Valuable Veggies

For the most part I enjoy vegetables, I know many people do not have that luxury and have a hate relationship with them. I grew up eating mainly boiled vegetables like frozen corn or peas and fresh garden beans and cucumber in the summer. We ate many garden/chef salads, or at least I feel like we did, as I was the one in charge of making them. They always had lettuce, celery, cucumber, tomato and often small deli ham squares and cubes of cheddar cheese. My favorite dressing was Catalina, although I recall Thousand Island being a strong representative as well. At one point in time we had a fairly large garden in Shaunavon, where I grew up, it was later replaced with our 2+ car garage. Before that I remember we grew all sorts of fresh veggies including our own cucumbers, which mom always pickled and therefore we also grew dill. We had carrots, lettuce, tomato, green onion, beans, peas, etc. I was such a whiny teen, sorry mom. I was sometimes asked to pick beans or snap beans and I remember always groaning about it. Little did I know then, what a treat it was to have fresh garden beans.

Here in Ottawa, I do not grow a vegetable garden. Mainly because I don't have near the sunlight needed in my yard to have them do well... or at least that is what I tell myself - lol! I often grow tomatoes, basil, cilantro and mint, but that is the extent of it. It would be challenging here because we do have many rabbits that eat your greens, so you have to have everything in a net or you are simply feeding the wildlife.

The main reason for my post though comes back to weight loss again - of course! When you are trying to lose weight, almost any diet, with the exception of a carnivore based plan or something that restricts certain veggies like nightshades (tomato, potato, eggplant & peppers primarily) to avoid inflammation or keto, where you avoid starchy vegetables like potato, beets, peas... you are encouraged to focus on eating lots of veg! Of course, I have known this for years, BUT, I was still guilty of making that plate that always had a carb on it, like rice, pasta, potato or bread. In some cases you have to be very purposeful to avoid having that carb, picture fajitas, tacos, stew (with potato and a side of biscuits or dumplings of course), spaghetti, lasagna, sushi, grilled cheese... but if you are having a more traditional "Meat and Potato" style meal, why not have the meat and veggies be the stars and get rid of the potato or carb all together? I started doing that every once and awhile, but found my kids often missed having that carb, as it was trickier for them to fill a plate half full of veggies (unless it was Caesar salad, Jasmine could live off of that). So, often that carb came back into play. Now with the kids gone, I only have to worry about Jay and myself. Yes, he works out and so he needs a hefty amount of food, but he can fill a plate pretty easily without that extra carb and if he is still hungry later, I know he will choose a healthy snack, with the kids, that might not have been the case.

This is the current food guide photo.

So here I am trying to lose weight and cook more vegetables. I take out all these cookbooks from the library and I am going to say, I am so disappointed. Almost every veggie book is smothered in cheese, butter, heavy creams, panko crumbs and crushed nuts. I mean the nuts are healthy, but high in fats for me. Honestly, there were very few recipes I felt I could try on WW and make it worth the points. I came to the conclusion that I have to keep it simple and keep roasting my veggies in olive oil with some seasonings and eat fresh salads. I am guilty of boiling many of my veggies still like beans and asparagus - I often wonder how much of their nutritional value they lose doing that? I am trying hard to find alternative sauces to put on vegetables as well, as I do love butter on my boiled veggies. I switched to I Can't Believe it's Not Butter to be lower in points value, but I know my nutritionist Rachel, would say I might as well eat plastic. It is hard to win sometimes, but right now my focus is weight loss, so ICBINB wins for the moment. I recently taste tested a number of flavoured balsamic vinegars at a little shop in Merrickville called the "Taste of Olives" and they are wonderful: Honey Ginger, Maple, and Lemongrass Mint. These have been a nice experiment to get rid of salad dressings and lower the amount of sugary stir fry sauce needed.

Back to these meals that have an almost built in carb... like fajitas. I am always torn on these ones. I recall some diets where I was "allowed" to have a carb, (I think that was the Dr. Phil Diet) but only in the morning, not at supper, so you were forced to eat your tacos and fajitas in lettuce all the time or as a salad. And I find that completely okay, some of the time, but I don't want to live my life without another taco again. I mean, they are tacos, I love tacos. Do I love it more than what I will feel like if I lose 100 lbs - sigh!? I am imagining the answer to that is NO, however, I don't know what it feels like to feel that good. I literally do not remember what it feels like to not have body pain. I am only recently remembering what it feels like to not be exhausted all the time since I retired and have the time to get proper rest (and for me crazily, that is 10 hours of sleep a night, AND I have to set an alarm to get up or I would sleep even longer). For me I now limit how often I eat those meals. Sometimes I eat them as a salad or in a lettuce wrap. For Fajitas I now use high Protein wraps and make 1 super loaded fajita with less cheese and avocado and more protein and veg and it still hits the spot. But sometimes I still enjoy that hard taco shell, sometimes I even enjoy 3 hard taco shells, but compared to some of the things I could be choosing, I still have to give myself a lot of credit for all that I am doing right. Like not choosing these vegetable casseroles filled with cream sauce and melted cheese dusted with panko crumbs and nuts. I will take my small wins and call it a day. I will continue to eat my roasted veggies and fill my plate with salads and remember eating the same meal at my kitchen table at home, just without a big side of carbs when I can. Thanks mom and dad for always feeding us well rounded, home cooked meals!