Mmm, veggies.

After last weeks dessert post, I felt the need to make up for it by talking about something even healthier, and sometimes just as tasty: vegetables. Why? Because I love vegetables.

No, really. I honestly love vegetables. Do you know why I love vegetables? They tend to be really good for you, high in vitamins, low in bad things (assuming you follow the dirty dozen and clean fifteen rule, or just buy them organic), and delicious! That is, vegetables can be delicious, if you cook them in delicious ways. No, this does not mean that you have to drench them in butter and salt. There are a lot of ways to make vegetables delicious, and include them in your diet, which is especially important given how many people tell me that they hardly ever eat vegetables. Enter Kate's ideas for including vegetables (and some veggie-like fruits) in your diet!

I eat vegetables every day. At least, I'm fairly sure that's true. This is pretty much just going to be a little shout-out about all the ways in which I include veggies, and why I actually enjoy eating them. So, here we go (everyone cheer, another list! My favorite! Aside from exclamation marks!):

1. Try to throw veggies into your main dishes as often as possible.
That's right, just throw 'em in there! GO DO IT RIGHT NOW. There are certain veggies that I keep around all the time, just for the purpose of adding extra veggies. Plus, they taste good! Any time I make anything with a red sauce (pasta, ravioli, gnocchi, etc) I throw handful of torn kale pieces into the water, and let it boil with the pasta for the last couple of minutes. Sometimes I add spinach, too. I add peas to cream sauces and carbonara, I add random handfuls of greens to soups. I put peppers and broccoli in curry. I find that, more often than not, these little additions actually add to the dish. They not only add nutrition, but they usually add different colors and textures, which can be nice.

2. Make veggie side dishes (but make them interesting and healthy at the same time).
Now, I know everyone knows this one. This is how most people serve vegetables, on the side of some kind of protein and some kind of starch. One big problem, though, is that people get stuck on this rule and get really bored of veggies. Don't fall into the rut, but don't discount it, either. Another big problem is that a lot of the time, people make these veggies really unhealthy in order to try and create flavor (adding butter, salt, cream, etc). There are plenty of other ways to add flavor, though, and it all involves herbs, spices, cooking method, and usually a little olive oil and vinegar. One really delicious way to eat vegetables is to roast Brussels sprouts, cipollini onions, and sweet potatoes in the oven. I also like to cook at least one bunch of rainbow chard (kale's often forgotten cousin) pretty much weekly. I just strip the stems of the leaves, chop the stems into small, even pieces, and throw them in a saute pan with some onions, garlic, about a tsp of olive oil, a little salt, red pepper flakes, nutmeg, 1/4 cup of stock, and a couple tablespoons of cider vinegar. Then I cover it and let it all soften on very low heat for about ten minutes. Take off the lid, add the leaves of the chard, torn into pieces, and let it all cook down for another five minutes or so. Add vinegar and salt to taste. SO good, and it's a side dish that tastes good with pretty much anything.


3. Make main dishes primarily out of veggies.
I make a lot of very healthy main dishes. Rachel and I pretty much follow the same rule of thumb: cook mostly vegetarian at home, and eat meat out, if we want to. This is great for us and our wallets, because humans are not actually supposed to have meat with every single meal. That being said, of course, I did just cook a pretty kick-ass cassoulet the other day with chicken, turkey bacon, white beans, and acorn squash. Anyway.
Most of the main dishes that I make are vegetarian. Since neither of us eats a lot of dairy (lactose intolerance plays a big part here), I make a ton of meals full of veggies. I also use goat cheese and beans a lot, to add protein. Another good way to add protein is to throw in chia seeds. The example I'm going to give here is one that I make pretty often, and that's pizza. Now, of course, you're all thinking that I don't actually eat healthy food. That's not actually the case, because the kind of pizza that I make always involves a very thin whole wheat crust, caramelized onions, pizza sauce, whatever squash is in season, arugula, and goat cheese. It's super versatile, and never involves mass amounts of melted cheese. I actually just made one the other day, so I'm going to show you how awesomely veggie-tastic pizza can be. Yes, I said "veggie-tastic," so feel free to slap me with a piece of pizza.

[Okay, everyone, I'm going to give you some food porn here. I actually considered making a regular post called Food Porn Fridays, because it might be a really good way to show some pictures and give some recipes from my cooking experiments that worked out. Anyway, we'll see if that happens or not. Now onto the pictures.]

Delicata squash, ready to be roasted

The aforementioned chard. Yes, I decided to put my sauteed chard on my pizza, because why not?

Onions in the process of caramelizing. Fun fact: putting caramelized onions on pizza will often make a pizza with very little cheese feel more satisfying. Another fun fact: if you add about a teaspoon of olive oil and put the pan on very low heat and cover it, you can cook down the onions until they're soft without the use of butter at all. Just uncover them when they're soft and brown them a bit using a little more olive oil, red wine vinegar, nutmeg, salt, and thyme, and they're delicious.

Partially assembled pizza: thin whole wheat crust with red sauce, caramelized onions, and squash. As a note, you can but thin organic whole wheat crust in two packs from various stores. Alternatively, there are a lot of good recipes for no-rise whole wheat crusts.

Enter chard. Yum!

I put on my sprinkling of goat cheese, and some sliced heirloom tomatoes from our garden

Top it all off with arugula, and get it ready to bake! A lot of people are skeptical about this step, but I find that it gives the pizza a very pleasant peppery flavor.

The final product, after it baked for 10 minutes (and was promptly consumed by me and Rachel. Whoops).

4. Keep veggies in your house at all times.
If you're like me, you hate wasting food, and hate throwing it away. The thing that really got me kick-started on eating veggies? Buying them from the store and keeping them in the house. When I realized that I had a bunch of chard in the fridge that I had to use up before it went bad (which rarely happens now, because I LOVE chard), I was far more likely to eat it. You don't just have to plan out a recipe that uses veggies. You can actually just buy them and keep them in the house. Odds are, if you don't shove them behind the bread and peanut butter and mustard and forget about them (and don't forget them on purpose. Remember, they're actually good for you), you will use them up. This idea also goes back to the first point on this list! You have to keep veggies in the house to be able to toss them into main dishes on a whim. I keep fresh kale, frozen kale, frozen spinach, and usually chard, in my house at all times. Sometimes it's raw, sometimes it's already in one of the dishes I made. Either way, I'm going to end up eating it.

5. Make veggies into snacks!
Like I just said, I always keep fresh green kale in my house. It's cheap, even in its organic form, and really good for you. Usually I keep one bunch to throw into main dishes on a whim, and turn one into kale chips. Kale chips, which I'm sure most of you know about by now, are delicious when done correctly and stored properly. How I make my kale chips is by pulling one bunch of kale off the stems, tearing it into pieces, tossing it in olive oil, salt, and garlic powder, and putting it in my convection oven on convection bake at 325º for ten minutes. Don't crowd it! Put it on two sheets! I also recently discovered the most magical amazing trick for keeping kale chips fresh and crispy, which I'll show you here. Seriously, it was a miracle. Cool the kale chips completely. Then, just put a layer of uncooked rice on the bottom of the Tupperware you're going to keep the chips in. The rice absorbs the moisture, keeping the chips crispy.

See the layer of rice in the bottom?

Still crispy, two days later! Then, Rachel and I proceeded to eat the entire batch.

Other veggies are good snacks too. I like to make a cucumber yogurt dip to keep in the fridge (kind of like tzatziki sauce, but better, because it has tahini and hot sauce in it). It's amazing on veggies. There are a ton of good dips and sauces out there, quite a few of them made with healthy things like nonfat organic Greek yogurt (which is a food that I like to think of as a gift from the magical yogurt god. You can replace sooo many things with it).

6. Recognize that sometimes you need to compromise (and not only count on eating green things).
I realize that sweet potatoes are starch, and most types of winter squash, such as butternut, are starchy vegetables. Don't discount them, though! I love to cook seasonally (more about that in my next post), and consequently have been using a lot of sweet potatoes and winter squash. The nice thing is that sweet potatoes and squash are full of all kinds of awesome vitamins! So use them! I've been making some pretty awesome things with these items lately: root vegetable soup, chicken and acorn squash cassoulet, sweet potato gnocchi, and a baked alaska pie with sweet potato ice cream for a friendsgiving party we had (okay, so that one isn't actually healthy). I'm also half in love with spaghetti squash. I just made a low-fat carbonara (using leftover turkey bacon from the cassoulet) and mixed in spaghetti squash instead of pasta. The result was something delicious. Anyway, realize that you can't always have green veggies, so embrace the starchy vegetables; they can turn out some pretty awesome things.

P.S. Gnocchi! The purple is purple sweet potato, simply because I thought it would add some fun color.

Three different sweet potato colors, pre-gnocchi

Rolling out/end result gnocchi. Yum!

SO, long story short, eat your veggies! Now that you know how delicious veggies are, you have no excuse not to.

Oh, and a tip that I forgot to mention in my last post, for baking...

Tip #9: Consider alternative milks
Consider using soy, almond, hemp, or other milks in place of regular milk. We already drink low fat lactose free milk in our house (lactose intolerance), but whenever a recipe calls for whole milk, I usually use soy instead. I also tend to use soy for buttermilk (I make my own by using a tbsp of lemon juice for each cup), because the consistency is more accurate to what the recipe calls for. Almond is great for this, too! Just remember that with nut milks, there is usually a bit of a flavor difference. The version of soy that I usually keep in my house is WestSoy brand Organic Unsweetened Vanilla. Unsweetened vanilla is the closest I have found to the flavor of regular milk, so it tends to work really well when I bake with it. VERY IMPORTANT, though, is to make sure that you look at the ingredients on your alternative milks and make sure that they don't have carageenan in them--carageenen is used as a thickener and stabilizer, and is all around gross and bad for you. This is why I go for WestSoy.

Speaking of baking, I have been baking up a storm lately. Or, rather, I've been cooking up a storm. Yay! My next blog post: how to shop for and eat organic food on a three school a week plus work schedule, and a $300/mo (roughly) paycheck. I'm going to create that blog post specifically per request of one of my classmates at Dominican who is having a hard time with her meals. Hopefully, it'll help! Anyway, till then!

Eat Dessert Every Day!

Not everyone knows this about me, but for the most part, I like savory flavors more than sweet ones. I'd take a piece of toast with delicious goat cheese and caramelized onions over a chocolate cookie any day. That being said, I keep dessert in my house at all times. This has actually been a subject of much debate in my house, because certain members of the house think that having dessert in the house all the time means that they will eat too much. I believe that that is incorrect. I believe that dessert is a very important part of your daily meals.

Yes, you read that right. I said daily meals. This means that I believe that you should eat dessert EVERY DAY. Well, for the most part. My reasoning behind this is that people tend to feel satisfied if they eat dessert. In fact, there's been a lot of discussion about how eating dessert every day can actually help people lose weight, because it tends to stop them from snacking after dinner. That is, if a person eats a brownie after dinner, often they will feel as though they have had a complete "set" of meals. They are less likely to then go and eat an entire bag of chips, because they already feel satisfied.

Now, I said before that I keep dessert in my house at all times. This comes with a disclaimer: I keep home made dessert in my house at all times. This means that I can make healthier versions of desserts. I know myself, and I know my wife, and I know that we're going to want something sweet after dinner. I learned a long time ago that if we try to avoid eating dessert, we will inevitably go and buy something sweet anyway, except that the something sweet that we buy on a whim is far less nutritious than something I would have made myself. So, I always keep home made desserts in the house. And you know what? I very rarely feel guilty about eating said desserts (unless, of course, I scarf down half a batch of something). This is because there are some really great methods of making desserts (and breakfast pastries, such as muffins and quick breads) healthier! I don't know if anyone's actually interested in this, but just in case you are, I'll post some of the ways in which I make my desserts and other baked goods healthier.
P.S. you can assume that all of the products that I refer to are organic, unless otherwise stated.

Tip #1: replace some flour with whole grain flour or a flour alternative
Refined flour is really not good for you. You can replace the flour in some baked goods with whole wheat flour (cup for cup). This will usually make a denser, chewier product, but it can be really great for things like breads. For lighter pastries, such as cakes, whole wheat pastry flour can be used for up to half of the required flour to great effect. I also use oat flour a lot. In my case, oat flour basically means taking rolled oats and grinding it into powder in my VitaMix. For recipes that require baking powder, I also add 2 1/2 tsp of extra baking powder per cup of oat flour. There are many other flour alternatives, too, all of which can be added up to a certain percent of the required flour. Bob's Red Mill has a really great list of the percent of the recipe that can be alternative flours, for different types. Just make sure you look at the tip at the end, about baking powder and baking soda (it's an acidity thing).

Tip #2: use sugar alternatives
 Refined sugar really isn't good for you, either. Consider adding an alternative sugar, like maple sugar, or coconut sugar. Both have a really nice rich caramel flavor. Other great options are raw honey, and agave syrup. Just keep in mind that using liquid sweeteners as sugar alternatives will alter the texture. There's also unrefined cane sugar in the bulk section at Whole Foods, and, as my Aunt Cathy recently showed me, Sucanat.

Tip #3: better yet, cut down on sugar
Whenever I make a recipe, unless it's a very delicate recipe, such as meringue, marshmallows, ice cream, souffle, etc, I like to cut out a certain amount of sugar. This can sometimes take experimenting, but I've found that you can usually cut out at least a 1/4 of the sugar in every recipe.

Tip #4: use egg whites, or flax eggs
One tip that I use fairly regularly is to replace a whole egg with two egg whites. Usually, I'll do half whole eggs, half egg whites. Or you can do the 1 tbsp flax/chia to 2 tbsp water mixture, and let it sit for fifteen minutes or so until it's become a jelly. Then you can usually use it in place of eggs in certain bakes goods.

Tip #5: use an oil substitute
Because it's fall, I've been making a lot of quick breads and muffins. A lot of this is due to the fact that I can get away with putting applesauce in everything, and it being delicious. I often like to replace 1/3-1/2 of the oil called for in the recipe with applesauce. Pumpkin and persimmon pulp can work wonders in this way, as well. Plus, delicious! Additionally, there are better oils to use than canola oil. Consider refined (if you're not big on coconut flavor) or unrefined (if you love coconut flavor) coconut oil. I even bake with olive oil fairly regularly. If you love flax seeds, like I do, you can also replace up to 1/4 cup of the required oil with ground flax seed: just to 3 tbsp of ground flax for every 1 tbsp of oil. Just know that putting flax seed into baked goods will often make it slightly chewier than the recipe would be otherwise.

Tip #6: use a butter substitute
When I say this, I do not mean margarine, because I have yet to find a margarine that isn't full of chemicals. A lot of the time what I'll do for a recipe that requires butter is do half butter, half Melt, or half butter, half organic Earth Balance (the Melt has no soy in it, and the Earth Balance does). Coconut oil can also sometimes be used, because the melting point, like butter, allows coconut oil to be solid at room temperature. Another fun tip? Olive oil solidifies in the fridge. If you pour olive oil and a little salt into a dish and put it in the fridge, you can then spread it on bread, like butter--and it's much healthier.

Tip #7: consider using cocoa powder and vanilla extract instead of chocolate
Some recipes are chocolatey. Some people love chocolate. Don't tell these people that there's no actual chocolate in a recipe--have them taste it first. Often, you can replace the chocolate in a brownie or cake recipe with cocoa powder, coconut oil, honey, and vanilla extract. Just try it! You'll see! Sometimes, you don't even need the coconut oil.

Tip #8: experiment and have fun with it!
The best thing you can do is experiment! You know what's healthy, you know what tastes good and what you like. If you have a muffin recipe that you like but would taste even better with pumpkin? Go for it! Maybe you can cut out some of the oil, too! Don't get discouraged if something doesn't work out, just keep trying. Also, realize that some fruits, such as persimmons, can be roasted into something delicious and caramelized in the oven with a very small amount of water and honey

Mmm, roasted persimmon with honey and oats

This is a very not-healthy ice cream cake I made for Rachel's birthday (yes, I make the ice cream too). I put a picture of it anyway, because it fits the "dessert" criteria, and now I'm seriously craving ice cream cake.

And that has been my dessert rant for the day. To make up for the dessert rant, I think that my next post is going to be about vegetables, and how amazing they can be. Now go, go and eat dessert!