Eat a Rainbow

A meal lacking color is not as aesthetically pleasing nor as flavorful and nutritious as a meal bursting with green, orange, red, purple and more.

Yesterday, as in many previous posts, I made reference to the phytonutrient-rich properties of colorful vegetables.

Last week after posting information about food-pyramids, the ANDI food ranking list and tips for shopping on a budget for health and wellness, a friend remarked that sometimes food just seems scary!

That is, she said, if you deviate from the prescribed 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

Prescriptive information can be scary; in fact, I think it's best used as a guideline rather than the formula.

When I googled "servings of fruits and vegetables per day," five did appear to be the number, but it did go as high as nine.

One food pyramid suggested 2-4 servings of fruit and 3-5 of veggies a day -- if you did eat the 4 and the 5 then you would be consuming 9 servings in total.

Frankly, I find the idea of the 2-4 and 3-5 servings not scary, but potentially daunting in its capacity to cause me to feel obsessive about counting and weighing and measuring my food, which is no fun.

I like color. And preparing my meals so that they are filled with a combination of green, purple, orange, red, yellow and white is a far easier, less neurotic way to ensure eating sufficient veggies and fruits.

And I like this fun little tune about color; it sure beats perusing pyramids and counting portions.

I also get quite excited by the art of coordinating vegetables and fruits so that the end result is a plate vibrating with interest, texture, flavor, and of course color.

The pic above is a plate of braised winter vegetables: leftover orange-yellow acorn squash from yesterday's meal, purple cabbage, curly green kale, and white and green spring onions.

I love the combination of the purple against the yellow-orange squash -- I probably wouldn't wear it, but it's gorgeous on a white plate!

For flavor, I tossed in a clove of peeled and chopped garlic and the same of a chunk of fresh ginger root, plus a couple rashers of Applegate certified-humane turkey bacon.

I served the veggies atop a portion of cooked quinoa (yesterday it was quinoa noodles) which I'd drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and then I poached an egg and set it in the middle (pic left).

This made for a rainbow-of-meal with who knows how many servings of veggies, but without a doubt plenty of color, and thus plenty of phyto-nutrients, and it included neutral-colored quinoa, a high-protein grain, plus a white and yellow Omega 3-rich egg.

Color: Eat it; it's good for you!

More Colorful Winter Vegetables

Yesterday I wrote that green vegetables are nutritional power-houses, particularly dark leafy greens like kale, collard and dandelion greens, chard, mustard and beet greens.

Calorie for calorie, they're a highly concentrated source of nutrition, rich in phytonutrients, vitamin K, minerals and even Omega-3's.

Yet for some, the slightly bitter, sometimes tough leafy greens are about as appetizing as old shoe.

I had a comment from a reader yesterday who said, "I've never had success making kale taste good, which is key when it comes to feeding it to your kids."

Children tend to be highly sensitive to the bitter flavor so it is challenging to get them to eat dark greens.

I remember sitting at the dinner table refusing to eat spinach, my mother hovering in the background threatening me with "You'll sit there till you eat it." So I sat there for hours.

What she didn't realize is that mixing bitter with slightly sweet makes the bitter flavor far more appetizing.

For instance, in the pic above, I've sauteed in olive oil a rasher of turkey bacon with a medley of winter vegetables:

• brown onion and a clove of garlic
  
• peeled and chopped butternut pumpkin
  
• sliced red cabbage -- all slightly sweet veggies
  
• and topped the dish with pieces of leafy kale.

The bitterness of the kale is not the stand-out flavor in this braised dish. The soft, smooth, sweet pumpkin dominates, and for kids this combo of texture and flavor is far more palatable.

So if you inner kid still cringes at the thought of a side of bitter greens, try combining greens with sweet, colorful, winter veggies.

Another tip for cooking kale into palatable bliss came from a friend on facebook: Judi grows her own green, red, white Russian and lacinto kale.

Her favorite way to prepare her kale is to saute a combination of leaves with caramelized onions (this link goes to my recipe for caramelized shallots but you can apply it to brown or white onions).

The natural sweetness of the onion, plus caramelizing it in brown sugar and butter, offsets the bitterness of the kale creating a sumptuous and rich veggie side.

Celery is a slightly bitter green most often thought of as a summer-salad item. Yet it's fabulous cooked since the process of heating it both breaks down the sinewy fibers and lessens the bitter flavor.

It's also a great alkaline vegetable as are the vegetables discussed above. If you have a predisposition to acidity, integrating more alkaline foods into your diet is a must for your health.

Braised Celery with Eggplant


1) Wash and chop up several sticks of organic celery.
2) Peel and chop a brown onion and a clove of garlic.
3) Chop an eggplant into bite-size pieces.
4) And either chop an organic red bell pepper or wash a handful of cherry tomatoes.
5) In a skillet saute the eggplant in olive oil over high until it browns slightly. Turn heat down and toss in all remaining ingredients, except tomatoes (if you're including them).
6) Add a chopped dried or fresh herb such as basil, sage, thyme or oregano.
7) Put lid on skillet and gently stew on low for about 10 mins; at the last minute, toss in cherry tomatoes.

To Serve: Season to taste, drizzle with a grated dry cheese like Romano or Parmesan. You might enjoy this medley of veggies over a bowl of shell or spiral pasta topped with a couple of the meat balls I posted last month.