What is your favorite way to sneak in vegetables?
 

Since the old days of pretending zucchini bread was good for you are over (2 cups sugar and 1 cup oil lol) we have to find other ways of getting our veggies. Do you have any tips to share?

Diced onions, tomatoes, peppers, etc are good in omelets, so that's easy.

Salsa is made of just vegetables :)

I've recently discovered the virtues of zucchini. Small, baby zucchini are so tender and mild and go in anything. You can dice them up and add to salsa, put in a salad, or even on a sandwich. They are good on their own of course, grilled, roasted, or stuffed.

Suzanne as we speak I am sitting here STUFFED and it was all legal :D I chopped up some zucchini, peppers (red, orange and green), spanish onions, tuna steak and smoked sausage (kielbasa type). I cut everything into about 1" cubes, sprinked with oil, and spices and skewered them for the grill..... burp! The zucchini came out better than I thought it would. We also grilled some white & yellow corn on the cob.

A few years ago I used to get lunch at this place called The Pita Inn. They made stuffed peppers (no meat, just rice & veggies mixed) and they put it hot in a pita loaf, they also put tomatoes and lettuce in there. But the best was the sesame tahini dressing they drizzled on top. You talk about a whoppin load of veggies that tasted out of this world MMMMM !!!

(Tahini is ground sesame paste and oil. It is an essential ingredient in hummus, one of the most popular of Arab foods. This spicy dip also includes garlic, lemon, pureed chick peas and mixed spices. Tahini is also featured in moutabel, an eggplant dip and baba ghanoush, which is char-grilled eggplant pureed with lemon juice and garlic.)

Well, I haven't been doing this lately and I don't know if it qualifies as "sneaking" :lol: but I do sometimes whir frozen vege into a sort of veggie smoothie in the mini blender. If I am trying to fool myself, I add some frozen fruit for sweetness and maybe soy or dairy milk or yogurt. In the days when I ate carrots, they made a good addition to a sweet fruit/soy smoothie and you wouldn't have known they were in there.

I've posted this before, but chopped fresh spinach is a good addition to egg salad.

Eating more veggies is a priority for me.
I love adding spinach to egg white omelets in the morning. Actually, if I can find a way to sneak spinach in I will because it seems like a "really" good vegetable to me for some reason. I put it in marinara-type sauces and in all of my salads.
Also, I've been adding something called "Broccoli Slaw" to everything too, especially salads and sandwiches. It is a dry mix of shredded broccoli, carrots and cabbage. It doesn`t have much of a taste, but it is very fresh and crunchy.
I'm trying to learn to make asparagus without bathing it in cream or butter.

You can sneek them in spaghetti sauce or meatloaf, like grated carrots, onions, peppers. Taste great

I LOVE plain steamed asparagus, hot or cold! I also have a recipe somewhere for a mustard type sauce for it. Came from a vegetarian cookbook (Moosewood, I think).

Interesting... should I get fresh, canned or frozen? I'm a poor college student so I've been buying frozen so that they don`t go bad. Is there much of a difference?

Thank you so much for introducing me to this stuff WastedThermos!! It's my new favorite thing to add to salads and wraps, etc. YUM! :T

Beverly

I've seen that, I'll have to buy a bag! I had wondered what to do with it, if it needed to be treated like coleslaw and smothered in a mayo based sauce. But that's a great idea to toss it in other things. I'll give that a try.

WastedThermos--be careful with canned veggies as they tend to have added sodium. I use frozen a lot because I never finish the fresh before they go bad!

I wish I could just scrape all the tastebuds off my tongue so I could eat more veggies! I am such a picky eater anyway--I don't even like many meats (mostly only chicken, sometimes sausage/hotdogs/keilbasa and cheeseburgers--but they must have the cheese and stuff so I don't taste the meat as much). I LOVE fruits--I am an avid eater of oranges, apples, bananas, kiwis, grapes, pineapple, watermelon, plums, peaches...the list goes on and on! When it comes to vegies, however, I'm trying SO hard to sneak some into my diet. I like potatoes and corn, but the starchiest veggies, of course, are worst for you :dizzy: A lot of people (including my mother) seem to think I really would like them if I tried them now, that I just don't like them because I didn't like them as a kid. Well, I went there. I have been trying them all over town! The verdict: ick! Veggies I like in a salad include: lettuce, baby spinach, red or white onion, and cucumbers. Aside from the spinach, none of these have much for nutritional value. I actually went and bought 1 red, 1 yellow, 1 orange, and 1 green pepper just to try. I tried them raw with dressing/dip. I tried them cooked in stir-fry. I discovered I do not like peppers of any color :p I hated carrots as a kid, but decided maybe my tastes have changed (your taste buds actually change every 5 years or so, which is why as you get older, you like different things). So I tried some raw carrots. I tried some cooked carrots. I discovered I still do not like carrots :p I like tomato sauce (marinara, spaghetti), tomato soup, and ketchup, yet I can't handle actual tomatos. I love my mother's broccoli casserole--smothered with creamy cheese sauce and breadcrumbs so I can't taste the broccoli :p Oi vei, what is wrong with me?! I see a lot of people on her emention asparagus, which I can honestly say I have never even tried. Any suggestions on how to prepare it? raw? cooked? dressings? I'd like to try it to add at least one real veggie to my options. Oh, I also tried drinking V8. I drank it every morning for a month--just 8 oz at a time, and different varieties (no salt added, with lemon, etc.)--and every time, I thought I was going to be sick. It just never seemed to get better, so I finally stopped torturing myself. Am I absolutely insane? Is there something I'm not seeing? Is there ANY multivitamin that may help to complensate for the nutrients I'm not getting? I know eating the food is a better way for nutrition, but eating healthy should not be this painful!

I put lots of extra veggies in my spaghetti sauce, especially zuchinni, peppers and no salt added canned tomatoes. I love zuchinni. It's really good sauteed with onions. My favoritething right now is Bird's Eye Normandy Blend veggies. The bag has broccoli, cauliflower, yellow squash, zuchinni, and carrots in the bag. I've been adding about 2 cups of this to a lean cuisine spa classics meal. I also like to saute chicken and add peppers, zuchinni, tomatoes, onions, celery, garlic and anything else I might have on hand with chilli powder and cumin and put it over brown rice. Green beans are very good also. I like them with lemon and some pepper. Also to get my veggies in for the day I like to peel and seed a cucumber, take a handful of grape tomatoes and dip them in ranch dip made with a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch dip mix and Breakstone 40% reduced fat sour cream. That's a good one. I always have that on hand. Also when I make chicken salad or tuna salad I eat it in a cucumber that has been cut length wise and all the seeds are scooped out and you fill it with the chicken/tuna. :dizzy: Pheww! Guess I like veggies.

Hey Suzanne, a few more uses for this stuff is in stirfrys and fajitas. YUM! I'm addicted! :D

Beverly

I like to sneak my veggies into things like chilli and spaghetti sauce. I make my sauce with shredded carrots and tons of red and green peppers. Tossing veg onto homemade pizza, sneaking extra into casseroles and stirfries.

The one thing I used to do when I was a kid was mash turnip into my mashed potatoes to hide them. Still do it to this day :lol:

jillybean720- my favorite way to do asparagus (and i LOVE asparagus) is to roast it-- either use a misto (w olive oil) or put a teaspoon of olive oil in a plastic bag, put in the trimmed/cleaned asparagus, and toss to coat. put the (lightly) oiled asparagus on a baking pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast in a 400 degree oven for 10 or 12 minutes-- you'll know it's done when it starts to look a bit brown along the edges. serve with a few squirts of lemon and ohmygod is it good. good cold the next day too.

i really like veggies, and always have. but since i discovered the fact that i can chop a whole bunch of them up, put them on a sprayed toaster oven pan, turn it up to at least 350 [or higher!] and then walk away, i've been making sure i have a stash of this stuff ready!!! and if i'm ambitious, i'll actually season them with some herbs. or wait until later.

they get a little sweeter, a little dryer, a little more intense. LOVE them in or on everything, from sandwiches to salads, eggs, side dishes, alone, mixed in soups, etc.

combinations: peppers, mushrooms, a little onion, zucchini. asparagus. broccoli. winter squash. eggplant. tomatoes. carrots. leafy greens work as well, but you have to watch them carefully so they don't burn [radicchio is excellent this way]. things like artichokes need to be cooked a bit beforehand. brussels sprouts are fabulous - really! and if you add a sprinkling of romano cheese to them - even better. i will NEVER eat a boiled brussels sprout again.

oh. and you can even cook frozen ones this way - they get a bit watery, and you have to blot them a bit, but they work just fine!