If You Don’t Eat Your Vegetables….

Recently at my office we had a week- long health and nutrition seminar.  As part of our nutrition day, we had various experts come in to lecture us on the virtues of vegetable consumption.  They were preaching to the choir, because frankly, I’ve never had a problem incorporating vegetables into my diet.  Given, my mom fed me less than inspiring vegetable dishes as child growing up.  I seem to remember eating a lot of those boxed, frozen string beans tossed in oil & vinegar for some reason, (this probably had something to do with her being sick of cooking for us EVERY day) but anyway, I subscribe to the belief that if you don’t like to eat vegetables, you might be “doing it wrong”, what’s not to like really?  The concept of not liking vegetables is foreign to me.  But as I sat there listening to the nutritionist talk about portion size, one of my coworkers raised his hand questioning, “Can you let me know of some ‘gateway’ vegetables? I don’t like to eat vegetables because to me they taste like plants, well because, THEY ARE PLANTS”.  The nutrionist went on to answer beginning her sentence with “Kids like” before stopping herself to realize she was answering a question from a grown ass man.  Does a grown ass man really need baby carrots drenched in ranch dressing? I say NO!

So I am making this a call to action: spice up your vegetables, because they CAN be delicious and you will want to eat them (practices Jedi mind trick).  Let’s start our road to delicious vegetable consumption with the much maligned asparagus.  Spring is here and it just so happens to be asparagus season.

Some tips on purchasing & cleaning asparagus:

• Choose spears that are firm, with tightly closed tips
• Look at the ends. Do they look hydrated or do they look dry and woody? Opt for what looks fresh and plump, leaving the dry spears for someone else to buy!
• Thickness or thinness of asparagus is not an indication of quality but rather one of personal preference
• The thinner spears are tender & sweet while the thicker spears are meatier, with a stronger asparagus flavor
• Trim away the tough woody base, either by cutting about a half inch away or by bending the asparagus and allowing it to snap. Asparagus will break naturally where the stem toughens

Below is a recipe for a lovely spring pizza that I put together.  Rather than using sauce, it calls for gruyere cheese and jarred artichoke hearts (which go on sale rather regularly!)  It’s light and perfect for spring and again, is a great, quick option when you have ready-to-use pizza dough on hand.  I like to buy my pizza dough a few at a time and freeze them, they thaw really quickly on my granite countertop which sucks the cold right out of them.  30 minutes to pizza.

Spring Pizza

Prep Time:  15 Minutes

Total Time: 30 Minutes

Ingredients

1 Jar (12 ounces) marinated artichoke hearts, drained but reserving the marinade

1 large bunch of asparagus trimmed & cut into 2-inch pieces

1 pint cherry tomatoes- halved

1 pound of pizza dough

Kosher salt & pepper

Garlic powder OR 2 cloves of garlic minced

3 cups of grated gruyere cheese

Preparation

Preheat oven to 500°. In a medium bowl, combine artichoke hearts, asparagus and tomatoes.  Roll out your dough, I like to roll it into a rectangle shape, only because it fits on my baking sheet better.  Brush all of the dough with the marinade from the artichoke hearts jar.  Top the dough with all of the vegetables (and garlic if using fresh), leaving  a 1 inch border.  Brush border with additional marinade and season pizza with salt, pepper & garlic powder (a light sprinkle IF not using garlic powder).  Bake pizza for 10 minutes, remove and add shredded gruyere cheese, baking until crust is golden and cheese is melted, an additional 3-5 minutes.

*Recipe courtesy of Everyday Food