Vegetables – tasty, varied and healthy

The right proportions

It’s good to prepare and season vegetables with the use of the newest methods and then serve them in large portions. Prepare a traditional meal, but switch the proportions of meat and vegetables; best serve three different vegetables. You can also use much less meat than usual, but serve a lot of starch products instead (pasta, rice or potatoes) and a couple of sautéed vegetables or one big portion of your favourite veggie. You also need to introduce vegetarian dishes into your menu: baked potatoes with stir-fried vegetables or risotto or pasta with roasted vegetables.

Here are a few hints to increase your daily dose of vegetables:

• Add more peppers, carrots, zucchini, aubergines, celery roots and leaves, mushrooms, green peas and beans to your traditional meat or chicken dishes.
• You can add plenty of crunchy vegetables to your sandwiches. Apart from tomatoes, cucumber or lettuce, you can use arugola, shredded carrots, radishes, strips of red peppers, as well as shredded white or red cabbage
• Frozen vegetables are great in salads. Frozen peas, green beans, broad bean and corn (in various combinations or separately) are great with cubed cucumber, chopped chives, tomatoes, arugula or water cress, served on shredded lettuce. Frozen vegetables are boiled 2-3 minutes, strained and served with sauce.

Vegetables for childrenIt’s worth acquainting children with vegetable dishes. Here are a few ideas how to do it:

• You can add white beans from the can to baked potatoes or serve them with a salad made with frozen vegetables.
• Add shredded carrots or chopped celery to the mince when you make hamburgers.
• You can enrich frozen pizza with some colourful vegetables like peppers, tomatoes, peas and corn.
• Add cubed carrots, peppers and tomatoes to spaghetti Bolognese
• You can use shredded or sliced vegetables in sandwiches
• Make shashliks with a piece of sausage, some red peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, baby corn and other vegetables.
• Mix in peas, cubed carrots, chopped cabbage, broccoli flowers and other vegetables with ground beef to make meatloaf.
• Cook and puree swede, carrots and parsnip with potatoes.