Smart Tips: Shopping for vegetables and fruits

10 Tips: Liven Up Your Meals with Vegetables and Fruits 

Discover the many benefits of adding vegetables and fruits to your meals. They are low in fat and calories, while providing fiber and other key nutrients. Most Americans should eat more than 3 cups — and for some, up to 6 cups — of vegetables and fruits each day. Vegetables and fruits don’t just add nutrition to meals. They can also add color, flavor, and texture. Explore these creative ways to bring healthy foods to your table. 

1. Fire up the grill
   Use the grill to cook vegetables and fruits. Try grilling mushrooms, carrots, peppers, or potatoes on a kabob skewer. Brush with oil to keep them from drying out. Grilled fruits like peaches, pineapple, or mangoes add great flavor to a cookout.

2. Expand the flavor of your casseroles
   Mix vegetables such as sauteed onions, peas, pinto beans, or tomatoes into your favorite dish for that extra flavor.

3. Planning something Italian? 
   Add extra vegetables to your pasta dish. Slip some peppers, spinach, red beans, onions, or cherry tomatoes into your traditional tomato sauce. Vegetables provide texture and low-calorie bulk that satisfies.

4. Get creative with your salad
   Toss in shredded carrots, strawberries, spinach, watercress, orange segments, or sweet peas for a flavorful, fun salad.

5. Salad bars aren’t just for salads
   Try eating sliced fruit from the salad bar as your dessert when dining out. This will help you avoid any baked desserts that are high in calories.

6. Get in on the stir-frying fun
   Try something new! Stir-fry your veggies — like broccoli, carrots, sugar snap peas, mushrooms, or green beans — for a quick-and-easy addition to any meal.

7. Add them to your sandwiches
   Whether it is a sandwich or wrap, vegetables make great additions to  both. Try sliced tomatoes, romaine lettuce, or avocado on your everyday sandwich or  wrap for extra flavor.

8. Be creative with your baked goods
   Add apples, bananas, blueberries, or pears to your favorite muffin recipe for a treat.

9. Make a tasty fruit smoothie
   For dessert, blend strawberries, blueberries, or raspberries with frozen bananas and 100% fruit juice for a delicious frozen fruit smoothie.

10. Liven up an omelet
    Boost the color and flavor of your morning omelet with vegetables. Simply chop, sautée, and add them to the egg as it cooks. Try combining different vegetables, such as mushrooms, spinach, onions, or bell peppers.

Adapted from the Choosemyplate Liven up your meals with fruits and vegetables handout.

Restaurant Menus and Calories

Bathing suit friendly fruits make a very rewarding dessert - sweet, cool, nutrient rich and good for you!

 Calorie labeling on restaurant menus and vending machines can help you make informed and healthful decisions about meals and snacks.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) new regulations requires calorie information on restaurant menu items including desserts and drinks including alcoholic beverages.  When you see the shockingly high dessert and beverage calories you will be glad that mother nature has created fruits to satisfy the sweet tooth. Read more

Calories are important in managing your weight. To achieve or maintain a healthy body weight, balance the number of calories you eat and drink with the number of calories you burn during physical activity and through your body’s metabolic processes. Consuming too many calories can contribute to a variety of health issues, such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. 

At Healthy Eating Live! strategies for healthy eating and enjoying food is what it does best! Check it out.

Fruit: Outside The Box

Sweet and Spiced Fruit Aspic

Aspic is a savory  dish in which ingredients are set into a gelatin made from a meat stock or consommé. When used in non-savory dishes it's called gelatin salad. I like to take ordinary ingredients and use them in unexpected ways. Here I take the gelatin and mix it with spices then add fruit and crushed cookies for a surprising take on a fruit salad mold. Cutting it into interesting shapes makes for an appealing presentation. Proving once again - healthy eating is fun and tasty! Enjoy!

Ingredients

2 envelopes plain gelatin

1 inch ginger

1 cinnamon stick

3 tablespoons maple syrup

2 cups water, separated

1 pear, peeled and cube ½ inch.

1 orange, sections only cut out

1 banana, small, sliced

¾ cup raspberries

4 Italian amaretti cookies

In a small bowl, soften gelatin in 1 cup of water.

In a small sauce-pan combine 1 cup of water, pear, cinnamon stick, ginger and maple syrup. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook for five minutes.  Drain the spiced liquid and add to gelatin bowl to help dissolve gelatin.

Place pear cubes in a bowl of desired shape and add orange sections, banana and raspberries. Pour dissolved gelatin in bowl and sprinkle with crushed amaretti cookies.

P.S. Save the Date: 

April 25, 2018 for a Delicious Simplicity Cooking Class: Food and More

RCTV Studios, 557 Main Street, Reading MA.

Juicy Sweet Citrus

 Citrus varieties available at local supermarkets (from right to leftstarting in back)White grapefruit, Sweeti pummelo, Navel orange, Minneola tangelos, Page tangerine, Cara cara navel, pink grapefruit, blood orange, Meyer lemon, stem and leaf Satsuma mandarins, lime, lemon, large sunburst tangerine.

On a recent grocery-shopping trip, a quick peek in the produce area revealed an amazing array of these juicy Citrus fruits – the typical standbys, oranges and grapefruits along with a whole range of others in varying colors and sizes. Such as clementine, navel oranges, tangelos halo mandarins, lemons and limes. I amusingly practiced my mantra of adding variety to meals. And in that spirit, picked up the more seasonal blood oranges, sweeti pummelo, stem and leaf Satsuma mandarins, blood oranges and page tangerines. Plus a sweeter (not as tart) lemon that resembles a tangerine and is called Meyer lemons.

Citrus fruits share a juicy characteristic but differ in their level of sweetness. There is a sharp contrast from the tartness of lemons to the sweetness of oranges and tangerines. These qualities are useful and handy in the kitchen. The less sweet are frequent flavor enhancers in both hot and cold dishes.  Lemons are staples in a myriad of cuisines. Oranges and grapefruits are often ingredients in salad and salad dressings. Enjoy them while at the peak of season!!