Ok so you are told to eat more greens by your health practitioner. Smart practitioner. And are you listening? I know greens may not be your thing and your palate fights you each time you try to get some broccoli past your lips, but trust me there are ways to make those greens tastier and a lot more fun to eat.
3 Tasty, simple and fun ways to include more greens in your daily eating regime:
One way is to juice them and experiment with different variations and combos so you get more nutrients and better balanced flavours. I recommend adding some beets, carrot or green apple to sweeten the deal.
Juicing Greens:
Here is a great formula for better tasting green juice:
3 parts of a combination of greens: i.e. Cilantro, Kale, cucumbers, collards, swiss chard, mustard greens, spinach.
1 part: apple, beet or carrot.
1 part: ginger, lemon, cinnamon (these help add flavour and warm things up)
Cooking greens:
Saute’ greens with coconut oil or sesame oil. These two fats add ALOT of awesome flavour and provide good fats to your diet. They are also stable when heated and coconut oil has countless therapeutic health benefits to support your thyroid, immunity and digestive system.
Cook greens with lots of fresh HERBS! Herbs like rosemary, basil and cilantro help to add flavour without processed calories.
Cook greens with garlic, ginger, tumeric, cayenne and chilis for some added spice and heat. Greens become way more exciting when you begin to play with flavours and combining different herbs also offers you a therapeutic boost as well. Remember meals that heal, can taste good too!
A great sneak-in-the-greens recipe I love is Zucchini Lasagna! This is my favourite recipe as it is gluten free, paleo friendly and loaded with great superfood nutrition.
Check this out! :
Courtesy and credit to Healthyrecipeecstasty.com
INGREDIENTS
Basil-Cashew Cheese
1 cup unsalted cashews
½ cup unsweetened almond milk
¼ cup fresh basil leaves
2 garlic cloves
½ teaspoon sea salt
Artichoke-Tomato Sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
14.5-ounce can no-salt-added diced tomatoes
8-ounce can no-salt-added tomato sauce
1 cup chopped marinated artichoke hearts
¼ cup fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces
Red pepper flakes, to taste
Sea salt, to taste
Freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
Zucchini Lasagna
6 medium zucchinis
Coarse salt
Fresh basil, for garnish
Olive oil, for drizzling
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INSTRUCTIONS:
Basil-Cashew Cheese
Soak the cashews in a bowl of water for 30 minutes. Drain and rinse well. Add all the ingredients to a food processor or blender and process/blend until smooth.
Artichoke-Tomato Sauce
Heat oil in a medium skillet. Add diced onions and cook for 3-4 minutes, until onions are softened. Add garlic and cook for 30 minutes, stirring frequently, until fragrant. Next, add the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, artichoke hearts and basil leaves. Season with red pepper flakes, sea salt and pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil and then simmer on medium low for 10 minutes.
Zucchini Lasagna
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Slice each zucchini into ⅛-inch thick slices. Salt the zucchini slices heavily and set aside for 20 minutes to drain the water out. Squeeze as much water out of the zucchini slices as possible.
Spread a few tablespoons sauce on the bottom of a casserole dish. Lay 4-5 zucchini slices side-by-side on the bottom of the dish. If you’re slices aren’t long enough for the entire casserole you can add another vertical row or place some slices horizontally to fill the space.
Top the slices with ½ cup sauce and ¼ cup cashew cheese. Repeat with the remaining ingredients, ending with a final layer of sauce and cheese. Garnish with more fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil.
Bake, covered, for 30 minutes and then bake, uncovered for 20-25 minutes or until the top of the lasagna is golden brown. Let the lasagna sit for 15 minutes before cutting and serving. Serve with another drizzle of olive oil.
Bake with greens:
Like in cakes and sweets?! Yes! You can add veggies to sweets and breads and not even know they are in there.
Best veggies to add in baking: Zucchini, sweet potatoes, spinach, kale, collards. If you do a google search on baked goods with greens you will find an array of recipes that combine veggies into traditional dessert recipes. And you can offer these to your kids, and they won’t even flinch at eating their veggies any more. How awesome is that possibility?!
Here is one of my fav Zucchini bread recipes:
Courtesy to theheartysoul.com and Foodmatters.tv
INGREDIENTS:
1 brown onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp dried rosemary
450g zucchini, grated (approximately 2 cups)
250g sweet potato, peeled and grated (approximately 1 cup)
1 cup (150g) almond meal
1 tsp baking powder
sea salt and cracked black pepper
5 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast or organic cheese
Cherry tomatoes to top
EXTRA OPTIONAL INGREDIENTS
1½ cups frozen peas
2 tablespoons pesto
1 cup baby spinach
WHAT TO DO
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C) and line baking dish with parchment paper.
If you have a food processor you can whip up this recipe super quick by using your grater blade and grate sweet potato, zucchini, onion and garlic.
Mix zucchini, sweet potato, almond meal, rosemary, nutritional yeast (or organic cheese) and salt and pepper ingredients together in a large bowl.
Make well in the mixture, add eggs and mix well.
Spread evenly in baking tin (20cm x 30cm), or whatever you have. We used our loaf dish. Top with halved cherry tomatoes.
Bake 40-50 minutes. This will depend on your dish you used, the slice is cooked once you insert a skewer and it comes out clean.
It’s just so DELISH and it goes great with cold or hot soup winter or summer long.
Well after all of that aren’t you getting hungry? Let’s go get some awesome veggies and bake up a greens storm tonight!
Stay healthy, happy and free!
Love Piera B.