Most of us spend our childhood hearing “eat your veggies!” You may grow up hating vegetables or enjoy them, but you can’t deny that they’ll never be as satisfying or appetizing as a slice of pizza or a choco-chip cookie. But you also can’t deny the importance of eating more vegetables regularly, as they promote healthy aging as you grow older. Now, you don’t have to depend on boring salads to stick to your New Year’s resolution. Here are a few clever hacks for you to up your veggie intake.
Dumping Undressed Coleslaw While Cooking Dishes
It may sound weird, but this is a real game-changing hack. We often skip adding more veggies to our dishes to avoid the effort, hassle, and time of cutting different veggies uniformly. A store-bought bag of coleslaw can be your perfect rescue here. As you’ll get a variety of chopped vegetables without any added dressing, you’ll be able to add them to any dish in any form you want. Sauté them alongside your onions, celery, and carrots before adding the broth to make a soup, stir fry them with rice, or add them to your salad with the dressing of your choice. A satisfying crunch, mild flavor, and an extra punch of nutrition, all sorted!
Chopping and Bagging Veggies as Pre-Made Snacks
Changing old habits needs enough of a boost of convenience. Every time you reach over the stale bread roll or pretzel sticks in your pantry, over anything fresh and balanced, you just think about instantly satiating your hunger. So next time, just after the grocery shopping, wash, chop, and bag up a portion of your freshly-bought veggies to use as snacks afterward. That way, you’ll have slices of fresh cucumbers or carrots ready at hand to dip in your hummus and munch on, whenever you feel starving and in the mood to forage the kitchen for a snack.
Cooking Pasta in Veggies
We all have pasta recipes in store that need veggies to be added, and that’s a better habit of following instead of gobbling up just meat-based pasta dishes. But, here we’re talking about cooking your pasta not only with veggies but also in veggies. And we don’t mean vegetable stock only! Liquefy nutrient-packed veggies and greens using a good blender, keep the consistency as brothy or soupy as you want, and cook your pasta in that liquid. Add a boiled or poached egg and some grated cheese for a touch of extra fat and protein.