February 16, 2017
Fruit:
- Eat it seasonally. Local fruit that is in season tastes better than any other food you can ingest. Freezing local, seasonal berries are a great way to enjoy them in the middle of the winter.
- Grab a piece of fruit when you have a craving for something sweet. Due to Mother Nature’s intelligence, eating a piece of whole fruit will satisfy your sweet craving without spiking your blood sugar (which makes you crave more sweets.)
- Leave fresh fruit in a bowl on the kitchen counter or table. Just seeing it will remind you to eat some.
- If you enjoy fruit salad, then make up a large one and eat it over several days. Use fresh lemon juice to keep it from browning. It is best to add bananas as you eat it, because they go mushy pretty quickly. And the fruit salad makes a great addition to a smoothie if you made too much to enjoy before it starts to go a little mushy.
- Commit. Simply commit to eating at least one piece of fruit each day. Make it part of your routine.
- Use fruit as snacks when you travel. Again Mother Nature scores; most fruit is packaged naturally ready to travel.
- Go for variety. There are so many types of fruit available, try something you have never tried before. Mangoes, kiwis, dragon fruit, are all delicious and are usually available year-round. Of course, fruit tastes best right off the tree, so a trip to Mexico in the winter is the best way to enjoy a mango.
- Blend Fruit smoothies are simple to make, just throw your favourites in the blender with some water or ice. You don’t need fancy or expensive protein powders or even any kind of milk. Just whole fruit and a little water or ice.
- Add fruit to your green salads. Adding berries, apple/pear/peach slices, or orange segments to a salad adds a level of freshness to you salad. Use raisins and other dried fruit sparingly as they are really concentrated forms of sugar. And it is best to avoid dried cranberries altogether as they contain a great deal of added sugar.
- Spice it up. Cut up an apple into slices and sprinkle cinnamon on it. The cinnamon is a wonderful flavor complement to the apple and it has two major benefits, it helps to regulate your blood sugar AND it hides the natural browning of the apple.
- Dip it in chocolate. Okay, so this may not be the healthiest of all the options, but it is definitely my favourite. Use a good quality dark chocolate (70% or more) to keep this on the healthy side of the line.
- Peanut (or almond) butter and banana. Do I really need to say anymore?
Veggies:
- Add veggies to your breakfast.
- Lightly sauté some leeks in coconut or olive oil then add eggs and scramble it all up. Eggs and leeks….yummm! Throw some fresh spinach on the plate and put the eggs on top for an added boost of morning greens.
- Make a breakfast skillet. Sauté onions, garlic, sweet potato, kale, spinach, zucchini, tomatoes, and anything else you like. Poach some eggs. Serve the eggs on top of the cooked veggies.
- Add raw spinach to a fruit smoothie. I know….oh yuck! But trust me. If you add spinach to a fruit smoothie that has blueberries in it, then you won’t even see or taste the spinach.
- Be creative with your salads. You can add any veggie you want to a salad. There are times when I want a salad but do not have any lettuce, so I cut up some cabbage, add some carrot, some kale, some nuts and seeds, and voila – an out of the ordinary salad.
- Roast your veggies. There is something about roasted veggies, especially in the winter that is so satisfying. Wash, peel (optional), and cut up your veggies of choice (sweet potato, squash of any kind, carrots, parsnips, cauliflower, onions, zucchini). Toss them in a heat safe oil (coconut, avocado, ghee), spread on a baking pan or dish, season with whatever spices you like, although sometimes salt and pepper are just perfect, and then bake in the oven until things are soft. If you want to mix veggies with different cooking time, then start with the really dense veggies first and then add the softer veggies part way through.
- Cut up raw veggies and snack on them while you are cooking dinner. This was a trick I learned with my daughter. I would cut up some veggies and given them to her while I was making dinner. She would snack on them while waiting for dinner and then the pressure was off at dinner-time. She has already eaten her veggies.
- Make soup. Buying a really good soup either at a restaurant or store is getting very hard to find. Luckily, homemade soup is easy and inexpensive to make. Good quality broth is a must, and making your own is easy once you get the hang of it. Start with your broth and then just add veggies. Add your favourites, or the ones that are going a little soft in the fridge, or your leftover roasted veggies. Adding tomatoes always adds a nice depth of flavor. Meat is optional. Use spices to add flavor rather than overload on salt. A little sea salt is necessary, but don’t rely on salt alone for flavor. Fresh ginger can add a real kick to your soups. Throw in some turmeric to colour a pale broth. The flavor is mild and the nutritional benefits are incredible.
- Invest in a spiralizer and make noodles from veggies. Zucchini, butternut squash, sweet potato, all make amazing noodles. Sauté the veggie noodles until they are soft and then top with your favourite sauce. You can get an inexpensive spiralizer for under $30.
- Add them into muffins or cookies. Yes, cookies. Pumpkin-carrot-walnut-chocolate chunk cookies. Pumpkin is an amazing ingredient for muffins and cookies. It keeps everything moist and adds some sweetness without much sugar, and provides fiber to hold things together (and for your health.)
- Get creative with cauliflower. Throw it in the food processor to make cauliflower rice. Steam it and mash it in place of mashed potatoes. I even have a recipe to bake it into a gluten-free flatbread or pizza crust.
- Puree veggies and hide them in other things. Add pureed spinach to tomato sauce, or pureed cauliflower to cheese/cream sauce. Check out The Sneaky Chef (https://www.thesneakychef.com/) for lots of great ideas and recipes.
