Fruit, veggie tips & tricks
My first breakfast of the day before yoga class: 1/2 cup grape-nuts, 1/2 cup fat free lactose free milk, peaches and coffee. (After yoga I will likely have a poached egg, turkey bacon and toast. Oh, and another cup of coffee.)
I have recently gotten into eating grape-nuts. Funny, I hated them as a kid. (My brother and I weren’t allowed to eat a lot of sugary cereals.)
Grape-nuts are crunchy, yummy, filing, healthy and have some fiber and protein.
But that’s not really what this post is about.
Over the summer I was eating my grape-nuts with about a half sliced up nectarine. Perfect combo!
But sadly summer fruits are disappearing …
A tip I learned when attending Weight Watchers meetings was you could use canned fruit and just rinse the syrup out so you were just eating fruit and none of that yummy sugary syrup. Yes, that is the best part, but the unhealthy part.
So this morning at the grocery I bought the little snack packs of peaches. I rinsed one out and added it to my cereal. Not quite as good as the fresh nectarine. But good enough.
As I was thinking about this I was thinking about some other quick, easy fruit/veggie food tips I have learned along the way, either from trying something or from advice from someone else:
- Slightly slimy mushrooms can be made “fresh” by peeling the first layer off. (Tip from mother-in-law)
- Slightly slimy mushrooms can be made “fresh” by peeling one or two layers off. (Figured that out last night when I discovered my neglected zucchinis)
- Don’t want to cry while cutting an onion? Put it in the freezer for 10 minutes before time to chop. (Learned that at work offsite team building cooking event)
- Not so firm apples: can be baked into a dessert (I sprinkled with a little Splenda brown sugar and topped with a small scoop of ice cream and sprinkled cinnamon); can be juiced; can be thrown into carrot soup recipe I regularly make, which calls for an apple
- Slightly gross spinach can be steamed (made it last night–Yum!)
- Various limp or “almost dead” veggies can be juiced, sautéed (done this with my tomatoes many times) or thrown into a soup.
Sometimes you can’t rectify the slimy, moldy veggies. At that point, just compost them.
I know I have other ideas and things I do regularly. But at the moment, that’s what I have come up with. Most of my cooking knowledge has come from my mom (and more recently from my dad and mother-in-law as well).
Any other tips or tricks my readers want to share?