Luckily the fridge replenished it’s supply of sliced apples, so I’m set for the day. But, I’m already dreaming of The Farmer’s Market.m Is it still too early for them to have more than flowers? I’ll let you know tomorrow what I find.
Play a Fruity Game at the Dole-5-a-day site (they’ve got a couple of dozen to choose from)
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Here are some random ways to stealthily increase your fruit and vegetable consumption. This can be helpful if you are one of those people whose natural inclination is to avoid fruits and vegetables at all times. Some of them I am sure I have posted here, maybe even recipes, but for the benefit of the new people, and old people who are forgetful, I will mention them again.
Salsa. Salsa, which, incidentally, passed ketchup as the number one condiment sold in the US, is made entirely of vegetables, and sometimes fruits. It is an ideal stealth vegetable addition because it tastes good, and people who seek to limit calories, fat, sugar, carbs, nets, grams, etc will be pleased to learn that it has almost none of any of those things, so you can have as much of it as you want. Salsa can help you have just a little bit of foods that you might think you can’t have at all. Just take a bit of the evil food, and put a lot of salsa on it. Or you can be doubly virtuous and dip your raw vegetables into salsa.
Chimol. Chimol is like salsa in a way, it is basically raw tomatoes and onions cut up fine and mixed with salt and pepper, maybe a bit of garlic or cilantro if you like. It also can be added to almost anything you might eat except dessert. And just because you already added salsa does not preclude the addition of chimol. You can easily add an entire serving of vegetables using chimol and salsa in generous amounts. Chimol has nearly no calories or any of the things people generally seek to avoid, so again like salsa, you can eat as much chimol as you want. You can fill a big bowl with it and sit down and eat the whole bowl and your glucose meter will not upbraid you, and you will not become fat, or clog your arteries with carbs or grams of cholesterol.
Pickled peppers. History does not tell us if the author of the nursery rhyme was on any sort of low fat diet, but the rhyme can serve to remind us that pickled peppers can add flavor to even the blandest of foods, just a few of them make a handful, which makes a serving, and they are not only vegetables, they are completely devoid of fats or transfats, interfats, overfats, suprafats or infrafats. If you like more flavor, choose pickled peppers that are marked “hot.” Some may be labelled as “sweet” but if you read the label you find that they don’t really have any sugar, or only a tiny bit, and are really the same as those marked “mild.” Every brand will be different in this regard, but the best way to use pickled peppers to best advantage as a stealth vegetable is to buy several jars in various colors and flavors, and add a little assortment of them to whatever you are having. If you have seen any of those diet tips that advise you to fill half your plate with vegetables, you will be encouraged to note that between salsa, chimol, and pickled peppers, you can do that a lot more easily than you might have thought.
Raw chiles. This stealth strategy may not be for everyone. Many westerners, in particular, prefer food without much flavor, but the rest of us can celebrate the variety of pungent chiles available for our delectation and stealthy vegetablic addition. Jalapenos, tiny green chiles from Thailand and South Asia, habaneros, scotch bonnet, collect ‘em all! You can chop them up and sprinkle them on food, or serve them whole on the side and nibble at will. Choose one, mix and match, make a party mix. Either way, they are vegetables, they add almost no calories no matter how many you eat, nor do they contain any of those other dietary boogeymen like fats, sugar, or cholesterol.
Kim chi. Even if you hate cabbage on general principle, and consider cole slaw to be a conspiracy between the fast food chicken and garbage industries, served on the side for the sole purpose of giving extra billable hours to the sanitation workers who haul off the untouched little cups of it, you will like kim chi. You would never suspect it of being cabbage, if you had not been told. And to be fair, it is really not cabbage. It has moved on, it has upwardly mobilized itself into not just an edible, but a tasty substance. Like pickled peppers, kim chi comes in varying flavor levels, so choose one that is right for you. More than a condiment, it is like chimol in that it can be added in generous quantities to almost any dish, and make it taste better, while stealthily increasing your vegetable consumption. If your uncontrollable craving is for chili dogs, try a kim chi dog. It is like chili and sauerkraut rolled into one. (Another tip, if you roll that hot dog in half a soft Middle Eastern or South Asian style flatbread, AND substitute kim chi for the chili, you can lop around 70% of the calories and fat that a “regular” chili dog would involve).
In conclusion, I could go on listing the vegetable relish concoctions popular in various places around the globe, but you get the point, and you can and should go forth and discover these delicacies for yourself.
Think of the world’s vegetable condiments and relishes as a cafeteria, sample as many as you can, and make some your own, and feel free to spurn others. The basic principle is, instead of having a large serving of Fat-fried Sugarstarch, to which you add just a bit of vegetable condiment, have a very small serving of Fat-fried Sugarstarch, and absolutely smother it with vegetable condiment.
Even better, of course, would be to have a slightly larger serving of Canola-oil spritzed baked Bitofat, and absolutely smother THAT with vegetable condiment.
Whichever method you choose to start with, the Proud Global Vegetable Condiment Community stands ready to give its all to aid you in your goal to stealthily increase your consumption of vegetables, thus improving your diet, which is, Science has decreed, a key element in improving your health.