Sneaking in Veggies

Part of my move to a vegan diet (or, as I like to call it, veganicity) has involved bumping up my veggie intake. A daily green smoothie helps, but it seems like veggies are often lacking in my diet. Because I've never minded leftovers, I tend to cook recipes intended to feed four or so people, then use the leftovers for lunch or dinner for the next three or four days. Sometimes, I'll freeze individual portions to use later, but usually, I just eat the same thing for a few days. For reasons of cost, I keep frozen veggies and frozen spinach on hand, and I try to work them into meals wherever I can. One of my favorite things to make is a big pot of brown rice mixed with cooked frozen veggies and spinach. I add some teriyaki sauce and, voila, I've got dinner and/or lunch for the next few days! (Such stereotypical college student food, I know, but I really like it!)

Another thing that I make quite frequently (at least every two weeks) is a pot of spaghetti. It's cheap, it freezes well, and I don't really get tired of it. My spaghetti recipe has changed with my change in diet, of course: I spend a little extra to buy whole wheat spaghetti, I avoid sauces containing meat or dairy, and I sprinkle a little sea salt and nutritional yeast on top, rather than parmesan cheese.

(Side note: When I made spaghetti last night, I glanced at the label of my sauce and almost fainted to see romano cheese listed as the final ingredient. I SWEAR I read the label before I bought it, and I can't for the life of me figure out how I didn't see the cheese listed. And, since I'm super budget-conscious about my food shopping, I'm eating it anyway. It won't happen again, though––I've decided to start making my own spaghetti sauce from scratch and freezing it in portions suitable for one pound of pasta. I'm actually relieved to make my own, because I've always hated the sweetness of commercially-bought spaghetti sauces.)

Anyway. Another change I've made to my spaghetti formula is that I add a one-pound bag of frozen vegetables to the sauce before I heat it up. My favorite for spaghetti sauce is the Fred Meyer brand called (I think) "Asian Blend"––it's green beans, broccoli, mushrooms, and onions. Not only does this add a hefty dose of veggies to each serving of pasta, it also makes it a lot more filling. Before I switched to whole wheat pasta, I could often eat two or three bowls of spaghetti and still be hungry a few hours later (that's simple carbohydrates for you!) But with the whole wheat pasta and the veggies, I can maybe manage a bowl and a half before I'm stuffed––and I'm not hungry later. Last night, I ate a bowl of the spaghetti and a whole cucumber in rice vinegar around 6:00 and I was so full that I didn't make my green smoothie until almost 10:00!

In an ideal world, of course, I would only eat fresh vegetables, but cost and storage is prohibitive. I can buy frozen vegetables in large quantities (I get a big bag from Costco) to save money, and they won't go bad before I can eat them. The other upside to keeping frozen vegetables on hand, of course, is that they're always available to be tossed into whatever I'm making (like spaghetti, rice and/or beans, quinoa, couscous, etc). They're easy to be creative with, and as long as you don't overcook them, they stay pretty crisp (I avoid the bags of frozen veggies where everything's in miniscule cubes––reminds me of cafeteria food).