Healthy cooking in the college world: veggie meals

Adding veggies to your diet is completely the fastest, easiest way to make it overall more healthy. The trick is not getting bored with whatever you're doing. There are 4 main ways I prepare vegetables by themselves, as well as trying to add them to recipes whenever possible: salads, stir fry, steaming, and soups. Oh, and just eating them raw is always good :) All of these are very flexible, and can work with many types of veggies, depending on what's on sale. All but steaming can also make the main dish of the meal if you're going vegetarian for that meal.

Salads:
Salads are great either with a leafy base or not. Spinach is probably the healthiest green leaf, but any type of lettuce or cabbage are good, and will give different flavors to the salads. Pretty much any vegetable that can be eaten raw is good on a salad. Just chop it up fine enough to eat easily. The traditional ones are sweet peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, and carrots. Other fun ones are celery, broccoli, zucchini, summer squash, onions (red or green have the most flavor). Nuts are really good on salads, especially sliced almonds and walnut or pecan halves. Fruit can be good: I like sliced strawberries, mandarin oranges, raisins, and dried cranberries. Chicken, fish, black beans, and couscous are also really good to make a salad a satisfying meal in itself. The dressings are also important. I really only eat a few kinds though: I like ranch on salads with mostly vegetables. I like a sweeter sauce like a ginger poppyseed for salads with fruits or nuts. I really like balsamic vinegar in salads with couscous and black beans. That's one of my favorite salads right now!

Salads and raw veggies are definitely the easiest way to take veggies along in a packed lunch. Just remember that both tomatoes and dressings will make some the lettuce and delicate veggies like mushrooms wilt during the day.

Stir Fry:
Again, many veggies can go into a stir fry. My favorites are sweet peppers, carrots, and broccoli. Also good are mushrooms, asparagus, tomatoes, onions and zucchini. Any veggie that will keep its crispness is good. Veggies like mushrooms, tomatoes, and zucchini should be added in near the end if you don't like them soft. Chicken goes really well in a saute for a more solid meal. Sauteed veggies also go over rice really well, although they are then better with a little bit of a sauce. I usually saute them with olive oil. Lemon juice or soy sauce taste good with some types. A lot of the more savory spices also go well, especially basil. There's a lot of good recipes on the internet if you don't want to just experiment.

Steamed:
There are two ways to steam veggies (3 if you count the microwave). You can put them in a pot with a steamer (which doesn't cost very much, and you can get it from target) or in a pot with the bottom layer of veggies half covered. You can also steam them in the oven. Steaming on the stove is usual for veggies that are in bite size pieces beforehand, such as broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and asparagus. Steaming in the oven I mostly use for cooking squash. Steamed acorn squash is great by itself or with butter, or a brown sugar sauce. Steamed spaghetti squash makes a great substitute for pasta in recipes! Its actually really easy to make, too! I sometimes put a parmesan alfredo sauce with veggies that were steamed on the stove, as well. In some later post I will detail how to make an alfredo sauce, but you can also just buy it in a jar from the store.

Soups:
I will just briefly explain veggie soups here, and save the full amazingness of soups for a later post. Veggies soups are made with a chicken or vegetable stock as the base and adding veggies to that. I like a lot of veggies in soups, including carrots, celery (the leaves are actually really good too), tomatoes, potatoes, turnips, and onions. The ratio of liquid to veggies is totally up to you, I'd start half and half. If you want it thinner then add more liquid, if you want it thicker than either let some of it boil off, or cook your potatoes longer. both potatoes and turnips will start disintegrating as they cook, making the soup thicker. To make a veggie stew that is a whole meal, add some beans or lentils. Lentils only take 15-20 minutes to cook, usually, and beans can either be pre-cooked, or used from a can to keep the time down. Many spices and flavors go well in soups. The taste of the stock can be good on its own, otherwise add any set of spices that smells good at the time, or add tomato puree for a tomato-y soup :) The biggest trick with soups is knowing the cooking times of the different ingredients, so that you add them in a staggered fashion to allow all to cook the right amount without getting over-done. To avoid this, and to make the soup-making faster, you can saute the veggies before-hand and just add them all together and simmer for a short while. Using the normal method, it usually takes me 20 to 40 minutes to make a vegetable soup.


As you can see, the more flexible and experimental you are with your meals, the longer it takes for each type to get boring :)