My Take
DiVoran Lites
Green beans have almost no calories, but they’re full of nutrition and are some of those all important fruit and veggies we hear so much about. Our grocery store has wonderful fresh pole beans, right now. We’ve had them twice. But no matter how fresh veggies are, if they aren’t properly cooked and deliciously seasoned, they can be practically tasteless.
One of the weight loss plans we’ve been on, taught us to stop eating when we felt full. Another (the HCG plan) showed us that our weight was more affected by carbohydrates than by anything else. Of course, that included the supposedly magical whole grains we love. Now we try for one small piece of bread or a rice cake a day, and we’re keeping the weight off.
I was brought up to believe that for supper you should have
1 meat dish
1 salad (it could be canned pears on a lettuce leaf and some cottage cheese)
1 cooked vegetable (where I came from they were always canned, but later I sometimes served frozen)
1 carb, usually rice, pasta, or potato, sometimes two if you count the bread
1 dessert (half the time it was JELL-O®
I tried to feed my family that way. I think most American moms, in that era did.
In later years, it was hard for us become accustomed to fresh vegetables. I didn’t know how to cook them and because we didn’t use them fast enough they went bad in the refrigerator. Now we say, “Hmm, this broccoli, spinach, or asparagus, these artichokes, carrots, or green beans, are wonderful!Yes, we have learned to cook and season them properly. We cook them in one of three ways: pressure cooker, microwave steamer, or pot on the stove. For seasoning we use bit of salt, a chopped up garlic clove, and herbs. We grow basil, tarragon, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, and oregano. We have a chart that tells which foods go with which herbs, but we’re doing a lot of experimenting on our own. Every combination we’ve tried so far has been good. The only other dish we have for supper is our meat. All protein is the same except for fat count. Yes, we seem to be carnivores, maybe someday we’ll switch to vegetarian, but maybe not. Anyhow, we have semi-healthy snack in the evening and eat a few nuts. And our weight, blessedly, is holding well.
Oh, and by the way, we asked our internist who is well educated in nutrition whether we had to eat a large variety of vegetables or not, and she told us it wasn’t necessary. We buy the ones we like and for the present our weight and the food we eat are flowing together nicely. What a relief!
How do you feel about vegetables?
Old Things R New 