@cmoneyspinner 4 July 2021 edited more from that month

My Foodie Luv: Eat Your Veggies. Easy to Say. Easy To Do.

Eat your veggies. I know this. But for me, it just required a little creativity tp incorporate a variety of vegetables in my diet. However, I learned that saying it and doing it were both easy! **I Ate What My Mom Cooked!** My diet when I was growing up basically consisted of greens or legumes (black-eyed peas or lima beans) seasoned with ham hocks or smoked pork neck bones. That’s how my mother cooked. That’s what my mother cooked. And that’s what we ate. My mother let it be known that if we didn’t like what was on the stove, we were welcome to go out and try to find our own food. Or? We could hold out until we got hungry enough to eat it!! *Most of the time I was hungry enough!* But looking back, when I think about it, had my mother simply not added that one ingredient – the meat for seasoning – we could have been an almost vegetarian family. I say almost because, of course, for Christmas and Thanksgiving, there was always turkey. For Easter, there was a ham. And for most of our Sunday dinners, there was fried chicken. Occasionally during the week we might have smothered pork chops or smothered liver. I was blessed to receive government grant money which paid for my tuition and books, my dorm room, and my meals at the university cafeteria. It was in the cafeteria that I learned that it was perfectly normal to eat a large bowl of salad for lunch! A large bowl? Loaded with veggies? Really? My mom never served us a big bowl of salad!

**Plant-Based Foods and Meatless Mondays** Nowadays plant-based food and meatless meals are all the rage. On Twitter, they circulate lots of recipes and meal ideas and hashtag them #MeatlessMonday. Not only are we treating our bodies well but we’re saving the planet too! Life events actually forced me to completely change my dietary and eating habits. My late husband was diagnosed with heart disease. Consequently, when making out the grocery list beef and pork was no longer on the list. And we started adding more veggies to our meals. It wasn’t a difficult adjustment to make actually. Lots of times when I was at the grocery store there were certain veggies that I wanted to try. But we had a budget. By the time I finished buying all of the other foods on the list, there was no more money left for trying those veggies. But what do you know? Not buying beef or pork freed up $30 to $35. Now I had the money to buy zucchini, swiss chard, bok choy, cauliflower and lots of other fresh vegetables.

**Cooking Tasty Veggie Dishes is Not That Hard** Now my only challenge was how to cook them and make the veggies tasty and not boring. TV cooking shows, food blogs, and Twitter to the rescue! There is no shortage of veggie recipes on the Internet. In fact, if you can find an Indian TV cooking show or YouTube video to watch, an Indian food blogger or an Indian food Twitter account to follow, you can learn all kinds of ways to prepare your veggies as a side dish or as the main meal. The spices they use to add flavor are amazing!! **Top 35 Indian Cooking Blogs For 2020** https://easyrecipedepot.com/food-blogs-india/ However, if you’re not an adventurous cook and you just want a no-fuss way to cook and eat your veggies here is a way that is quick and easy. Preheat your oven to 350 F. and chop up some veggies. What kind of veggies? Whatever you want. Pattypan squash (or any other squash), peppers, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggplant, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattypan_squash Season with fresh herbs like basil, parsley, oregano – whatever herbs you like. Add chopped garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Toss them in some olive oil. Mix all your ingredients, wrap in foil on a baking dish. Bake at 350 F for about 40 minutes. You can drizzle the roasted vegetables with your favorite balsamic reduction or not! You can serve over rice, quinoa, crusty bread, etc. or just eat them!

Most dietary experts say that you should eat 5 cups of fruits and veggies per day. Most people don’t have problems finding fruit to eat. We like fruit. It’s sweet! But when it comes to the veggies? We know it’s good for us. But we have to get creative. **10 Easy Ways to Eat More Vegetables Every Day | Kitchn** https://www.thekitchn.com/10-easy-ways-to-eat-more-vegetables-every-day-reader-intelligence-report-164945 ♦ ♦ ♦ NOTE: This is my original content which first appeared March 2020 in 100 Springs Magazine (100springs.com). More Read.Cash articles in My Foodie Luv series https://read.cash/search?q=%22My+Foodie+Luv%22,+@cmoneyspinner&filter=articles More fun foodie posts on Noise.Cash https://noise.cash/search?q=cmoneyspinner+AND+food ****MY FOODIE LUV CHANNELS ON NOISE.CASH****: **Recipe Sharing : My Foodie Luv** https://noise.cash/c/recipe-sharing-my-foodie-luv-42lq9qlk Cooking is about enjoying food & sharing recipes so dishes can be enjoyed again & again. **Herbs and Spices : My Foodie Luv** https://noise.cash/c/herbs-and-spices-my-foodie-luv-7k15qp81 Experiment with various herbs and spices and create culinary delights everyone will praise! ♦ ♦ ♦