39: 10 Simple Ways To Eat More Vegetables Every Day And Enjoy It

0:00 You're sick and tired of being sick and tired, you want to have energy. You want to feel great on a daily basis and not have to fight each and every moment just to stay alert, awake, and to have enough energy to do the things you want to do. You know, you're not getting enough vegetables in your life, and you think that might be the cause of it all. If that sounds like you, you don't want to miss this episode, because today, we're sharing with you our favorite 10 easy ways to get more delicious veggies into your life. You're listening to the smarter Healthy Living podcast where we firmly believe that getting healthy should never feel like torture. We're your host, Jared and Anita Roussel were college sweethearts, and health professionals who help you redefine what getting healthy looks like using a whole food plant based lifestyle. It's time to hear from the experts and learn the best tips and tricks that helped others get beyond the overwhelm, to create a vibrant life they love. If you're sick and tired of being sick, and tired, you're in the right place. So pull up a virtual chair, grab your matcha latte. And let's get started.

1:10 You know, it may sound really simple, that you're having all these different issues, could it possibly be the food that you're eating this behind the low energy, the aching, and the pains that you have in your joints, we're just trained to believe it has to be something major, something big that's causing all this. And it is something big. But it's also often something very simple. The fact that your body is crying out trying to give you a sign, and we need to learn to listen to our bodies. When you start to do that you start to recognize patterns. And a lot of times what it's trying to tell you is you're not eating your veggies, you're not giving me the fuel that I need to be able to do the things that you want me to do on a daily basis. And it's just exhausted.

1:57 What I find is that so many times the answer is simpler than what I expect. And also much closer than what I expect. And that's totally the case with whole food plant based living. Because it was right there. It was in our pantry. It was in our fridge. But we didn't know it. Well, it could have been. But I know for us, though, that we had the vegetables. Yeah, but we weren't eating them the way that we should have. Yeah, not as quantity that we should have absolutely not as many because we think about them kind of more like a condiment. Like it's a little bit of ketchup or a little bit of mustard. It's a little side of veggies. And then I told myself, hey, I've had my veggies for the day and doing so great. And I kind of on the back get a little goldstar Yeah.

2:42 No, we're nice near the amount that my body required. Just saying, well, I got my little token bit of whatever on the side of the big. Yeah. Like my little token, what what would it be corn piece of corn on the cob or my little token side salad, something like that. And really the fruits and the vegetables, the grain select games, they need to be the main things on your food, the star of the show, star of the show, and quarterback, and you know, the study show. And I'm sure you'll probably remember a little bit more about this. And I will bet talking to Jared. But I think you know, the studies, as I recall, show that even if you don't stop doing the other things that you're doing, if you just add in more vegetables, by nature that kind of beats out or pushes to the side, the things that you're eating that are sabotaging your health, well, you will just because you only have so much room in your stomach.

3:41 Exactly. And not only that the foods that are filled with fiber, it's the plant feeds right there with fiber, because animal feeds have no fiber, they're not filling and you leave the table hungry. And you wonder why? Well, the plant feeds fill you up. They're much lower calorie by nature, that's just how they were created. That's because that's what our body needs, right. And so when you eat the plant foods, you feel full sinner. And so all of a sudden, you tend to feel full longer. Because that fiber doesn't digest right away, it takes a while it's a process to digest it. So you're more satisfied for a longer period of time. And so when you start eating the vegetables, and more and more of them over time, you just don't have room on your plate for the other stuff.

4:25 Because then your tastebuds start to change. And all these other things start happening, some of which we talked about quite a bit, you can go back and listen to the other episodes because we've talked one by one about these things that happen to your body. As you start getting more these things and you're not having to force yourself to eat this way. You don't want to die it you feel kind of forced, like, well, I can't do this and have to do that. And you start enjoying these foods so much. It's what you look forward to. I mean, I've even shared about how I was a huge pasta fan. And now I'd much rather have more veggies Then the pasta, I'd rather have the sauce that's loaded up with vegetables and games and things like that. All right, be honest, there are times when you'd rather just have a big bowl of sauce with the spoon. But the funny thing is, though, is that the pasta sauce that we have, it has tomato, and it has lentil to give it that that denser texture to replace the meat, it's almost like a stew was less awesome.

5:26 More like a stew. It's loaded with vegetables. I mean, it's like, I call it like a bowl in a sauce. I don't even know I'm probably not even pronouncing it completely correctly. It's just basically it's normally loaded with meat. And we instead load it with vegetables and lentils. So I'm putting onions and garlic and all kinds of different bell peppers, and you name it, it can be in there. I mean, I've put cauliflower before carrots. What else the lentils we said, it's just a reloaded, I mean, anything you can think of you can do eggplant and chop it very small. And so it's this. It's almost like this meaty texture.

6:06 And it's delicious. And I mean, I could eat it by the plateful and it's wonderful unposted. But again, you're craving is changed, you learn to listen to your body, your taste buds change. And before long, these are the things that you want more, and it just becomes easier and easier to eat them. Because that isn't that's now your preference. It's not like somebody is forcing you to do this on a diet because if you don't do this craving, you're gonna come to weigh in at your meeting and all of a sudden, you're so discouraged. And the whole meeting all you can think about is how the pounds have gone up or they haven't changed at all feel like you failed. Yeah, and you feel like a failure. And there's no reason to keep doing that to yourself. Because eating this way is life giving it is literally life giving it has changed our life changed the lives of our clients in so many other people around the world. So today we're gonna share the 10 simple ways to get more vegetables into your life.

7:01 That's easy and enjoyable too. Although I think you may have just given a bonus when talking about the Boland A's because that I don't believe that was one of the ones that we had considered. But that is a good way to get a lot of veggies in. right cuz you're not just doing meat with tomato sauce. You're doing the tomato with a ton of other veggies in it. So absolutely. All right, she's in there. Number one, you can start your day with them so many times this gets overlooked that a lot of times with breakfast foods people think of cereal, milk or in the case of this plant milk, and that's about it. Maybe some toast maybe a little jelly, biscuits, gravy, bacon eggs. Well, traditional diet, yes.

7:44 But in this way of eating I think some people will do they might branch out and do avocado toast which is a great thing to do love it. But avocado is more of a fruit it's considered more like a fruit although it's not sweet. Typically, it's considering technical science here. So we're talking about other vegetables so get a tofu scramble going crowd it's one of our favorite ways so good scrambled scramble scramble the Thai food that is scramble and crumble at the same time. We've just created a new word and you know my legs crumble. You can tell he knows my language. Yeah, so tofu scramble. So what you do is you just crumble it up not really tiny but just till it's in the form of an egg that you would normally eat. Like if you like them a little bit smaller, do them a little smaller, I always say a little bit larger than you like when you break it up there because as you stir it in with your vegetables, they will break up some you want to use a firm Thai food, maybe even extra firm tofu. Put it in your pan with some veggies that you've already sauteed So actually, you would start with a veggie saute, throw in vegetables if you're in a hurry, use chopped frozen veggies, it's fine use green pepper. The color bell peppers she use any vegetable you can use carrots, onions produce some corn, maybe some fresh or frozen corn that's probably gonna be more readily available.

9:06 Listen, we've even thrown legumes in with us I know it's not a vegetable but you can do that. And then put your tofu in. A lot of people add tumeric it gives it that color that Aggie color and and I have a sauce that I make it's got some nuts in it and I'll do that or if you don't use nuts you can do like chia seed or flax seed for that and it gives it more of that creamy texture, but traditionally it's just some cumin and then all those spices, any spices really that you want. So you scramble up your tofu with the load of veggies that you've already sauteed in your pan no oil do not use oil when you saute your veggies You do not need it. If they go a little try just add a very small amount of water. Alright, so then you could take that tofu scramble if you don't want to eat it plain, wrap it up in a wrap.

9:57 So you have a veggie burrito flower morteus burrito a veggie breakfast burrito? Exactly. So flour tortilla corn tortilla, however you enjoy it, or why don't have a bowl of savory out, you know, we always think about sweet cereals or sweet It's loaded with sugar syrup. Which we don't use any more because you start reading the ingredients on that. And that is something and but you can still make out like that but think outside the box. So I think about a savory oats. How would you do a savory oatmeal, you could easily chop up greens very fine and cook them in with your outs. They'll get soft and tender. And it's delicious. You can season it with herbs and spices, throw tons of other veggies in there, whatever you like. Think about it as more like a rice and don't make it as thin make it a little thicker with less liquid. There you have your savory, spice it up how you like if you have seasonings that you like, add those as well as in.

10:58 Yeah, make it delicious. Make it the way you like it. So that's number one. Start your day with more veggies. Number two, keep roasted veggies on hand. How do you roast veggies, you cut them up and you lay them on a pan. And usually output I don't like cleaning up mess. If you're like me, I mean, honestly, I do not like clean up mess and I don't like things to take a long time. So when we're teaching our clients, we teach them things like this, because you don't want to have all that to clean up afterwards. Nobody has time for that. So you just cut up your veggies very simply put them on the pan, whatever you want, and you do not put oil on them. Put them on parchment so you can easily clean the pan. Bake them, I usually bake them at about probably 353 75 I don't rise them really hard. I like burning them or put chopping char on my bed. So you can go ahead and just roast those and then let them cool a little bit, take them off the pan, you can use them in a ton of different dishes. I mean, anything you can think of the sky is the limit.

12:01 Now you're not going to have all those calories that were added from the oil that you might typically add. So by nature, you already have a lower calorie food. You um, the oil can also damage the lining of your blood vessels. Keep that in mind and you just don't need it. So take those vegetables, add them throughout the week and things like your grain bowls, sandwiches. They're wonderful on sandwiches. How about casseroles? Can you add them into casseroles? chili, okay, chili. We've already talked about the pasta sauce. That was an extra but what about chili, we make veggie chili and we put tons and tons of vegetables in it. I make it right in my crock pot. use dried beans, add the chili spices, add all the veggies that we like the bell peppers, the onions, the garlic, maybe some corn, you can again you can add things like broccoli and cauliflower. If you don't want the the normal part that you would use the florets. You can trim this stem and cut them up in small chunks and they will cook down in your chili and they are delicious. Don't waste those stems. They're so good for you.

13:06 That tastes delicious. And then what else can you think for this, I think the big takeaway though is having this prepared ahead of times makes it easy where you can just grab it and use it because so many times the the time aspect of having to do this is the limiting factor. If you think I'm going to do this and it's going to take me 2030 minutes, I'm just not going to bother with that. But if you batch prepare some of this and you think oh, I'm gonna make this bowl, maybe have some leftover rice and you want to make a grain bowl. And then you have these grilled veggies. Although I guess I prepare technically grilled but there are arrested birds, you just scoop him in there. Well you can toss veggies on the grill, that's an extra two you just gave him maybe you could easily do that. But I think but we do this in place of grilled. So that's why I call it grilled veggies.

13:51 Yeah. And honestly, the cheap the cheapest, quickest, easiest thing to do is to buy veggies in bulk when you can find them like that. Or if you especially if you have a farmer near you. That's amazing if you can find a farm that you can go to and buy them at the roadside stand. And then just cut those up. I'll even cut a lot of them up ahead of time, especially my color, bell peppers, put them in the freezer and then just pour them out on the pan and bake them when I'm ready and they're already cut up for me. If you don't have time for that it doesn't take long just to chop up some vegetables, get your kids in the kitchen, get them involved, help them cut get them to help you cut up the vegetables, put him on the pan, honestly, I mean I think about the days that I used to make homemade fajitas and I would stand at the stove for I don't know how long salt Tang adding sauces adding all this step. You can put vegetables and a casserole dish. Put them into your oven and bake them like you went on a sheet pan and you can plow a lot more in there and a casserole dish and honestly you put the fajita seasoning on them. Are you kidding? It's exactly the same.

14:58 It's so easy. I'm no Longer tethered to the stove. I can throw them into the oven. They're done. Grease all over the stove. The Cabinet's huge thing about not using all too. So, I mean, you can still pan saute your vegetables for fajitas and things like that without oil and eating in this way, but it made it easier, you're not having to watch it and it still collected some of that juice from the veggies on bottom. It's a total nightmare, it really I couldn't tell a difference as far as enjoyment and flavor it was, for me the same. It's the easiest way it's kind of my go to now for fajitas as well. So that's number two. Keep your roasted veggies on hand or veggies that you can chop quickly and get into the oven. It's super simple, then you can walk away, do whatever you need to do. They're done, throw them in a wrap, you're good to go. Or on your sandwich or into your grain bowls, or all those other things we just mentioned. Number three, be sure to pack soups and salads full of vegetables. What are your favorites, like what's the favorite super salad that I make this just loaded with veggies, because pretty much every soup it's gonna make Yes, veggie That's hard.

16:13 A blank, the one that comes to mind those chili just because it's so thick, and it's really more like a stew and it has just a ton of the lagoons and the veggies in it. And pretty much up there. I mean, go back and listen to our episode on grains. We talked about a million different ways. Well, not literally, but it felt like a million different ways. We shared a ton of our tips on how to use greens. So we're not talking specifically about greens today, although they do fall into the veggie category. But just pack them full. I mean, you can pick your absolute favorite vegetables, put them in your instant pot or your crock pot and let us soup simmer all day long or use the delight timer on your instant pot. I mean we make all kinds of things I even make at beef stew using jackfruit and a ton of vegetables. It's wonderful. I just use my traditional one and just tweak it a little bit to change out the ingredients to make it whole food plant base and add all the spices in there same spices and everything. And then we make soups and stews like I make a veggie chowder, a cheesy veggie chowder. It doesn't mean cheese in it, but it's amazing. And you can use things like a neck cream or things like that in there, I'm probably going to in depth but here number three, just pack that pot with soups, or pack your bowl full of veggies. Eat big salads every single day and mix it up. Don't eat the same one.

17:43 Just do lettuce and tomato add we add cabbage with lettuces. So you can mix those. We'll put beans on there, the garbanzo beans are a favorite that we add to it at fruit at fruit. I mean, you can add fruit to your salad. It's wonderful. There are tons of different things, all berries, excellent on the salad. Add chia seeds to give it a crunch or flax seeds and get your omegas that's a wonderful thing to do a salad. And number four. Number four, this has become a favorite lately too is where you can cook beans and rice together in your instant pot. But then add veggies in there as well like onions and bell peppers, garlic, and greens. Just like we were saying, I mean you can take some kale and put it in there. And before you even cook it, you just put all the veggies and pick it with your rice and beans. And they're all done together.

18:29 And it's just a one pot meal. The kids love that. Honestly, it's gotten to where they've been do that sometimes for breakfast, it's been 10 or 12 year old does it. I mean, he measures it out, puts the water puts on the lid sets it for the time and he's done. I love learning. I wake up in the morning and I smell rice and or some type of grain and beans. Because of the pressure cooker. That's what happens all of a sudden the house just smells like whatever it is you're making. And it's the most wonderful thing and it's not so easy. Honestly, a 12 year old can do it or younger. I mean, or your children child could do it really well she could the only caution would be with the steam at the end after it's finished cooking. And it's under pressure. Exactly the steam coming out of it. But we've just shown him how to use a wooden spoon to hit the little release button. And it works. Yeah, he's never sculpted himself.

19:22 They just have to know to not try to take the lid off and things like that. But that's just the common sense thing she would teach your children when you're teaching them to. Yes, I know the Instant Pot has a locking mechanism so that if it's under any kind of pressure, you can't twist it. Exactly. You do got to teach that because sometimes mechanisms fail so you do gotta you answer Sure. All right, babe, what's next? All right, the next one is always add more than usual. So if you have a recipe that calls for a certain amount, then add more. If a little is good, more must be better. Right? At least with veggies it is yes not always true but in the case of veggies, it is true probably one of the only times it is true.

20:06 So like with we talked about pasta earlier, when you have the sauce and you add in you can make the sauce but then add veggies on top of it maybe grilled or oven roasted and more. You don't have to have it all pasta with a little bit of sauce and veggie make it more the sauce in the veggie make that the main player in the meal and you have some pasta in there. But you know that my mom said shift, it really is a mindset shift. I mean because when we think about having pasta, we think about this huge plate filled with pasta, and very little bit of sauce. Some people like to quote drown in sauce, which usually is not a healthy sauce, but really it's still a huge plate of pasta. And if you can start backing off a little bit on those things still have the things you love, but add more the stuff that your body is craving. Again, every time everything starts to change.

20:56 Even the way you perceive the flavors and what you crave. I mean look at me now I just want to go Just give me this and it's that's truly how it is. Well number six is creating simple veggie snacks that you can enjoy during the day. So raw snacks like carrots, our kids love carrots, a lot of times I don't even cut them they just grab them and they'll clean them off they'll Oh, peel peel Thank you. I was gonna say skin but I know that's not right skin the carrot. They'll peel the carrots and have those ready but honestly everybody eats more when they're pre prepped. So if I know that we're getting close to dinnertime, I mean are close to snack time I guess I should say although we have done it for a main meal we just had a big plate of veggies with hummus and everybody loves that. It's a great way to get a lot of vegetables in and why do we think it has to be cooked I mean that is super simple. If you're in a hurry, you get home you don't know what to have have everybody help you peel and chop up some veggies make a huge plateful put a big thing of hummus in the middle and snack together. I mean it's it's a big snack I'm talking we fill our plate full and it's delicious.

22:10 Well the benefit of that is is you are if you have a lot of leftovers, or maybe you have a head of broccoli and a head of cauliflower and you've got some little grape tomatoes and things that may be going bad. That's a great way just to use it all but also have a variety. But a lot of times what we found is that if you pre cut things and you have them ready to go, the children are going to grab and eat them more even fruit veggies, anything like that. If it's already pre cut and pre pre prepared, right? Aren't they going to just grab it and be more likely to eat it I am. If I've already got it and done the work and it's in the fridge. That's the easy thing now for me to grab. And I love it. It takes so much less time and so much less energy to just grab something and eat it if it's already there.

22:56 Number seven is enjoy lettuce wraps. sandwiches, lettuce, lettuce, one red leaf lettuce, Iceberg lettuce, no let us let us sandwiches. What we'll do is we'll take instead of doing bread, we'll take a lettuce leaf and put hummus on it and then put some raw veggies on there. Love that. So good drizzle it was in balsalmic if you want to make it extra special. We love that love sauerkraut on it from time to time we don't eat sauerkraut every day. Good every once in a while. Yeah, it's delicious goals are great on that as well. Love that. Another thing you can do is number eight have a stir fry night regularly. Very easy to do you can use you don't have to stir fry the veggies you can do a traditional Starfire with your bagged and add that stir fry purists are gonna hate this.

23:44 But you can just use the backtrace did that or roasted veggies we just talked about but if you want to stay in there and do stir fry and add your sauces and start very quick in a hot pan so they stay really crisp like a great stir fry is that again is very quick just chop and pre prep step ahead of time throw it into the pan once it's hot, and you have dinner ready at that point after about five minutes. Do some kind of simple Asian sauce and boom, it's done. You've got dinner, dinner on the table fast. And then number number nine is family sushi night. This one we absolutely love kids get involved everybody makes her own sushi.

24:25 It's just a great time to make incredible memories together but also incredible food. We love it and it's just all veggies and it is amazing and with a Nori you get kind of that fishy flavor in there. And well we get the sushi rice and Anita makes it that perfect stickiness. The kids love it even our eight year old she rolls her own and we cut it for her but she rolls her own everybody it's a it's a favorite here. She could probably cut around now that she has the new knock. She has her own special knives. We can put a link for those below. They're wonderful for children. I'm not sure it might rip the sushi. I'm not sure about that test it Hey, maybe we need to have sushi again very soon we can test it out.

25:07 I like the way you think I like the way you think we definitely need to do that but it is amazing. Do not limit yourself on what you put in the sushi. Any fruit and vegetable is up for grabs inside that Pepe It's delicious. We have commonly done mango we've done sweet potatoes where you have and roasted love that that's amazing. Give such a great flavor in there. Carrots, all kinds of different things. We might need to have a podcast just on sushi. Ooh, I like that idea. That'd be so good. And you like that idea to send us an email? Let us know let us know info the crunchy couple.com. And number 10 is have your friends over to make your own pizza, do a pizza night and pile that crust up with vegetables. It is absolutely wonderful. You know it The funny thing is, we have piled and piled and piled our pizzas up and looked at him and go What in the world where you know, how is that going to work?

26:02 How are you even going to bite that. But the vegetables cooked down the only risk is if you use a lot of really watery vegetables, it can make your crest kind of damp and watery. So you don't want to use a lot of really wet veggies. And you don't want to cook it a long time. So one secret with pizza is I'll par bake the crust, so I'll bake it ahead of time. Not till it's done. But just till it's brown and a little toasty feeling not as brown as I want it and then you add your sauce and your vegetables, put it back in and bake it and it's amazing. It keeps your crust from getting soggy. We absolutely love doing this and having friends over to do that makes it all the more fun having pizza night with friends. Yes, and you can even introduce them to pizza without any added oil or added cheese.

26:44 They're not gonna believe how good it is. It's a make believer out of them. Amazing. There you have it 10 wonderful ways to add more veggies into your life that you'll actually enjoy. There are so many wonderful opportunities ahead for you, my friend just waiting to be discovered amazing places to see memories to be made business to build and dreams to become a reality for you, Jared and I cannot wait to see what your future holds. As you start living out the things you've learned to create this wonderful life that you deserve. drop us an email, let us know how things are going for you. And also if you have a friend, family member or co worker that you know would really benefit from this information, be sure to send them a link and have them join us on the podcast too.

27:33 And we'll see you next time on smarter healthy living.