Does this look like you when you’re making dinner?
You come up with a main course, usually a meat. You pick a starch potatoes,
rice, pasta.
At the last minute, you realize you need a side dish. So you dump frozen peas or broccoli in boiling water, or you toss bagged salad in a bowl. Again.
If your aim is healthful, balanced and affordable, you may have missed a big chance. Again.
Dietitians see you do it. When they have clients keep food logs, they often see no fruits or vegetables during the day. And all that missed nutrition isn’t being made up at night, either.
“We tend to think in food groups,” says Elisabetta Politi, the nutrition director at the Duke Diet and Fitness
Center in Durham, North Carolina. “‘Tonight, I’m going to have chicken, I’m going to have pasta.’ It shows people don’t think too much in terms of balance.”
Melissa Herrmann Dierks, a registered dietitian and diabetes educator in Huntersville, North Carolina, tells clients to generally aim for 2 1/2 cups of vegetables and at least one piece of fruit a day, with a cup being about the size of a light bulb. Politi suggests more, 2 1/2 cups of vegetables for adult women and 3 cups for men, plus 2 cups of fruit a day.
That doesn’t sound too hard, does it? Brace yourself: The Centers for Disease Control
released a
report Sept. 10 that looked at fruit and vegetable consumption by state. Not one state did well in
meeting the goal of eating vegetables three times a day and fruit twice a day.
“A lot of people skip breakfast or get a sausage biscuit,” says Dierks. “At lunch, it’s fast food or
Chinese or a pizza.” By the time we get to dinner, it’s our last chance.
Doing bagged salad or frozen broccoli every night is a start, but you’re still missing something else important: Variety.
“The bigger variety that you eat, the bigger variety of vitamins and minerals you’re going to get,” says Dierks.
Yes, it
can be expensive to keep fresh fruits and vegetables around.
“Aiming for a variety is great, but we want to be watchful of waste,” says Politi. “People stop buying if they think they’re throwing away.”
 |
We spend all our time on main dishes, and then we just dump a bag of frozen vegetables in
a pot for a side dish. But side dishes are important to get to our five servings of fruits and
vegetables a day. (Charlotte Observer/MCT) |
But there are ways to keep it affordable and even fast. Both Dierks and Politi push the importance of meal-planning including side dishes.
“Emphasizing side dishes can help you plan what to buy at the grocery store,” says Politi.
Fresh is great, but there’s nothing wrong with stocking up on frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. They last
longer, they’re on hand when you need them, and if you plan, you can stock up on sales.
With an eye toward affordability, variety and speed, we dug into our own files of great side dishes, the ones we rely on to fill out the plate. All of them use things that are easy to add to your grocery list.
“People who spend at least 20 minutes planning the grocery list eat healthier,” says Dierks. “Get those foods in the
house, otherwise, you’re not going to eat them.”
Oven-roasted green beans
Adapted from “Desperation Entertaining,” by Beverly Mills and Alicia
Ross (Workman, 2002). This never fails to get raves whenever I serve it. It’s just as good at room temperature or slightly warm, and you can make it with the most
tired mid-winter green beans.
● 2 pounds fresh green beans (see note)
● 1 large onion (see note)
● 8 cloves garlic (see note)
● 2 tablespoons olive oil
● About 1 teaspoon salt (crispy sea salt is great, table salt is fine too)
● 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Rinse and drain the green beans. Trim off the stem ends, leaving the green beans whole.
Spread the green beans in a mostly single layer in a wide, shallow pan, such as a roasting pan or a jelly roll plan. Peel the onion and cut in thin slices. Separate the rings and scatter over the green beans. Peel the garlic cloves. (Place cloves on their side on a cutting board, place the flat side of a knife blade on each one and hit it with your fist to break the skin.) Cut each clove in half and scatter over the green beans.
Drizzle olive oil over all. Shake the pan a little to distribute everything. Place in oven, uncovered, and roast for 10 minutes. Use tongs to stir it all around. Roast for 10 minutes longer.
Remove from oven. Immediately pour balsamic vinegar over everything. Serve immediately, or cover the pan with foil and let stand up to 1 hour before serving.
Notes: You can halve or increase the amount of green beans depending on how many people you’re serving. For the onion, I’ve used thinly sliced shallot, red onion, sweet onion or yellow onion. I’ve skipped the garlic, and I’ve even
added thinly sliced fresh shiitake mushrooms (fabulous).
Yield: 8 servings (4 if you use 1 pound green beans)
By Kathleen Purvis
(McClatchy-Tribune Information
Services)
From. Korea Herald
