Healthy Eating RESET

Let’s talk eating healthy for a minute…maybe you had a New Year’s Resolution to try to eat more fruits and veggies and need a jumpstart or maybe you just want to make more nutritious meals for your family and looking for motivation.

I also had a resolution to starting eating clean and using less processed foods. I wasn’t quite sure where to start but then I stumbled across a local, organic buying club. Different fruits and vegetables, each week! This made it fun for me to look for new recipe ideas each week on Pinterest to keep it interesting. Let me tell you: I like to keep it simple, with minimal prep and very few ingredients! You have many packages to choose from each week, to suit the size of your family. We pick up our share on Fridays and even my 2-year-old loves it. We come home and put everything on the table and we pick up each item and talk about it’s name, color, shape, taste and texture. We’ve been able to add a ton more vegetables into our daily diet and fruit has become the main snack and dessert. It also forces me to make a meal plan each week because I don’t want to waste any of our fresh produce! We are all eating much healthier now because of this!

As an example, I had never made spaghetti squash, eggplant or butternut squash until joining my club. I also didn’t like kale. Now, butternut squash and kale are 2 of my favorite foods! I know…you’re probably thinking: kale?? A favorite food? YES! A “massaged kale” salad topped with roasted veggies: delicious! Massaged Kale means roughly chopping 2-3 cups or however much you’d like to eat and then using 1 tsp – 1 tbsp of whatever oil you’d like to use (I like white truffle oil, grapeseed oil or extra virgin olive oil) and simply massing the kale with it, maybe 1 minute or longer, up to 2-3 minutes if you have the time! It takes away the bitter taste kale has and even softens the texture. Trust me, your taste buds will thank you and busy/working moms: no worries, you can prep this in advance for work and it will still be fresh for 2-3 days! Recipes coming on the next post!

Are you craving KALE yet?! I bet you’re at least hungry!

There are so many options to choose from to get started! Simply type “organic fruits and vegetables Orlando” into your search engine and quite a few local farms, co-ops and buying clubs will pop up for you to check out. There are also ones that will deliver to your house each week! You can also choose to go to a weekly farmers market or simply the grocery store or specialty food store of your choice each week, but just try to mix it up and buy something new each week!

I’m going to start a new monthly series, “Kristen’s Kitchen” featuring a different fruit or vegetable each time and we’ll focus on the nutrition benefits it provides as well as simple, tested recipes you can try at home, without having to search through Pinterest for hours!

I hope this article has inspired you to go out and buy a few extra (maybe new) fruits and vegetables this week!