Eat More Veggie Tails

There are literally thousands of vegetables in the world. This means that your odds of finding some veggies that taste good to you are strongly in your favor.

I did not grow up eating many vegetables. As your average "city girl," who sadly was not raised on a farm (I say sadly because I've had a lifelong dream of owning a horse), my idea of a vegetable was what came from a can. My childhood favorite was canned green beans.

I had no idea how much variety there was in food. Heck, I didn't even know what a clove of garlic was. The first time I tried to cook some garlic mashed potatoes for Michael, I mistakenly thought a bulb was a clove, so they were very garlicky. Oh, and I didn't even saute it first, just roughly chopped it up (didn't have a food chopper to properly mince it either) raw and stirred it in. Large chunks of raw garlic in every bite. Yeah...

I also used to avoid trying something new. I was your stereotypical restaurant patron who would order the same item every time because once I found something I liked, why bother trying something different?

Allow me to share another story from our dating years...Michael and I were shopping at Walmart, and Michael purchased a mini-eclare pie (maybe 3 or 4 inches in diameter). While I was driving, he wanted me to try a bite, but it didn't look appealing to me, so I refused. He insisted. I refused. Insisted. Refused. Then he reached over and shoved it in my mouth. I refused...by spitting it back out...onto the remainder of the pie he was still holding in front of my mouth. He didn't finish it...can't imagine why. :)

So as I've aged, I've learned to be more open-minded to new foods. I make myself try something at least once before I let myself say, "I don't like it." And surprisingly, foods that I didn't like as a child, I now love the taste of. Tomatoes, for example.

I have since discovered many new foods that I enjoy. Specifically in the vegetable world, I have at least quadrupled the number of vegetables I used to enjoy eating as a child. (I'm somewhat guessing, because like I said, there are thousands of vegetables.)

We strive to eat vegetables with all meals. We add a vegetable powder to our breakfast smoothies every morning (we make it ourselves). At lunch, we usually eat a vegetable-based soup, poured over a whole grain. With dinner, if the meal itself doesn't incorporate many vegetables, we eat some steamed veggies or a big salad as a side dish.

One day, we'd love to build a garden in our backyard and grow our own vegetables. But until then, I will continue to walk through the produce section like a kid in a toy store. :)