Adventures in Vegetables Part 1

Since the beginning of this year I have made it a personal goal to get at least 3 servings of vegetables onto my plate at every meal. Sometimes the vegetables are the meal and sometimes they accompany a grain or a protein or both.

On the busier weeks I started repeating my quick and easy vegetable recipes. Considering that we are now well into March that’s a lot of steamed broccoli, zucchini and cauliflower. I needed to come up with some fresh vegetable ideas.

I was reading a medical book about pasta alternatives and came across a suggestion for cucumber noodles. Hum cucumber noodles how about that?

I was regularly eating spaghetti squash but had never tried preparing cucumber or zucchini noodles. Furthermore, I had no idea how to create cucumber noodles. I thought I would ask the experts…Melissa’s husband is in culinary school so I had her ask him which kitchen tool I needed for cucumber noodles. He said a spiralizer. A spiralizer? I had never even heard of a spiralizer but the name itself excited me. I just wanted to say it over and over Spiralizer, Spiralizer.

That got me searching Amazon for spiralizers. As soon as I saw the photos of spiralizers and what they could do I was sold! All the vegetables looked so fabulous and appealing. They were sliced so thin and beautiful I just couldn’t help but get excited and think Wow! What I could do with a spiralizer. I immediately purchased one. I couldn’t wait for my new kitchen tool to arrive.

Let the sun shine in…

On the day my spiralizer arrived I put it to work shaving fennel that would be part of a golden beet salad. When I saw the ease and efficiency that it sliced the fennel I was overjoyed!

This handy little kitchen gadget has been a breath of fresh air to my kitchen. My new spiralizer has given me the ability to incorporate some new vegetables and try different variations on the old standbys. Not that the vegetables taste all that different but the textures are and that is a big change. It is also possible to eat a lot more raw vegetables when they are sliced so thin. Items such as fennel, cucumbers, radishes, peppers, jimica, parsnips, just to name a few.

Here’s a photo of my shaved fennel and golden beet salad.

Isn’t it wild that simply changing the shape of a vegetable changes the excitement around it?  Let’s take cauliflower for example. You know little cauliflower trees that you have to steam and chew and chew. Then take cauliflower rice. This is the chopped up version of it’s big sister that changes the entire perspective on cauliflower. In case you haven’t heard of cauliflower rice Trader Joes sells it in both the fresh and frozen sections. I’ve included a picture of it below.

Cheers to you and your Adventures in Vegetables!

-Dr. Purcell

PS: Have a vegetable adventure to share? Post a comment and let me know about it.