New Articles on Cooking, Meal Planning, and Healthy Living

I’ve posted several articles to a site I’m new to, Associated Content, that you might find interesting depending on what search brought you here to my old blog. Check them out!

Cooking Tips to Help Picky Eaters Learn to Love Vegetables
Use these ideas for how to prepare vegetables to create tasty, less bitter dishes that will entice reluctant eaters to try these new foods. Getting picky eaters to eat vegetables just takes patience and a little ingenuity.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1898892/cooking_tips_to_help_picky_eaters_learn.html

Picky Eaters? Tips on How to Introduce Vegetables
Know a picky eater? Are you a picky eater? Try these strategies to introduce vegetables, notorious for turning up noses, to people who are afraid to try new foods. Celebrate small victories on the way toward achieving a truly healthy diet.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1898414/picky_eaters_tips_on_how_to_introduce.html

Get Started with Easy Meal Planning to Save Time and Money
It’s simple to start planning meals: It takes nothing more than a piece of paper and a pocket of time. Collect ideas as you go, then organize them into a list or on a calendar, and you’ll be set to start saving money and improving your health.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1899112/get_started_with_easy_meal_planning.html

Strategies for Eating Out at Restaurants Without Wrecking Your Healthy Diet
Restaurants offer rich, indulgent food that can easily throw your weight-loss plan off track. These tips can help make it possible to enjoy the occasional night out without regretting it when you step on the scale in the morning.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1888016/strategies_for_eating_out_at_restaurants.html

Avoid Dehydration This Summer with Thirst-Quenching Tips
Five tips for keeping yourself hydrated through the hot summer months that won’t break the bank or pack on the pounds, based on my experience with dehydration and living in the crazy Las Vegas heat.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1858229/avoid_dehydration_this_summer_with.html

Peas and Quiet

I’ve learned to like most vegetables as I’ve grown older. I don’t turn up my nose at broccoli or cauliflower, and I’ll even accept bell peppers and cabbage provided they’ve been prepared to my liking.

But what’s with peas?

I’ve never particularly disliked peas. However, I simply cannot muster any enthusiasm for them. I’ve had this bag in my mini-freezer for weeks now, despite it holding a mere 450 grams of the green meanies.

As you can see, I added a mere half a cup to my fabulous vegetable soup. I was afraid I would overwhelm the good veggies with the starchy taste of shelled English peas were I to add more.

I like snow peas and sugar snap peas. I don’t remember ever having tried field peas, so I reserve judgment. But this typical freezer-fodder type just doesn’t dazzle me. I don’t get the sweetness from them that people rave about.

So what is it? Am I doing something wrong here?

Green Giant Frozen Sauced Vegetables

Aside from junk food, which I shouldn’t be eating anyway, these veggies could be the American grocery products I miss the most here in Slovakia.

 

I was definitely a picky eater as a kid. Scott is growing increasingly incredulous as I describe how for years I wouldn’t touch pizza, hamburgers, or raw tomatoes. (Actually, one or two of those he might not know until now that I used to refuse. The list is long.)

 

I do blame genetics in part, by the way. My mom still won’t eat most cheese or nuts, and neither my mom nor my dad has never cared for Mexican food.

 

Still, I got over most of my childhood neophobia. Over the years, I’ve tried to chip away my reluctance to eat many different vegetables. I’ve started to eat more carrots and broccoli (and I long ago began eating tomatoes again), for example. Over the years, I’ve worked more and more greens into my salads, including baby spinach. I’m currently working on cauliflower and squash.

 

In fact, I’ve come to love many new vegetables over the years, and I routinely add them to main courses to fill them out and put a second bowl out as a side dish, in addition to the usual dinner salad.

 

These Green Giant vegetable blends with sauce helped me a lot with coming to like vegetables such as broccoli over the past couple of years. And even though I now like the vegetables in most of the blends on their own, I still love how the sauces add easy interest to a side dish.

 

And did I mention they are generally low-cal and delicious?

 

My favorite is the simple broccoli with cheese sauce. If you live alone, like I did in Vegas, this particular blend comes in convenient single-serving packages. That way, you don’t have to count out sauce chips to heat up a single portion from the big bag.

 

But even if you aren’t living alone, those 60-calories broccoli cups make a delicious quick snack.

 

The buttered corn comes in single-serving packs, too, but I prefer to save some calories by just spritzing a little butter spray on regular frozen corn.

 

In addition to the mixed veggie blends, I greatly enjoy the bags with roasted potatoes in along with the veggies. They’re slightly more indulgent as a side dish, so portion the main accordingly.

 

And hey — if you’re looking for a filling frozen meal without a ton of calories, try making any of the pasta and vegetable blends your main dish. It’s like easy pasta primavera.

 

What I love about these bags is that they combine indulgent flavors with amazingly low calorie counts, so you don’t have to feel at all guilty about eating as much of the side dish as you want. Mmmmm!

 

Pickled Salad

Dinner here almost always requires a salad. I cook almost every evening, and I suppose my creativity is not always rainbows and milky ways, so it’s generally bowls of bagged lettuce along with whatever’s still around (tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, radishes, etc.) and my mustard vinaigrette that grace our table.

A lettuce shortage in the apartment? Time to try something different (um, finally)!

Right now, dill is my new favorite flavor to experiment with. Of course, it’s a natural fit with cucumber pickles.

By the way, have you ever had fresh refrigerator pickles? A-maz-ing.

I took the idea of refrigerator pickles and mashed it up with cucumber-tomato-onion salad. Letting it sit a while turned it into a dish with that sort of lip-smacking sourness.

Pickles. Yum.

Pickled Salad
Source: Colleen Fischer
Yield: 2 servings

• 1 seedless cucumber
• 1 globe tomato
• ½ medium onion
• ½ teaspoon dill
• salt
• pepper
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons olive oil

Slice the cucumber in half lengthwise, then halve each half lengthwise. Cut the quarters into a chunky dice. Add to bowl. Core and dice the tomato, and then add to the bowl with the cucumbers. Divide the onion piece in half lengthwise. Slice it widthwise into small quarter-moons. Add to the mix.

Sprinkle the vegetables with dill and add salt and pepper to taste. Add vinegar and toss to distribute the vinegar and seasonings throughout the vegetables. Add the oil and toss again.

Allow the salad to sit for at least half an hour so the vinegar can penetrate the vegetables. Serve.

Download Pickled Salad into MacGourmet.