Author Topic: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day  (Read 39441 times)

Serendip

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2208
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #200 on: November 22, 2018, 08:33:50 PM »
Papaya & turmeric root in my breakfast oatmeal
Lentil soup with roasted veggies for lunch
Rice/beans with broccoli & spinach for dinner
Success!

Serendip

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2208
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #201 on: November 25, 2018, 11:01:16 AM »
Yesterday: wild berries in my oatmeal
-lunch: avocado on toast
-dinner: veggie spring rolls with mint, red pepper, cucumber, lime

*need to roast more veggies tomorrow as that seems to be the easiest way for me to up my veggie intake. Also, greens--will buy some bok choy, broccoli and swiss chard this week. I dehydrate kale in the summer/autumn so we add handfuls of that to everything as well (into rice, soups, etc)
**this challenge is helping me add variety as well--bought some mushrooms and asian eggplant as well as some unusual peppers
« Last Edit: November 25, 2018, 11:45:53 AM by Serendip »

Kahooli

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 36
  • Age: 36
  • Location: Midwest City
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #202 on: December 05, 2018, 09:15:11 AM »
Using the oven is fun and helps heat the house in the winter, so I also roast veggies a lot when the temperature drops.
Last night I roasted 1lb of trimmed, halved brussels sprouts in oil salt and pepper. I then cooked them into a hash with 4 eggs, garlic, some crumbled leftover bacon, and topped it with some parm.

HappierAtHome

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8015
  • Location: Australia
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #203 on: December 21, 2018, 11:35:00 PM »
Bumping the thread because I think at this time of year, eating enough veges can be a lovely form of self-care to balance out all the rich food.

Tomorrow I'll be making a red curry with potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, peas and red capsicum. And tofu ;-)

Moonwaves

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1940
  • Location: Germany
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #204 on: January 02, 2019, 07:48:44 AM »
Still haven't caught up on the start of this thread but aiming to start this year off better than last. I mostly aimed to finish last year better than it started but a few days in Ireland with little to no control over food meant realising once more that far more meals are far less balanced than one would hope. Still, at the two meals I ate out, I made decent choices considering what was on the menu, I think. Once bruschetta (which came with a big helping of rocket, not my favourite but at least something green in a sea of very brown/beige days) and sweet potato fries and the other with a salad as a starter of a two-course meal instead of going for a dessert. Mind you, the salad was enormous so I left behind most of the chicken and mostly just ate the salady-bits.

Anyway, have watched Consumed over the christmas, I was inspired yesterday to rearrange my kitchen cupboards somewhat. It's all about the optimal use of the space you have! I have one big, deep press that I had been using for tins and jars but stuff was just so hard to find. So I've moved all of that over to the smaller cupboard and moved the Tupperware with dried stuff in it into the big cupboard. Slightly easier to move around plastic containers to find what I want and I generally know exactly what stuff I have in Tupperware so it's less likely anything will get "lost". I threw out a couple of things yesterday that were a few years past the BB date and discovered several things that are very close to or just past their BB date. Now that I have things a bit more sorted, I know exactly what needs to be used up quickly. So, there's a good bit of pesto on the menu for the next couple of weeks.

After all that yesterday, I was very happy with my dinner of boiled potatoes, steamed salmon, with a third of a big jar of red cabbage, and a portion of tomatoes, onion and courgette that I dragged out of the freezer. Had quark with mandarins (half of a tin just past it's date) this morning and will have the same again tomorrow. Leftover potatoes, salmon and another third of the jar of cabbage was lunch and I'm making a butternut squash and beef curry this evening. Might not make it to 5 full servings of veg but my main aim is to achieve the 50% veg or salad/25% carbs/25% protein recommended by my dietician. So, will add loads of onion to the curry and throw in one of the tins of carrots and peas I found in the cupboard yesterday. Might see if there are some greens to be had in the shop when passing on my way home. Wilting a couple of handfuls of spinach or similar into a curry has become one of my favourite ways to try and up the veggie content of a meal.

Any ideas of how I can veggie up a chicken pesto dish? I think I have some broccoli in the freezer and I suppose I can add some onion and leek to the pan.


Serendip

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2208
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #205 on: January 02, 2019, 10:23:24 AM »
@Moonwaves, broccoli is definitely a good call with pesto, as is steamed spinch or asparagus

We had a fondue for NY eve dinner--cheese & bread but also included about 8 veggie options so it felt more balanced. Dipping veggies in cheese is decadent but fitting for NY :)
Then a breakfast brunch with friends yesterday, started with a big fruit salad, then frittata with peppers/onions, then served with arugula, tomato shakshuka sauce & yam/cashew dip.

Now, I am looking forward to simple meals (eating out the pantry basics with veggies on top of everything!)

HappierAtHome

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8015
  • Location: Australia
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #206 on: January 02, 2019, 06:10:32 PM »
First day back at work after the Christmas break and I'm back on board with a big tub of vege and tofu curry for lunch.

Moonwaves

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1940
  • Location: Germany
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #207 on: January 03, 2019, 02:23:27 AM »
My curry wasn't as tasty as it could have been but has potential for tweaking. It was actually a recipe for a quick massaman curry, where you add already cooked potatoes and use minute steak pieces. But I could only get stewing beef pieces and was substituting uncooked butternut squash for the potato. So I added water and cooked it for a bit longer. Still good, but the flavour was a bit diluted. I made things worse by deciding to cook rice in the same pot, which meant adding a bit more water. Only having one pot to clean was worth it though. And all told I used almost 1.4kg of veg (butternut squash, onion, leek, kohlrabi and a small tin of peas and carrots) for what turned out to be 5 good-sized portions.

If a standard serve size (as per Australian guidelines mentioned at start of this thread) is 75g then each portion of my curry is about 3.5 servings. That's not bad, actually. Along with the cabbage from lunch, I may have just about reached my 5 a day.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2019, 02:26:28 AM by Moonwaves »

Serendip

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2208
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #208 on: January 09, 2019, 08:35:24 PM »
Tried to veg-up some Liptons chicken noodle soup (due to a lingering cough)--added fresh ginger, hot chilis, tomato and broccoli.. Much better.

Have been topping everything with roasted sweet potato & we have pots of veggie chili as well as lentil/coconut/spinach soup in the fridge.
Feels like adding veg to anything I might be eating is the sure-fire way to use things up from the fridge as well as getting a hit of nutrients.

Moonwaves

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1940
  • Location: Germany
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #209 on: January 14, 2019, 10:59:43 AM »
Made a lentil and chicken stew yesterday and it is fab. Smoked paprika makes everything taste good. Used a total of 1,260g veg (mostly tomatoes - one tin and one carton of passata - but also onions, carrots, and mushrooms) and will get six portions out of it, I think. Had the first for dinner on the run this evening and it is really good. I'm feeling very impressed with myself. I also made pumpkin soup so along with the last two portions of veg soup from last week, I have a fridge full of just-needs-to-heated-up food to see me through this very busy week.

Moonwaves

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1940
  • Location: Germany
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #210 on: January 27, 2019, 12:53:23 PM »
So, last week's pumpkin soup was a bit meh so I added a half a tin of coconut milk, an already cooked chicken breast chopped into bits and a couple of spoonfuls of Thai green curry paste. So much better. Threw some rice into the last portion of it to bulk it up a bit and that was great, too.

This weekend I bought a Savoy cabbage. Half of it is cooking now so that I can use some of it to make colcannon tomorrow - potatoes are peeled and waiting so all I'll have to do when I get home from the gym tomorrow evening is to boil and mash them. The other half of it went into a cabbage soup, the recipe for which I found in an old book I bought a few years ago, Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. Basically cabbage, onions and apples with some garlic and ginger. It's lovely, although I'd use less stock next time to get a slightly thicker soup.

I've also made pulled pork today in the slow cooker and instead of just doing it on bed of onions, the way I've always done it before, I used onions, 2 leeks and a kohlrabi (and added the leaves of the kohrabi to my scrambled eggs today and felt very virtuous). There's an onion and a tin of tomatoes in the braising liquid, too. I'm really looking forward to my lunches this week.

How is everyone else doing?

brooklynmoney

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 707
  • Location: Crooklyn
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #211 on: January 27, 2019, 01:00:54 PM »
I apparently just bought a Japanese yam instead of a regular sweet potato. I am going to mash them with coconut oil. Not sure if anyone else has experience with them.

Anatidae V

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7626
  • Age: 34
  • Location: Fourecks
  • Nullus Anxietas
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #212 on: January 27, 2019, 02:37:55 PM »
I chucked a big handful of salad leaves over my bolognaise and mixed it in as I ate. Having prepped vegetables on hand is definitely making a difference.

Moonwaves

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1940
  • Location: Germany
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #213 on: January 31, 2019, 04:00:46 AM »
I apparently just bought a Japanese yam instead of a regular sweet potato. I am going to mash them with coconut oil. Not sure if anyone else has experience with them.
How was the yam? I've just read this article on the difference between sweet potatoes and yam and then the wikipedia entry on yams. All of which would have left me, if I had just bought a yam by mistake, thinking I might just have cornflakes for dinner.

I have been doing pretty well eating the cabbage soup and pulled pork I made at the weekend. I made colcannon on Monday evening to go with the pork and then last night, even though I was a bit wrecked by the time I got home, I made potato cakes with the leftover colcannon and then heated up some pulled pork and cabbage to go with it. For good measure, I added a handful of salad leaves - you're absolutely right Anatidae, having that prepped and on hand made it much easier. I thought I was getting a bit sick of eating the same couple of things and was going to just get canteen food for lunch but last night's dinner was actually delicious and this morning I ended up just assembling the leftover potato cakes, some pulled pork, some cabbage and the rest of the salad into Tupperware and it will be today's lunch.

There's still a portion of cabbage left and I also have half-a-tin of coconut milk that needs to be used up. I may throw those two in a pan together this evening, add a couple of handfuls of green beans from the freezer and some curry paste and whatever else I can scrounge up and that will be dinner.

Also need to come up with a good plan for next week. Have lots of choir things going on both this weekend, most nights next week and then the concerts next weekend. I was thinking of going old-school with good old ham and cheese sandwiches for a lot of the week. Maybe I'll find time to make soup at the weekend and cover some veg intake that way. A minimum of washing-up is actually what I'm looking for as if I'm home late every evening, I won't want to do it, and if it builds up without me doing it, it can lead to me not wanting to be in the kitchen at all, which isn't great for cooking efforts.

brooklynmoney

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 707
  • Location: Crooklyn
Re: Eat 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit a day
« Reply #214 on: February 15, 2019, 09:27:28 PM »
If they were in fact Japanese yams they were amazing. I made them like mashed potatoes with coconut oil and coconut milk and they were seriously fantastic.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!