best way to get more veggies into my diet

Corn is a grain....

People on certain diets...

.

 

Me. I don't eat grains.

 

The easiest and quickest way to get veggies into your diet is to steam a bunch of vegetables and blitz them into a soup (you can add vegetable stock, suck as Vegeta, or use coconut milk, to round it out). Cheap and nutritious.

 

I would say the easiest and fastest way is a vegetable salad. There are zillions of variations possible. 50% of my diet is vegetable salad + something.

 

So you're getting fit/strong/something? Good to hear. But seriously, learn to cook. In other words, teach yourself. Buy a basic book or two if you want to, or just find everything on the webs and go for it. Whatever.

If you approach it right, it's actually really relaxing, even kinda meditative. Perspective counts for a lot. So yeah, if you treat it as time out, that's going to be beneficial in more than just the most obvious way, that's a good start.

And, as others have more or less said, cooking doesn't always need to involve, well, cooking things - salads are great, for example. And when you do literally cook things, it doesn't have to take half a day/night to do. I'll second or third the suggestion of stir-fries - excellent, quick, healthy, tasty food. Don't need a wok, necessarily (I know, it's best, etc.) - just use a frying pan, if you prefer.

Anyway, it's all up to you. In my opinion, you're not doing yourself any favours, as it stands, and the best solution is to just dive in and get to practising the absolute basics of cooking / food prep. If you end up going further with it, making more complex stuff, at some stage? Awesome. But it doesn't matter either way.

 

50% of my diet is vegetable salad alone.

 

Frozen meals are not lean cuisine. Anything that is actually healthy and nutritionally balanced in a prepackaged format is going to be $8-12/meal.

Quick and Dirty noname lasagna will be less than this, yes.

Depends. With the quality of ingredients i use, I have to eat at a half decent restaurant to be cheaper.

 

That depends more on what you're cooking. When all you eat are meat and vegetables, you can still go pretty nuts on quality and not blow your meals out to horrendous prices.

 

I must say my dad used to make some pretty awesome stirfrys (back in the day when I lived at home) and I always wondered how he did them.

Not exactly something that can be put in the freezer to be eaten later though?

 

This thread isn't about you and that was a thumbs up, not a question mark

 

No but everything you need can be from the cupboard or freezer. Frozen vege mix, bottled sauce and shelf-safe noodles, a big hot pan, and you're good to go. You can always reheat some from the fridge, so it isn't entirely a "one-meal" option.

 

When I was doing my body building, I was recommended by a big champ (USA guy) who is an expert at cutting down fat and getting ripped, to prepare foods before hand. Sometimes even prepare foods for a few days ahead. This means getting veg-dishes cooked (don't overcook) and frozen or stored in fridge so I could just grab out the weighed portion and put in a microwave (if I didn't eat it cold) and away I went.

I often had a lean meat and curry (made myself, not premix) on top of 150g's (cooked) broccoli which is one of the best veggies to eat. The other veg dish I often ate was 200-300 gram salad (this is a big salad) which had combined 200-300g of veggies and then tuna and a home-made dressing.

This was the REAL health booster. Again a salad will keep for a few days in fridge nicely if you don't ad any dressing or meat on it, you can make it up in a BIG container, just take out the serving size needed (I weighed to the gram LOL), then put on the tuna/chicken and dressing.


Your biggest enemy is time, so that's why dedicating some time at the beginning of each week to prepare some meals will make it MUCH easier to digest more veggies.

I will be getting back into BB sometime before xmas (only just moved back to AU) and when I do I will adopt all my old good habits. For the past 2 years I have mostly been adopting my old bad habits

 

Totally understand where you're coming from. Night shifts suck. They totally blow your care factor out of the water. At least you're not eating Macca's.

Maybe when you've graduated, got a day job, then your keeness for cooking may change.

Has anyone mentioned antipasto? From the deli - artichokes, peppers and olives? Already cooked and marinated. Pre-made salads too.

Avocados - cut and eat. Same with tomatoes - I used to eat them like an apple.

Mushrooms and rocket (tho rocket ain't a veg) - throw into your scrambled eggs. Cherry tomatos too, tho you have to cut them in half...or not.

Raw vegies - like others have said. Just find something to dip them in if you need a hand with flavour. Carrot, celery, cauliflower, snow peas, toms, broccoli....

Good luck

 

I was also thinking exactly along these lines. Boiled veges aren't a lot of effort.

 

went and bought myself some steamed frozen veggies..... not bad i must say. could be a regular thing.

 

No it shouldn't. The Soffritto/Mirepoix is a flavour base, not 40% of the sauce.

To the OP - one word. SOUP.

Pick a vegetable or pick many, chop, add stock, boil, simmer, blend, eat, freeze.

 

I just drink alot of SOG-3.

 

That's nice. Did that change the fact that corn is still not a vegetable? No.

 

This is me right now.

Everyone keep suggesting

 

I checked out the prices yesterday when I got some frozen veges. You do pay a premium for them to be packed that way. Another option to buying the steaming bags and divvying up a big bag yourself would be to buy the small microwave containers with the vent in the top and divvy some up from a big bag. Would be cheaper, but just as convenient.