The Broccoli Queen Dethroned

I’m sure you’ve been in a food rut before. Everyone seems to get into them. Some people like it that way, or else they will claim to, and some of us need more variety in our lives, but are forced by habit to keep doing the same thing over and over.

That’s the place I found myself before receiving a weekly box of fruits and vegetables from Abundant Harvest Organics. I was the Broccoli Queen. It started to get embarrassing when my deep dark secret was revealed to outside family members by my kids. They liked it at first, but then would complain about having broccoli every night, or nearly every night. It was getting pretty bad, this broccoli addiction.

I did try on occasion to serve different vegetables, it wasn’t entirely my fault, but my son didn’t like cooked carrots or zucchini or green beans, or anything with a texture too mushy or tough, and my husband hated peas. After trying these with poor results, I pretty much gave up. At least I knew they liked broccoli, and I had been eating it religiously since college.

One of my favorite (though uninspired) meals when I was single was steamed broccoli and a microwaved baked potato. So, as you can see, this was a long standing addiction. I got my son hooked early. One time he was so engrossed in a bowl of broccoli as a three-year-old I was sure that if I put a cookie in front of him he wouldn’t eat it. I got out the video camera and started filming him chow down his “trees.” As expected, no amount of temptation with the cookie could tear him away. But unfortunately, he kicked the habit pretty early, and he is now detoxing from broccoli with a steady stream of sugar injected in daily doses.

Anyway, now that I’m receiving a weekly box of seasonal vegetables not of my choosing, I am forced to figure out how to cook and serve them. Some of them I would never buy on my own, like kale and chard, but I’ve learned to cook them and genuinely like the taste (especially the recipe with kale, bacon, bread crumbs and parmesan cheese, yum!). Not to mention that the abundance of healthy vitamins in leafy green vegetables is widely touted. I just feel healthier after eating them. My body feels satisfied and refreshed when I eat the vegetables in my box. The way you feel after drinking a cold glass of lemonade on a hot day.

I know that choice in our culture is king, but I’m starting to appreciate not having to choose. With twenty varieties of yogurt, fifty varieties of cereal, and more and more choices every day that just slow down my grocery shopping, I’m happy to have fewer decisions to make.

I've also gotten more creative in the kitchen, which inspires other areas of my life. I used to be a by the book cook—relying exclusively on recipes. I envied those who could just whip something up, create a new recipe, and be experimental in the kitchen. Not me. If I didn’t have a recipe, I was lost. Now that I have to cook what's in the box, I've learned how to experiment, although I still look up recipes for new vegetables like Lambs quarter.

So if you're trying to eat more fruits and vegetables, stop trying and just do it. With the plethora of recipes on the internet, and helpful websites on how to eat more fruits and vegetables, there really is no excuse. Why not buy and cook some new types of vegetables? You may be surprised at what you or your family will like, and by how it may inspire the rest of your life.