BTW, I've noticed that most salmonella/listeria outbreaks seem to come from bagged and frozen bagged greens. I've never seen one for whole greens.
I think I won't join the challenge right now, but I do eat a lot of greens and other veggies. Some of you have commented on the challenge of fitting them in so here's how I do it.
I usually have a mid-morning snack of about half a pound of vegetables and a couple of tablespoons of hummus. Although that sounds like a mighty pile of veggies, it's actually usually a whole bell pepper, plus two or three pieces of celery. The hummus is mostly just for flavour, but I do find it makes veggies more satisfying. Sometimes I just a bit of hot sauce on the celery instead.
Our typical lunch is a large chopped salad with cooked beans on top. For the salad, we try to mix as many greens as possible. An ideal salad might begin with 2-3 kinds of lettuce (likely just one in winter since I failed to get any lettuce going for winter), and a few leaves each of collards, kale, cabbage, bok choy, sui choy, cilantro, parsley and/or spinach. We chop it really finely and typically eat it with a spoon. The beans on top are a similar mix. i usually mix all types -- black, kidney, white, navy, pinto, etc. -- and cook them with some herbs and salt. I cook them until they are softer than canned beans, which to me improves the flavour. The chopping of the salad seems to be absolutely key for me -- it's way easier to eat than big hunks of leaves, and way faster to do than ripping. Besides, cabbage doesn't rip well at all!
Dinner typically has some kind of cooked vegetables and/or a cooked vegetable main dish. There are lots of ways to put extra greens in with other vegetables. Tonight for instance I madcolcannon, sort of -- sort of because the recipe calls for butter and cream, and I just cooked chopped collards in with our potatoes, smashed up the lot with the potato masher and served them with turkey gravy and cranberry sauce. (We're about 90% vegetarian and we cooked a turkey for Christmas dinner.)
Breakfast is most often oatmeal with fruit. We sometimes have smoothies and when we do we usually sneak some greens in, but usually in the morning we eat more fruit.
Not meaning to go on and boringly on -- hoping some of you something of value here. I don't do recipes so much as I just chop things up.
I think it may be possible to eat that many leafy greens without juiciing, but I would think it would have to do with how greens reduce when cooking. So less than a half pound of greens I eat in a daily salad (and that is a large salad), but suppose you had a half pound of chard, if you cook that down (say saute in olive oil) it will not be much, given how chard cooks down. But probably the easiest way is not to use leafy greens which weigh nothing afterall but something like broccoli which actually has some weight. I don't know how advisable it is to go overboard with crucifers though as they might exacerbate thyroid issues. I probably wouldn't even mind eating a pound of lettuce and chard though
It might be more practical to have a challenge eat x (probably more than 1) pounds of vegetables a day and yea include tomatoes, bell peppers, avocados (none of which are that plentiful this time of year though), onions and garlic and leeks and fennel. But this is inventing a whole new challenge of course.
Last edited by ApatheticNoMore; 12-30-16 at 1:30pm.
Trees don't grow on money
Well, I have tried to increase to the 1 lb level each day without success. A lb of vegetables maybe but not just greens even with cutting them finer. I have made more effort to eat stir-fries with onions, mushrooms, cabbage, broccoli, etc and a daily large salad with legumes for the protein. That is what is doable for me anyway.
How is everyone else doing with this challenge?
As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
Based on some of the responses here, is half a pound of raw or cooked greens a more reachable goal?
Not part of this challange, but I eat a cabbage a week. While that is only, what, 2 lbs? It is a great Thing for the week.
I have also buying A lot of spinach and cookng it down in with an egg in the morning, in soups, in pasta dishes.
i have never had trouble consuming vegetables, the problem is in keeping butter and fatty stuff off them.
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