Introducing my new series: Pimp Your Veg

Welcome to my new series..a collection of posts celebrating my favourite food: 

The wonderful world of vegetables, great ways to cook and enjoy this earth given produce 🙂 

 I know that lots of you already do great things with vegetables, so these posts may not necessarily be aimed at you, although I hope that they may still bring you some new ideas and tips; what this series of posts might do is bring people to your mind that you know need some inspiration for including more vegetables in their lives, or would like new ideas for cooking vegetables, and in which case, please do pass the posts and ideas on. I have put together this series, coming up over the next few weeks, to produce food for thought where vegetables are concerned, and this is where the idea came from…

This series has been prompted by a friend of mine…he is on a weight loss journey and has already lost 4 stone (25 kg/56 lb), but still, he will admit himself, has a long way to go. He’s already achieved so much and I’m so proud of him, but I know that he is now stuck; he has been following a ‘diet plan’ which has brought him this far, but the food is not inspiring enough to keep him interested. And it is not teaching him about leading a healthy lifestyle in the future, it’s just showing him how to lose weight now, so I’m hoping that I might be able to inspire him to view how he eats differently and make good choices for his health in the long term. 

Starting with: making vegetables interesting..

If, like my friend, your experience of vegetables has only been what you’ve had with your childhood meals, ie, boiled peas, carrots, broccoli or cauliflower, and over cooked sprouts at Christmas, vegetables probably seem like a pretty dull, uninspiring concept. I’m here to tell you, there’s so much more to vegetables!!! And there’s so many more ways to eat them just just boiling or steaming. 

So, my aim, is to inspire anyone who’s interested, to fall in love with vegetables, to make them a star on your plate, not just the added extra because you think you should eat more veg! 

I plan to share methods for cooking vegetables, celebrate their flavours and add more, provide crunch or various other ways to celebrate these beauties…I hope you will join me and enjoy the posts.  

Please do also share your tips and recipes in the comments as the posts come out – I intend to share recipes of mine and lots of your too 🙂 

As a starting point, I would ask you to consider where you buy your vegetables. If you only ever buy vegetables from a supermarket, you are not experiencing vegetables at their best, and you’re probably paying more for them than I do. Vegetables in supermarkets may all be uniform in size and polished and shiny, but for me, they lack flavour and diversity, and completely miss any benefits of seasonality. 

 If you can visit any local markets, or get a veg box delivered, you will find ‘real’ vegetables, in gloriously uneven shapes, as nature intended, and sometimes even with some mud thrown in! Buying and eating vegetables based on the seasons in which they are grown in your country of residence will also ensure that you get the best flavour. Vegetables that are force grown to be available all year round or refrigerated for months on end, are not fresh, fabulous, local produce. 

If you have a market near you, or regular farmers markets, please do visit and check out their produce. Not only will you benefit, but you will also be supporting local farmers.

Like I said, all food for thought, so, for now, welcome to my new series, I hope you like the idea. And please do get involved 🙂 

Part 1 : coming up soon…get roasting!

I’m bringing my new series introduction to this week’s Fiesta Friday party and hope that lots of the party goers will join me and share their ideas as my series unfolds. Join this week’s co hosts Kaila and Jenny and check out everyone’s great dishes 🙂