Sunday, March 27, 2011

Vegetables Galore!

As a busy college student I don't always have time to make meals, especially healthy ones. I find it really hard to get in 5 servings of vegetables a day. This all started with my love of putting pumpkin in my oatmeal. It's so delicious! So I figured, hey! That's a serving of veggies! Unfortunately, pumpkin is rather expensive and sometimes hard to come by. So I decided to make a blend of pumpkin plus some other veggies and fruit for my morning oatmeal.

I decided on:
1 large can pumpkin
1 sweet potato
4 carrots
1 1/2 apples
(I "accidentally" ate a half of one of the apples...)

I peeled at chopped the s. potatoes and carrots up into similar sized pieces and then boiled them until very soft. At the same time I peeled and diced the apple and put them in a pot, turned the heat to medium, covered them, and let them stew till very soft. Then I threw it all in my mini-food processor (multiple times). I canned it all and put it in the freezer (except for one to start eating now).

It turned out very good. The apples and carrots made it nice and naturally sweet, which is perfect for in the morning.

THEN I got to thinking... what about other veggies?! (I get way to excited about veggies...) I'd already made an orange veggie sauce, I should make other colors! So I made a green (boiled spinach and peas and roasted broccoli) and red (sauteed red bell pepper, stewed tomatoes and roasted beets). The green is really good in omelets or with rice (barley, quinoa, etc.) It's kind of like a broccoli pesto. The red is the scariest pasta sauce you'll ever see--it's a stain monster. I had a lot of fun with it though, my hands were completely pink! It's very sweet so I imagine it would taste really good with pork or anything with basil. It kind of reminds me of cranberry sauce, but I think that's just because of the vibrant pink color...

Here's a pic of the final product:


If anything, the vibrant colors will make me happy while eating. :D