Recipes with More Vegetables
Last week, I was inspired by a participant in this round of Purposeful Conception to watch the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. It’s about a man who is overweight and seeks to cure a chronic disease by doing a juice fast for 60 days. After the 60 days, he continues with a healthy lifestyle that includes exercising, eating in moderation, and drinking juice daily. His quest inspires others to change their lives, too.
By the end of it, I was inspired to incorporate more vegetables into our meals. I then watched a 30-minute segment about The Engine 2 Diet, which relies heavily on vegetables. (As an interesting coincidence, the guy who authored it is a firefighter from Austin, and I actually know his wife really well.) I ordered the book from the library but also realized that they have some good recipes available on their website, such as this recipe for burritos. We scaled it way back (only one can of each type of beans). It was still delicious. I loved the brown rice inside the burritos, two different types of beans, and all the vegetables. Cooking them in the oven until crisp was a really nice touch at the end.
Next time, I’ll try to do some of the prep ahead of time when we’re cooking other meals, such as making the rice. It was a lot of work (for us) for a single meal. But I look forward to making this recipe again and trying to squeeze as many vegetables as possible into our dinners (which we eat at leftovers nearly every day for lunch).
3 Comments
Maureen
Maybe ask for a rice cooker for xmas? The nice ones you can set up in advance and set up to turn on when you need it so you can walk in the door to fluffy brown rice, already done! I guess you can also make other things in it too.
Anonymous
I second the rice cooker! You can just let it do its thing while you cook the other stuff.
Sarah Notes
I haven't seen the documentary you're talking about, but we did watch Forks Over Knives about 4-5 months ago (one of the main doctors in the documentary is actually the dad of the guy who does the Engine 2 Diet…or something closely connected I think :). It really made an impact on us. As it so happens, we found out I was pregnant literally the next week, and with that came morning sickness, exhaustion…you know the drill :). I haven't been able to really implement all the changes I'd like in our diet, but at least I've been able to make some big changes with my son (18mo) early on. Since I rarely give him chicken or red meat, he hardly eats it when it is available. I don't see us going completely vegan, but my goal is to get us to the point where we're only eating chicken/meat a few times a week. So…thanks for your veggies recipe inspiration :).