packs more mineral and fiber into your porridge.
Wrap it in nori. Add more minerals to your meal with a nori wrap.
My favorite way to eat nori is to wrap it around scrambled eggs.
I added wakame to this dish. I wrote a recipe for this dish. Check it out here.
Nori wraps are a super easy way to add more mineral and texture to your meals.
6. Add herbs to your meals!
Sautéing some sage in olive oil and sea salt can add so much flavor to fish and chicken dishes.
Rosemary and sea salt is an easy way to make lamb taste even better.
Adding herbs (ex. rosemary, thyme, sage) and zest (lemons) to your burger, sausages, and breakfast patties can pack more nutrition and flavor into them.
Chives and garlic greens are an easy way to add more flavor and nutrition to your scrambled eggs.