One of the biggest challenges to getting people to eat healthier, especially kids, is the perception that the food’s just not going to be as tasty as fast food that’s loaded with sodium, bad fats, cholesterol and refined products.
The key is to make the food taste absolutely fantastic. Try this recipe for broccoli, for example.
One head of broccoli, chopped into bite-sized chunks (stalks ok)
Olive Oil
Two bulbs garlic, minced
Pinch of Red or Black Pepper
Prepare olive oil on high heat in a skillet. Add garlic and sautee until browning. Add broccoli and stir. Sautee until tender. Stir in pepper then turn off heat.
The flavors combine marvelously when the pepper is added just at the end of the cooking process. As a childhood friend noted, if only he had been exposed to this kind of broccoli when he was young, he would never have started his lifelong hate-affair with vegetables. Bon Appetit!
Scott Cooney is the author of Build a Green Small Business: Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur, and loves a good broccoli saute.
oooh. Love this. My son (3.5) will actually try to poach broccoli from our plates after he finishes his.
We do the same basic thing, except use chili garlic sauce (found at Asian markets) instead of the red pepper. We often add a touch of Bragg’s too, for salt and balancing out the spiciness. Gives it a Chinese-food taste, but delicious!
I think the secret to this recipe isn’t how you flavor it, but how you cook it. Giving it a little bit of brown color, while keeping it just a bit crunchy is the key. We do it just with olive oil, salt and pepper… toss it all together first and then put it in a really hot pan, don’t stir until you’ve got a bit of carmalization on the bottoms. Almost all vegetables work this way, including beans, asparagus and even cauliflower.