{"id":690,"date":"2010-02-01T03:52:42","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T03:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/?p=690"},"modified":"2010-02-01T03:52:42","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T03:52:42","slug":"vegetable-exhaustion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/vegetable-exhaustion\/","title":{"rendered":"Vegetable Exhaustion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Investment Thinking + 4 Days of Meal Ideas Put Ease into a Vegetable Life<\/h3>\n

I suffered a case of Vegetable Exhaustion last night while driving to a friend’s house, loaded with prepared vegetables.\u00a0 After a nasty ski accident landed her in bed for three months, she readily accepted my offer for a few vegetable dishes.\u00a0 So I spent the better part of a day making a roasted beet salad, green salad with saut\u00e9ed mushrooms and onions, Beef Stew with Tomatoes, Turnips and Leeks, and kale salad with golden raisins and almonds.<\/p>\n

\"Beef<\/a>
Find all sorts of great recipes at VegetableAMonth.com, like this Beef Stew with Tomatoes, Turnips and Leeks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Dang!” I groused to myself on the drive to her house.\u00a0 “How could it have take so long to make four vegetable dishes?”<\/p>\n

On average, I get sucked into these head debates about once each month.\u00a0 A tipping point is reached, I get overwhelmed and aggravated, and off I go, demanding to know why vegetables take so long.\u00a0 I’m guessing I’m not alone in these outbursts.\u00a0 In fact, the time commitment required for vegetable cooking is undoubtedly a big part of the reason only one in ten of us eats the recommended daily servings.<\/p>\n

So is there any hope for a peaceful coexistence with vegetables?\u00a0 There has to be.\u00a0 Vegetables are far too important (and delicious) to be squeezed out by the clock.\u00a0 But how to still the discontent and debate provoked by these hard-to-crack powerhouses?<\/p>\n

Here’s what calmed me down yesterday:\u00a0 “Investment thinking,” or taking the long view.\u00a0 If I limited my view plane to a single day, then of course I spent way too much time on vegetables yesterday.\u00a0 But if I instead took a long view of things, what seemed like wasted time was magically transformed into an<\/em> investment with a payoff<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Remember, I had made four <\/strong><\/em>vegetable dishes\u2014some in quadruple <\/strong><\/em>batches!\u00a0 Although several servings were going to my bedridden friend, one day’s effort still left me with enough green stuff for three more days.\u00a0 And truth be told, I didn’t really spend the entire<\/em> day cooking vegetables, only about three hours.\u00a0 So a three-hour investment yielded a total of\u00a0 four days’ worth of lunches and dinners.\u00a0 Not a bad return!\u00a0 In fact, that payoff is a lot better option than driving to, ordering and coming home with fast food multiple times.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t stop with taking a long view.\u00a0 Not wanting any of my payoff to go to waste, I also jotted down a quick plan for using everything up to maximum advantage.\u00a0 Reproduced below, it also gives a few hints for maximizing prep time.\u00a0 For instance, I actually started the green salad a night before, taking advantage of the extra meal making time made available by having leftovers for the rest of the meal.\u00a0 See if any of my efficiency tricks can help lighten your nightly meal making load.<\/p>\n

Saturday–Start Making Ahead <\/span><\/h4>\n

Dinner<\/span><\/h4>\n