Fruits and vegetables in season

I sort of wanted to finish up going over other ways of adding fruits and vegetables to your meals. We haven't really covered roasting, soups, stews, or casseroles. It just doesn't feel right to do it now.

I suppose some of that comes from recent experience. There was a recipe that I wanted to try for soup where I actually had all of the ingredients. It had baking potatoes, sweet potatoes, and ham, as well as some milk and broth. The weather had been fairly grey and cool, but the day when I actually cooked it, it started to get sunny and bright, and it just wasn't as well received. It wasn't exactly too warm to cook or eat soup, but it was getting there.

With a slow cooker you can in some ways get around the issue of heating the house too much in warm weather, but still, there is a feeling that it is not the right time of year for pork roast with carrots and potatoes. Now, if instead that was slow cooker pulled pork, and you served it on hamburger buns, it feels completely different.

Obviously, a lot of it is psychological. And, yesterday I was talking to someone who had just come from Montreal where everything is frozen, and some double potato and ham chowder would probably be well received there. Here, I think we are just going to have French toast tonight, but I am planning on cutting up some bananas and oranges.

That probably still sounds not as healthy as it could be, but we are looking at working with what you have and then making improvements. As we move into summer, we use the oven less and skillets more, and that feels right. Because of this, we eat a lot of breakfast type meals. We never actually have these things for breakfast (no time), so it works out. We will also do more sandwiches, and stir-frys, and salads. Some of these will be fairly healthy, some of them will be delicious, and if I can hit both healthy and delicious, it feels like a win.

Part of this is being able to enjoy what is fresh and in season and local. Clearly, our oranges and bananas are not. However, I have found that it is never worth buying strawberries from California. Wait until they are in season here. We used to freeze them, but they don't thaw well, so all you can do is make jam, pouring in a lot of sugar, and we like raspberry jam better anyway. So, we eat fresh strawberries for about a month and then we are done for the year.

I do still freeze blueberries and blackberries. They thaw differently, especially depending on how you freeze them, and they make good pies. This does involve a lot of sugar, but feels worth it.

As you focus more on fresh and local, you can work out a nice variety. Asparagus are special when  you have them, because in a little while, you won't. However, then you start getting summer squash, and corn.

It will not always make things less expensive, but you should find your produce to be better tasting, and that makes getting it eaten easier.

Obviously a garden can be a great way of having fresh produce and being in touch with the seasons. I have been very happy with Early Girl cherry tomatoes and Quinault strawberries. I have also not kept either of them going, and gardening is a weak point for me. I should fix that, but for now, at least we live in a great area for agriculture. There are farmers' markets, fruit stands, and U-pick fields all over the Metro area, not to mention multiple options for Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs).

http://www.tricountyfarm.org/

You can find something that will work for you.

Smoothies and purees for camouflage

These are the two that I don't personally do, but it's because I don't necessarily need them, and other people might.

The purees came from a cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld, Deceptively Delicious. Two of the Seinfeld children were very picky eaters, and there was an enormous amount of frustration in getting vegetables into their growing bodies. Noticing once that the pureed squash that she was making for the baby was the same color as the macaroni and cheese she was making for the rest of the family led to a new strategy.

I feel some sympathy because I had some strong food prejudices as a child. Actually, I still have a few left. Since there are several vegetables that I will gladly eat, though, and since there is some initial prep work involved, I have not gone ahead and tried any of the recipes.

However, if you have vegetable averse children, this could be a great option, and the initial work of pureeing the various vegetables so you can add them while cooking is probably a good time investment. I have to say that the book is well-written, and gives you clear steps. Vegetables you will use include avocados, beets, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, cauliflowers, peas, red bell peppers, spinach, sweet potatoes, and zucchini and summer squash. (There are also some fruit purees, which I do not consider as significant, and I will get to that in a moment.)

There are recipes I would like to use, for my own specific needs. Truly, I have no problem eating carrots and sweet potatoes. We do that all the time. I also do not want to eat cauliflower under any circumstances; I don't care if it has a disguise. Spinach and squash are things that I eat, but I don't really like to. If disguises would make them more palatable, there could be something to that.

Also, there are foods where extra nutrition might be valuable, so brownies with carrots and spinach, or cupcakes with pumpkin and squash, might have some merit, both by adding vitamins and ending up with less calories. So, that's something to think about.

The reason I don't worry about fruits so much is because people tend to like eating them. They have higher amounts of natural sugars, making them sweeter, and usually the way they get prepared, whether for baking or preserving, is to add significantly more sugar. It seems best to just eat them fresh, or to add them into salads.

So, while I enjoy the occasional fruit smoothie, it's not something that I need in my life to increase my fruit intake, and it's not a way that I want to take in vegetables. Nonetheless, smoothies were quite popular in the group I was working with, especially green smoothies.

Part of the deal with this is that kale thickens up really nicely, making it easy to work with in terms of getting the right smoothie texture, as well as being high in calcium, beta carotene, vitamins C and K, and other nutrients. It sounds great, it's just not a direction I want to go.

I still see it's value, especially after a friend had a child with an overly sensitive gag reflex. Various food textures would trip him up, and she needed to find ways to make it easier for him to eat, and that involved a lot of pureeing and blending.

So, even though I am not using these two methods, I appreciate them. If they will work for you, I want you to know about them. I do not believe in only one true way to eat vegetables. I think that's rather mature of me.

Grilling and stir frying vegetables

We actually don't have a grill, so this is not something I work with a lot. However, I know there are people who love it, and grill meats all the time. As long as you're out there, why not add some produce?

Yes, you can have your salad, and tomato slices and lettuce leaves to go with your hamburgers, and that is something. Realistically, though, for your best health you should be eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, and that does not come naturally to many. Adding variety, and making things more delicious, helps a lot.

Since we want the results to be delicious, a little preparation, rather than randomly slapping anything out of the vegetable crisper on the grill, is advisable.

http://www.recipetips.com/kitchen-tips/t--857/grilling-fruits-and-vegetables.asp

I like this page because it gives a general overview to keep in mind what your principles are, and then it gives you some specifics. With a little searching you can find many more recipes. For just a few other thoughts, grilled fruit served with ice cream can evoke pie, while being less work than pie, and skewers are fun to eat, and can be a balanced meal on a stick.

Do plan in advance. If vegetables are better grilled over medium heat, and fruits are better over a lower, indirect heat, then you are planning a progression, including the meat, for what goes on when.

I do stir fry. One of the great things about stir frying is its flexibility. You can do all sorts of combinations. It can be vegetarian, or not. You could do a surf and turf stir fry if you wanted to, with steak strips and shrimp, and it would work. You can probably sneak in new vegetables for experimenting, without causing too much trouble. You can add noodles for starch, or serve it with rice. This is a great chance to customize, and find the combinations that work best for you.

The main thing to be aware of is that based on density and water content, different things have different cooking times. For example, one common combination I will do is chicken, mushrooms, and spinach. The chicken goes in first, making sure it is thoroughly cooked. (Always make sure your meat is cooked!) Then the mushrooms go in, getting done much more quickly, and then the spinach is done almost the moment it goes in, as it starts to wilt.

There are probably some ingredients where pre-cooking, like blanching or steaming, would make them work better, but I like keeping things easy, so I stick with foods that I can just throw in the pan.

Speaking of pans, you may be tempted to use a wok. A wok was designed for sitting in a depression, where the heat would be coming up all around. On a regular stove, on a stand lifting it up, you're missing out on a lot of the heat. I just use a nice big skillet with high sides, because low sides let a lot out of the pan as you're stirring, which is messy and annoying.

One interesting thing that I read when I was preparing for the presentation is a suggestion that it is fine to cook the different elements separately and then mix them together if you are worried about undercooking or overcooking something. If that will make you feel safer, do it. (I cook boldly, which generally works well but I have had some spectacular fails.)

Again, you can find a lot of recipes here. (You can also find frozen kits that are ready to go.) I don't think I've ever looked up a recipe for a stir fry, but if you are looking for ideas, I recommend visiting your local Mongolian grill, which will not really be representative of Mongolian food or grilling, but that's okay, you know what I mean.

Notice that carrots are sliced paper thin. You can do that, or slice them into slivers. Anything bigger and they will not cook well fresh, though if you have frozen diced ones, they may do okay.Broccoli is pretty solid, so it takes longer to cook. Slicing it down into smaller bits helps. The sizes and thicknesses of their vegetables are based on what will work well.

Their meat is different, because they have it sliced more like cold cuts almost, but you will notice that they separate the meat from the noodles and the vegetables, so that they can make sure the meat gets thoroughly cooked. Nothing makes you regret a meal like food poisoning.

(Also, you will see that even though they focus on the meat first, and then the vegetables, everything is on the heat at the same time, and you really don't need to worry too much about overcooking.)

There will be good suggestions of sauces there. Some people measure very carefully, and they are probably wasting their time. You can experiment and see how much of a difference it makes. A good base for cooking at home is teriyaki sauce, but when we were out of that I did some research and found out that is just soy sauce, mirin, and sugar, so I added sugar to soy sauce, which we had a lot of.

The down side of this is that you may be horrified by the amount of sugar you are adding. Another good base is oyster sauce. I can see where different fruit sauces would be good, though probably also somewhat sugary. That is going to be very much a personal choice, and there is not a thing that you can eat that no one will be able to criticize. However, now that we have some ideas floating around, and ways to get more ideas, you start doing what works for you. It's all anyone can do.

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.