I've been reading a variety of books on healthy eating lately, including a lot of raw food books and Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and, since I already eat fairly well, my main takeaway was that I need to eat more leaves. We are excellent at eating fruit at our house, and my girls will eat most vegetables (given the daily vagaries of toddlers), but they don't like green leaves. I had been willing to let that pass, but no more. Bring on the leafy greens!
I got myself moving fast: green leaves in every meal. Green smoothies for breakfast, a bunch of greens in every dinner recipe, and my traditional reheated dinner leftovers for the next day's lunch. I've been pleasantly surprised at how good I feel. In particular, on one large green smoothie I can go without my morning snack. That's a pleasant surprise.
Unfortunately, my husband and children have not been so enamored of this idea. I haven't made them do green smoothies (my girls asked for bites of mine the first two days and then gave up), but they eat my green leafy dinners only under duress.
That's unfair to my husband. He wouldn't choose leafy greens, but he eats them just fine. My kids, on the other hand, are trying out hunger strikes.
I figured that chopping the leaves in the food processor and cooking them in tomato sauce was pretty safe. Pasta and red sauce is one of their favorite meals! But not last week.
So I tried Indian food, thinking that strong spices were what I needed. No such luck. I never follow a recipe exactly, and I don't think I have enough experience with Indian spices to guess them right. My husband and I like Indian food, but this wasn't great. And the kids hardly touched it.
Tonight I tried a Italian vegetable ragout from the cookbook "Wild About Greens." My husband liked it! I got my first really sincere compliment on my cooking since the leafy greening began. My children ... ate it with less fuss than other meals. That's progress, at least. Slowly I'll wear them down. Next year I'll grow stevia and put it in smoothies: See, the green leaves are good! I'm so sneaky.
I got myself moving fast: green leaves in every meal. Green smoothies for breakfast, a bunch of greens in every dinner recipe, and my traditional reheated dinner leftovers for the next day's lunch. I've been pleasantly surprised at how good I feel. In particular, on one large green smoothie I can go without my morning snack. That's a pleasant surprise.
Unfortunately, my husband and children have not been so enamored of this idea. I haven't made them do green smoothies (my girls asked for bites of mine the first two days and then gave up), but they eat my green leafy dinners only under duress.
That's unfair to my husband. He wouldn't choose leafy greens, but he eats them just fine. My kids, on the other hand, are trying out hunger strikes.
I figured that chopping the leaves in the food processor and cooking them in tomato sauce was pretty safe. Pasta and red sauce is one of their favorite meals! But not last week.
So I tried Indian food, thinking that strong spices were what I needed. No such luck. I never follow a recipe exactly, and I don't think I have enough experience with Indian spices to guess them right. My husband and I like Indian food, but this wasn't great. And the kids hardly touched it.
Tonight I tried a Italian vegetable ragout from the cookbook "Wild About Greens." My husband liked it! I got my first really sincere compliment on my cooking since the leafy greening began. My children ... ate it with less fuss than other meals. That's progress, at least. Slowly I'll wear them down. Next year I'll grow stevia and put it in smoothies: See, the green leaves are good! I'm so sneaky.
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