Veggies

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah I was thinking Spag Bol is pretty good on the internals for veggies anyway, but yeah mushrooms of course.  Then on the side have some greens something like asparagus/brocolli or cavallo nero.

Is it? It's mostly tomatoes and mince. A chilli is broadly similar but is padded out with a couple of pounds of pulses usually and they usually count in the veg quotas.

[TrenterPercenter]

Onions, tomatoes, celery, carrots, mushrooms it's alright for that kind of thing.  Better would be a veggies lasagne.

[Blue Jam]

Spinach is also a good vege-table for chucking into things to bring you up to your five-a-day. Curries especially. It also works well with sautéed potatoes, Bombay or otherwise.

[touchingcloth]

Is it? It's mostly tomatoes and mince. A chilli is broadly similar but is padded out with a couple of pounds of pulses usually and they usually count in the veg quotas.

I mince a fuckton of veg into bolognese when I make it. Onions, celery, carrots, mushrooms, bang the lot in.

Speaking of which, celery with crunchy peanut butter spread on it. Great snack.

It's great. I've lost 9kg since the start of Lent, in no small part thanks to celery with peanut butter.

[beanheadmcginty]

Add them to the sauce? Start it off with a soffrito (chopped celery, onion and carrot), use some chopped red peppers in the sauce, mushrooms if you're a pervert. The tin of tomatoes counts too.

I've always wondered what the point of celery is in a soffritto. What's it adding to the mix? If I'm following a recipe I'll put it in, but if I'm just making my own concoction it seems a bit superfluous so I don't bother. Or does it have some magical properties I'm unaware of?

[touchingcloth]

I've always wondered what the point of celery is in a soffritto. What's it adding to the mix? If I'm following a recipe I'll put it in, but if I'm just making my own concoction it seems a bit superfluous so I don't bother. Or does it have some magical properties I'm unaware of?

It definitely adds to it. It's ever so slightly peppery, but it has its own celery-y taste as well. I reckon you'd be able to taste the difference of a plain soffrito with it and without it, but whether you'd notice it once combined into a bolognese, however...

[Gurke and Hare]

How much garlic would you have to eat for it to be one of your five a day?

[imitationleather]

As far as I know garlic is the only vegetable that has clothes. Why do we like to dress it up so much?

[Kankurette]

Celery is in there for texture, though it does have a slightly woody flavour of its own. It's often used as a base vegetable for soups, like onions.

[mothman]

Same for the correct abbreviation of breakfast, which is brekky. I eye anyone who spells it as "breaky" with suspicion.

People do that? And are allowed to live afterwards?

Though it does make Billy Ray Cyrus's most famous song inadvertently even more hilarious.

[Attila]

I thought I hated vegetables until I left home and started learning to cook. I think a lot of people are in that situation, being put off vegetables because they've never had them cooked properly before. I did feel shame at this though and made efforts to rectify it. I'm still a fussy eater but couldn't imagine getting to 60 and living on meat and potatoes.

It's a miracle I eat any vegetables at all as an adult (although I have to avoid onions and especially garlic, which makes me headachy and ill). My mother was a terrible cook to begin with, and my dad insisted that she boil all vegetables  to death then salt the mushed up corpses.  The memories of the overly cooked, overly salted carrots, lima beans, sweetcorn, and so forth can still make me feel queasy. And if my father didn't like a particular vegetable, we didn't have it -- so no cauliflower, greens, broccoli, and many others that I now happily eat were missing from the table when I was a kid.

Steamed or sautee'd for the win. (I also prefer  as little salt and no butter as possible). Mr Attila is an excellent cook -- he's a vegetarian, although I am not*, but I think his skills were borne out of necessity to make sure he always has a varied, flavoursome and nutritious evening meal.



*His family always make a vegetarian version of stuff like Scotch eggs and that for the xmas spread, and every, single year they plunk the vegetarian stuff down in front of me, assuming/thinking that I'm one, too. Nope -- gimme something's flesh, especially the excellent sausage rolls his dad makes.

[seepage]

Yes, as a child, choice of cabbage boiled to death with lots of bi-carb of soda, plain carrots, or tinned sweet corn. Sprouts at Christmas.

[Blue Jam]

Yes, my mother couldn't cook (my dad could but rarely did). My aunt however is a really good cook so I don't know why my uncle refuses to even try so much of her cooking (or how the fuck she puts up with him). Mr Jam's parents don't just cook veg well but also grow it well, so Christmas dinners with them are always enjoyable.

I've realised that while I have a bit of a sweet tooth I'm actually more fussy about fruit than veg. I'm not keen on legumes or brassicas but I make exceptions, really don't like celery or celeriac, but I'll eat most other veg. There are more fruits I won't touch, and I really wish I liked bananas, they're healthy and convenient and so it's frustrating that I absolutely cannot stand the flavour or texture of them, don't mind the smell of fresh banana but the smell of a banana peel that emanates from a bin after it's been in there for three hours makes me heave.

I once met a guy who owned a small business and had a strict "No bananas on the premises" clause in his employees' contracts because he hated the smell of them so much. I wouldn't quite go that far.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I mince a fuckton of veg into bolognese when I make it. Onions, celery, carrots, mushrooms, bang the lot in.

Yeah but onions don't count for veg quota's (not sure why) and celery is full of indigestible cellulose, although it does have micronutrients. But the point is you can add most of that stuff to chilli too and it will have way more organic content due to the several pounds of beans.

[touchingcloth]

Yeah but onions don't count for veg quota's (not sure why) and celery is full of indigestible cellulose, although it does have micronutrients. But the point is you can add most of that stuff to chilli too and it will have way more organic content due to the several pounds of beans.

Onions count. As I understand it, the "five a day" thing isn't really based on that being the amount of vegetables you need to get the right amount of nutrients, but more a way to have people not eat a load of meat and carbs and nothing else. I've heard that five portions is actually less than optimal, and is a bit of a public health fudge based on what people are likely to be able to stick to in practice.