Ideas for Meals With Plenty of Vegetables

Have you made a New Year's Resolution to eat a healthier diet? I'm not always inclined to make New Year's resolutions, but after all the holiday treats we've been eating I've definitely been thinking about how to get my diet back in order. One of the things I've been working on is eating more vegetables. I'm finding that to get more vegetables into my diet it really helps to incorporate them in my menu plan. So here are some ideas I have come up with (and these are all normal foods, because I'm not a sprouted lentil burger/cauliflower pizza crust/peas instead of a hamburger patty kind of person).

Fajitas
Here is a stir-fry version from this blog, or I also like making oven fajitas when I don't feel like babysitting the food. Add lettuce and tomatoes to get an even bigger serving of vegetables. Tacos are also good.

Meat with vegetable sides
Sometimes I forget about basic meals like this. Just make some chicken tenders, steak, or chicken legs and add a couple of vegetable sides, which can be as simple as boiled peas or carrots or uncooked vegetables for dipping in ranch. We also enjoy roasting vegetables like green beans, potatoes, carrots, or sweet potatoes with spices and a little oil.

Soup
There are so many soup recipes that have lots of vegetables, and you could even use a vegetable broth or canned tomatoes.

Stir-fry vegetables
Making stir-fry is pretty simple. I generally sautee a chopped chicken breast in oil with garlic salt and in a separate frying pan I sautee a bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables in oil. To make the sauce, mix 1/2 cup chicken broth, 1 Tb.cornstarch, and 1-2 tsp. soy sauce. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and chicken and stir, cooking until the vegetables are soft. Serve it over rice.

Cafe Rio Salads
Make some rice and beans. Assemble salads on top of tortillas and/or tortilla chips. You can put romaine lettuce, rice, beans, tomatoes, chopped avocado (or guacamole), corn, peppers, or whatever else you think would be good. I like this Cafe Rio style tomatillo salad dressing on top.

Salad
Add a salad to whatever dinner you're making, or some salads can be the main dish. Here are some salads I've enjoyed recently:

Pea Salad
Marinated Confetti Bean Salad
Cranberry Apple Pecan Salad