Vary your vegetables!

The basis of a healthy lifestyle is eating enough vegetables. Another aspect that people often forget is that it's important to have enough variation in the vegetables you use. If you ask yourself the question: 'Do I have a varied diet?' then you will probably say 'Yes, I have!'. But when you write down which vegetables you eat every week you will probably write down more or less the same vegetables.

When anybody takes a look in my refrigerator at any week they will always find sweet paprika's, cucumber, zucchini, salad, arugula, (cherry) tomatoes, onions and mushrooms. I love these vegetables so I eat them a lot! And since I'm living alone and I don't like to waste any food I need to use these in different meals. But when I get only these vegetables every week that's definitely not a varied menu!

In order to avoid buying more or less the same vegetables every week I agreed with myself that every week I need to buy a vegetable that I've never used or tasted before. When I just started eating clean this really helped me to discover new tastes and new recipes and I learned a lot! But now I find myself at a point that I tried (almost) every vegetable available in the store or on the market so I needed a new trick.

There are a lot of vegetables I do not really eat that often for no apparent reason (like broccoli, beet root, cauliflower, egg plant, carrots, pumpkin, leek etc). In order to avoid that I don't eat these vegetables at all I now need to incorporate two of these vegetables every week into my menu plan and not the same vegetable of these two weeks in a row. This really works for me and it makes sure that I have variation in the vegetables I eat. Of course, every week I eat paprika's, zucchini and mushrooms. But this isn't a problem due to the fact that I add some of my less desirable vegetables to my menu every week.

So be aware of the choices you make when it comes to vegetables and make sure you have enough variation!