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Health & Nutrition: Human Nutrition

Do you have any ideas for serving vegetables?

• Many vegetables taste good raw. Try a low-fat dip with raw cauliflower, broccoli, carrot, green pepper, turnip, and rutabaga sticks or pieces. You can use green beans red peppers, zucchini, or snow peas as dippers, too. And how about trying a new vegetable, green cauliflower? It's green like broccoli but looks like cauliflower.

• Green up your salads by adding spinach, watercress, romaine or other dark greens. They get an A+ in nutrients as well as in flavor. Don't stop there add more color and flavor with other raw or cooked vegetables. Try raw green pepper strips or turnip slices or cold cooked peas, corn, chickpeas, or beets. Vary salads even more by serving greens tossed with fruit slices such as oranges, apples, and pears. Be moderate in your use of oily salad dressings and mayonnaise because they may add more fats and calories than you want.

• Create your own cooked vegetable combos. For ideas, check out some of the vegetable combos in the frozen food case at the grocery and then try some of your own too. Think about color, shape, and texture contrasts. For example, combine green, yellow, and white vegetables, or add water chestnuts to a soft vegetable for a crisp texture contrast.

• Try steaming vegetables. Use a steamer basket that fits into a saucepan. Put vegetables in the basket with water in the bottom of the pan, cover the pan with a tight fitting lid, and steam the vegetables until tender but still crisp and brightly colored. Water should not touch the steamer basket. You can also steam vegetables in a microwave oven, using cookbook directions.

• Stir frying is a cooking technique adopted from the Orient. To stir fry vegetables, lightly coat the bottom of a nonstick frypan with vegetable oil; heat the frypan; add vegetables, and stir gently until vegetables are tender crisp. Use your imagination. Many vegetables are good stir fried. For example try summer squash, broccoli, cabbage, or asparagus. Lower sodium soy sauce, lemon juice, or herbs add flavor.