Eating your vegetables: Salads!

I am trying to eat more healthily, as I had mentioned, and one thing it takes me back to was a presentation I did about a year and a half ago on using fruits and vegetables.

It was summer, and the ward cookbook came out, and most of the sections had a wide variety of recipes in them, but vegetables was very short, and they were all potato recipes. I know a potato is technically a vegetable, but from a dietary point of view, it's more of a starch (and corn is more of a grain).

I don't think the cookbook meant that people weren't eating vegetables, but I know we often just kind of have them there as a duty, and don't really let them shine. And, if we are just trying to get some kind of vegetable out there, the easiest way to do that is boiling, which is often the least appetizing way.

I put together a presentation where we covered salads, grilled vegetables, stir-fry, smoothies, and hidden add-ins. It was focused on summer, which is why I did not really go into soups, roasting, or casseroles, and those kinds of presentations. It all ended up kind of lengthy, so I am breaking them down into different sections.

We started out with salads. It is common for salad to be the first course, and we had some good ones.

Salad can be just as boring as boiled vegetables. You can buy a bag with iceberg lettuce and some shredded cabbage and carrots, and we do that, but that is only one type of salad, and not the most interesting.

I think the first thing that got me thinking about it was a FoodDay article that pulled from this web site:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

First of all, I was intrigued by the carrot, blueberry, sunflower seed salad. Although it initially sounded like an odd combination, it also sounded good, and the preparation sounded very simple:

"Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft."

Okay, I cut back on the pepper and mixed it with salt, and I left out the olive oil. It was still a very good salad, and not only did my family eat it, they would eat leftovers of it. This never happens, so that was pretty exciting.

I recommend this site a lot. It's not just that many of the individual ideas are good, but reading about them together gives you a pretty good idea of the potential of salad. Salad can be lettuce, but it can also be other vegetables, and fruits, and grains and pastas and meats. It can be a first course, but it can also be a main course, or a dessert.

One thing about food preparation is that the more you do of it, the more that you see can be done. So I am going to explain about another salad that I like to make that was inspired by other recipes, but became my own.

First, I sliced a yellow bell pepper and soaked it in lemon juice. The acidity of the lemon juice helped counter the alkali of the peppers. (I know, the yellow ones aren't even that harsh.) Next, I blanched pea pods. I have also done this with snow peas. It might work with green beans, but I like the pea pods. I mix those with the peppers and lemon juice, plus some olive oil, sugar, and sliced almonds. It is very summery, and it is light, but more filling than it would be with lettuce.

One tip that my sisters got from somewhere (it may have been someone on Medifast) was to mix in cold cuts with bagged salad, and maybe some cheese, for a lean and green salad. Sure, bagged salad and cold cuts aren't the best starting place, but this is a meal that will have roughage (especially if the salad is not all iceberg) and be filling, and will have some protein, but is also really easy, which a lot of people need.

And part of that experience is going to be that it's okay to fail. Sometimes you will think something will work, and be wrong. That is frustrating, but it is just one meal, and you will have learned something, and you will keep getting better at that.

Start with ingredients that you know you like. One thing with the first salad is that I knew that I liked carrots and blueberries a lot, and even though I had never put them together before, I could not think of any obvious incompatibility. Then, as you can build confidence, you can think about throwing in jicama.

The minimalist gives you 101 starting points. They will probably not all be winners for your specific tastes, but surely at least a few of them are.