Vegetables in Real Life
Confession: My family eats the same simple veggies on repeat
Over on my food blog, you can find many tasty vegetable side dishes. There’s Instant Pot collard greens, garlicky Instant Pot green beans and Brussels sprouts & sweet potatoes with maple-dijon dressing, to name a few.
But most nights of the week, the vegetables that show up on my dinner table are very, very basic.
Right now, with a busy life and two busy kids, quick and easy is the name of the game. Below, I share more about this in detail, but first let me answer a frequently asked question…
Do My Kids Eat Their Vegetables?
According to “food experts” I’ve done everything right.
We have a small garden at home, my kids are in a garden club at school, we go to a farmers’ market, I serve vegetables every night, my kids are exposed to lots of different foods, bla, bla, bla.
But I’d estimate that 90% of the vegetables I put on our dinner table are eaten by my husband and I.
We encourage the kids to eat vegetables, but don’t force them. No one, as far as I know, has ever started to love a certain type of food by being forced to eat it.
My kids eat vegetables here and there and somewhat unpredictably. One week they’ll eat broccoli, the next week they won’t touch it. One week, they’ll crunch on carrots before dinner, the next week they won’t.
What I’m saying is that they’re normal kids. They have the same feelings about vegetables that your kids do. They’re not happily munching on kale and fennel salads every day just because I’m a recipe developer.
Today, on the way to school I asked what their favorite vegetables are. One said “cucumbers” and the other said “strawberries.” So, there you go!
Raw Veggies for Dinner
My list of go-to vegetables isn’t full of new and exciting ideas. But sometimes we all forget the obvious and it’s good to be reminded that sliced cucumbers are a perfectly acceptable dinner vegetable.
Raw veggies are such a quick, easy and healthy side dish. Here’s what frequently shows up on my dinner table…
Raw cucumbers and carrots
Raw snap peas
Sliced avocado
Sliced fruit/fruit salad (I often serve fruit at dinner, which is probably why one of my kids thinks that strawberries are a vegetable)
Butter lettuce salad, dressing on the side. I buy the bagged butter lettuce at Trader Joes. My kids like the mild flavor and slightly crunchy texture. Right now, neither kid likes salad dressing so I always serve it on the side.
What About Cooked Vegetables?
Most often, cooked vegetables at our house means:
Roasted sweet potatoes, with cumin and smoked paprika
Roasted potatoes with Lawry’s Seasoned salt
Roasted zucchini, cauliflower, or broccoli (with olive oil and salt)
Steamed broccoli, lightly salted
Roasted bell peppers with red onion (maybe with cumin and chili powder)
Green beans, boiled very briefly (about 3 minutes, tops)
Frozen peas (one kid will only eat them frozen)
Grilled veggie skewers (onion, mushrooms, bell peppers, zucchini)
How to Add More Flavor to Veggies
Even if the vegetables you serve are very basic, you can add more flavor by serving salad dressing or a condiment on the side. I serve a lot of things “on the side” so my kids can choose to add more flavor, or not.
Ponzu (a citrusy Japanese condiment). Ponzu can be used alone or with soy sauce.
Coconut aminos (we like the Trader Joe’s version)
Glory Bowl dressing (I cut the recipe in half. Nutritional yeast is optional)
Ginger Carrot Dressing from 101 Cookbooks
Furikake (a mixture of sesame seeds, seaweeds, herbs, fish flakes, and salt)
Grated parmesan cheese
Magic salt from Boston Mamas
Dinner Last Week
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? Here’s what my crew ate last week.
Monday: Baked salmon, leftover Peewee potatoes (roasted), frozen peas
Tuesday: I found chorizo sausage in the freezer that was leftover from Christmas paella, so I sautéed the chorizo and served it with black beans, shredded cabbage, grated cheese, avocados, and both corn and flour tortillas.
Wednesday: Kefir marinated Greek chicken breasts, mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts
Thursday: Green Goddess salad with leftover chicken breast, plus boxed mac n’ cheese for the kids
Friday: I defrosted leftover pork and ricotta meatballs and served them with pasta and red sauce + steamed broccoli
Cookbooks & Reading
Vegetable Butcher by Cara Mangini is part cookbook and part how-to guide. There are lots of step-by-step photos explaining how to peel/cut/slice/prep and cook any vegetable you can think of. This would be a handy cookbook for people who get a CSA box each week filled with vegetables.
Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy is another guidebook/cookbook, with gorgeous photos of vegetables, herbs and edible flowers and lots of information. This is a cookbook to slowly page through, or to keep on your shelf so you can refer back to it periodically. Some of her recipes are a little bit fussy for family dinners, but the book is inviting and unpretentious. You can tell that Deborah Madison wants everyone to love vegetables as much as she does.
Fiction
I finished Unlikely Animals and it was a “like” for me, not a “love”. The quirky plot just seemed silly and overdone at times, trying a little too hard to be funny. However, it’s an easy, mostly enjoyable read and it was on many “best of 2022” lists, so you might want to give it a try.
While waiting for a new fiction book to arrive at the library, I’ve bravely started These Truths, A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. I’m averaging about 5 pages a night, so I should be finished by… July?
Please note that book titles in this section are Bookshop.org affiliate links. Your cost for purchasing the book is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to me and help support my work. When ordering from Bookshop.org you’ll also be supporting independent bookstores.
We’re battening down the hatches for a rainy, chilly weekend. There was even hail this morning, which was very exciting for my Southern California kids. Those snowy mountains in the background are visible on my morning walk and will likely have a lot more snow on them by Monday. Stay warm everyone!
xo,
Jenny
P.S. Have you downloaded the Substack app on your phone yet? It’s my preferred way of reading Substack newsletters. Otherwise, they get lost in my inbox. You can get the app here.