Monday Mission: Get Spring Greens in your Diet

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to get more leafy greens into your daily meals.

Spring is the perfect time for this as (finally) some local foods are going to come into season in the colder climates. For a while, it will be leafy greens, leafy greens, and more leafy greens (+ asparagus).

Why eat more green leafy vegetables? Not only because they might be fresh and local in the spring, but any time of the year they fight cancer, improve a ton of body functions, and have more health benefits than I can count!

This post is sponsored by Plan to Eat, where their mission is to help families plan healthy, real food meals at home to encourage family mealtime, saving money, and being well, both physically and emotionally.

Can You Find the Perfect Recipe for Leafy Greens?

When you have an unfamiliar ingredient you’d like to use, it’s amazing and wonderful that the power of the Internet can quickly spit out hundreds of recipes using that food, isn’t it?

Sometimes, though, it can hamper our creativity and ability to think outside the box. For example, I encouraged my mom to include artichokes more in my dad’s anti-cancer diet, along with greens of any kind (but especially the leafy greens). She was a trooper about it and looked up some artichoke recipes to use up the huge Costco-sized jar I left with her.

Unfortunately, the recipes were a bust. Too lemony, too crunchy, too whatever for my dad to enjoy it. She froze the rest of the artichokes and hoped to include them in something, someday. But the nail was already going into the coffin of artichokes to be sure.

When they visited for the weekend, I used nearly a whole huge jar of artichokes in 2-3 meals, and Dad wasn’t any the wiser.

My mom was also surprised I had stuck them into so many things, and I explained how easy it would be to cut up the artichoke heart small and incorporate them into any soup or especially the pasta meals that my dad adores, which are kind of cheats anyway and could use a little boost. (No pressure, Mom, no pressure…but whenever you’re ready, I have two more jars here for you!)

My mom has also been awesome at including leafy greens in Dad’s smoothies, but I still had to encourage her to think outside the recipes. Here’s the key:

Green leafy vegetables can go into almost anything

It’s true!

Beef stroganoff? Leafy greens.

Pasta dish of any kind. Leafy greens.

Soup? Any soup at all? Leafy greens.

Okay, so maybe they wouldn’t go all that great in oatmeal, but even basic staples like meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables can absorb some cooked leafy greens without too many complaints (as long as the eater can get over the green mashed potatoes, you really can’t taste much!).

If you’re steaming broccoli for a normal side veg, just add a few leaves. Just ask your adult eaters to simply spear a piece of broccoli with a few leafy greens, and they’ll bare notice.

Eating More Green Leafy Vegetables

My poor, poor brain. It gets so tired, you know.

Even though I know how easy it can be to add leafy greens to any recipe, I can have a bunch of kale in the crisper drawer for a week and simply forget that I should be using it. No matter how easy it is, if you forget completely, it doesn’t work very well.

I have two basic strategies for trying to make sure I do include leafy greens more often, especially when I’ve already bought them.

I do buy leafy greens without a plan for them, by the way, which some say is a bad idea because you might waste the food. But for me, having them on hand is the push I need to remember to plan them in, so it’s the first line of attack in a way, and I try hard NOT to waste them!

First, in my Plan to Eat recipes in my online menu planner, I have taken to editing recipes to make notes of including green leafy veggies. This helps my poor, tired brain out the next time!

I might be planning a week’s worth of dinners and have a note-to-self like this:

“Use or freeze kale, celery and tomato paste!”

While I’m planning, I’ll make sure my chosen meals either already include those foods OR I can immediately edit the recipe (so easy to do in PTE) and add ” leafy greens” into the ingredients list and/or the directions.

Also when I do add leafy greens to a meal, I can grab my tablet after dinner and make sure I edit the recipe to help my poor, tired brain have a leg up next time I plan that dish.

It’s best if I add it to the ingredients, because then I can use strategy number two even more efficiently – searching for recipes with ” leafy greens” (or “kale” or “spinach” etc.) when I know I have some to use up.

I focus on my own recipes in Plan to Eat, where I know I’ve got a much better chance of finding both tried-and-true meals and real food ingredients than on a standard Google (or Swagbucks) search.

“How to Use Leafy Greens” Ideas for You

If you’ve ever had a CSA, you probably are well versed at including leafy greens in everything. But if you haven’t had the pleasure of five bunches of unidentified leafy things hitting your fridge every week, you might enjoy these green-y tips and recipes from KS – always family-friendly, kid-approved, real food standards:

• Sausage Spinach Pasta Toss (family favorite! New photos!)
• Recipes to Use up Your Spinach
• Tomato Basil Einkorn Pasta with Greens

• Creamy Halibut with Caramelized Onions on a bed of wilted spinach
• Quick Green Vegetable Meatball Soup (super kid-friendly!)
• Blended Green Soup for the Kids
• Sausage Kale and Bean Soup
• Italian Salmon or Mushrooms with Greens and Goat Cheese (more of a nice adult lunch)

• How to Dehydrate Greens (when you just have too many at once)
• Green Smoothies with Kale (with special “normal blender” instructions if you don’t have a high-speed blender)
• Tuscan Bean Soup
• Best Ever Scrambled Eggs (or any omelet or scramble!)
• Salmon Spinach Crustless Quiche, pictured below, recipe in the Healthy Breakfast Book.

What About Those Pesky Anti-Nutrients?

Spinach contains oxalates. Kale contains goitrogens.

The first, not so great if you’re at risk of kidney stones. The latter can hinder thyroid function, which is actually suffering in many Americans (most of whom don’t realize it and just think they’re tired…see above, my brain!).

I’ve written about them in the past HERE, but it seems that so much new information is coming out all the time. It’s hard to keep up! I know there are some real foodies who won’t touch the cruciferous family raw with a 10-foot pole, nevertheless a fork.

For me, I’ll eat a mixture of raw and cooked greens, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower, and I’m not worrying about it yet. SJ tells us about reducing antinutrients in our foods here, if you’re interested!

On the other hand, I keep wondering about all that I hear about low thyroid function (my basal body temps have always been closer to “dead” than normal!) and adrenal fatigue. I’m guessing I’m a prime candidate with the sleep schedule I tend to keep.

Now the important question – are you going to figure out how to use more greens in your meals, starting this week? Buy some kale or spinach and see what you can do with the pressure of using it!  

Need More Baby Steps?

Here at Kitchen Stewardship, we’ve always been all about the baby steps. But if you’re just starting your real food and natural living journey, sifting through all that we’ve shared here over the years can be totally overwhelming.

That’s why we took the best 10 rookie “Monday Missions” that used to post once a week and got them all spruced up to send to your inbox – once a week on Mondays, so you can learn to be a kitchen steward one baby step at a time, in a doable sequence.

Yes! One Change a Week please!

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