LOVE Yourself, LOVE Your Vegetables!

As nutrition and food experts have been telling us for some time, if we want to build healthy eating habits, we need to work more fruits and vegetables into our diets.   Easy to say--hard to do--if you didn’t grow up eating a lot of vegetables, you don’t know how to cook vegetables, or you don’t think you even LIKE vegetables.  Food Snob is convinced that the reason so many of us don’t like vegetables is that we don’t know how to prepare them so that they taste good. Let’s face it, no one is going to crave vegetables that are overcooked, mushy, and flavorless, but if you learn to cook them properly, vegetables can play a central and enjoyable role at your dinner table. 

For the past few years, Food Snob has served three vegetables at dinner; usually with some type of meat, poultry, or fish and a small amount of starch (potato, rice, pasta), if any.  Sometimes one of the vegetables is a salad; almost always, the vegetables are each a different color.  Eating a rainbow of colors regularly helps give your body the nutrients it needs.  “In addition to fiber, vitamins, and minerals, naturally-colored foods contain what are known as phytochemicals. These powerful nutrients are the disease-fighting substances that also give fruits and vegetables their array of colors,” says Jane Harrison, Registered Dietician, University Medical Center of Princeton. 

You may not be ready to eat three vegetables with your dinner, but you can add an additional vegetable to your meal - starting today.  It helps if you can get the vegetables on the table quickly, and if you can do something else while they are cooking.  Food Snob has the answer for you:  learn to roast your vegetables.  Roasting brings out the natural sweetness in vegetables and intensifies their natural flavors.  Unlike steamed vegetables, which are just cooked, roasted vegetables brown, caramelize, and crisp.  They are also easy to prepare, since you season them before you put them in the oven and they are ready to serve when you take them out.  They are also delicious served at room temperature.

This past winter, Food Snob has tried roasting just about every vegetable she can think of, and hasn’t found one that hasn’t stood up well to roasting.  Two weeks ago, she started roasting green beans—what a fantastic result!  The beans were tender crisp, slightly blistered and charred on the outside, and full of sweet flavor.  Food Snob is not sure she is ever going to steam green beans again.

For most small vegetables, like asparagus or green beans, Food Snob likes to roast at 500 degrees.  Food Snob has used both her oven and her toaster oven for this purpose.  Small toaster or convection ovens work well in the summer when you don’t want to heat up your kitchen.

Roasted vegetables require only three ingredients in addition to the vegetable you plan to roast, and you have three of them in your house right now: a small amount of olive oil, kosher salt, and fresh ground pepper.  EVERY vegetable Food Snob has roasted has come to life with just these simple ingredients.

A word about frozen vegetables:  frozen vegetables don’t roast well.  Now that markets offer a wide variety of fresh produce all year, look for good-quality vegetables on sale.  Green beans were on sale in the market this past week – in preparation for Easter.  If you have some, try this simple recipe; or file it away for summertime, when the green beans are everywhere at the farmers markets.

Roasted Green Beans – makes 4 generous servings – about 58 calories each

Ingredients

1 pound fresh green beans (look for small diameter, tender pods), stemmed,    washed and dried thoroughly

2 teaspoons olive oil

Kosher salt

Fresh ground pepper

Preparation

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Line a large jelly roll pan (11 x 15 or larger,) with foil and lightly coat with cooking spray.

Make sure the beans are THOROUGHLY DRY – vegetables will not brown if they are wet.  Place green beans in the prepared pan in one layer – don’t worry about arranging them.

Drizzle the beans with the olive oil.  Sprinkle the beans lightly with Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.  If you aren’t sure how much salt to use, start with less and taste after roasting; you can always add more if needed.

With clean hands, work the oil, salt, and pepper over the beans so that every bean is lightly coated.  Distribute the beans so that they are not stacked, but all in one layer.

Roast uncovered in preheated oven for 8 to 10 minutes.  Roasting time will vary depending on the size and freshness of the beans.  Check after 8 minutes – beans should be tender-crisp, slightly blistered and a little bit browned.  This past week, Food Snob’s green beans took 10 minutes.  Taste for seasoning; add more salt if necessary.  Serve hot or at room temperature.

Next week, Food Snob welcomes spring with massaged Kale Salad.  Kale, a vegetable high in Vitamin K and antioxidants, is often touted as the "healthiest vegetable on the planet."  Eaten raw, it makes a delicious and quick-to-fix salad. Trust me . . . .