Melanie asked about the practicalities of eating five servings of vegetables per day. Most often I eat one for breakfast, two for lunch, and two for dinner.
About five days a week I have a pumpkin smoothie for breakfast. You can find a lot of frou-frou pumpkin smoothie recipes if you go looking, recipes that tell you to add three kinds of spices and whipped cream on top. Before breakfast? I think not. My recipe is easy and delicious: half a cup of pumpkin, one frozen banana (or an equivalent amount of whatever fruit we have in the freezer, or a fresh banana with some ice cubes), plain yogurt, and coconut milk to blend. It fills me up until lunchtime and it is not overtly vegetable-y. My daughter enjoys it, and she is the queen of picky eaters.
At lunch I'll often eat a big salad with some protein. A serving of lettuce and other raw leafy greens is one cup. A cup of lettuce topped with various other veggies (tomatoes, carrots, peppers, cukes) and something meaty makes for a satisfying lunch. I'll also often scavenge in the fridge and reprise our dinner from the night before.
At dinnertime we usually have something salad-y (sometimes green salad, sometimes slaw, sometimes carrot salad or broccoli salad or similar) and something steamed. It's not hard to eat a cup of salad and a half-cup of steamed veggies along with something main-dish-y. We often incorporate veggies into our main dishes-- the broccoli thing I mentioned last night, or the pasta bake with red sauce we had tonight, or a speedy soup made from greens and potatoes. If I pay attention to the greens/potatoes ratio and offer bread for dipping, everyone but Stella will eat green potato soup.
If I'm running behind on the servings count, we usually have snackable veggies in the fridge. Baby carrots are our standby (my husband buys pounds and pounds of carrots every week-- babies for snacking and full-sized for cooking and salads, but olives are good too. This one is kind of quirky, but a favorite snack at our house is frozen peas. Not microwaved, just straight out of the freezer and into a bowl. Weird, but it works.
I use the USDA portion size info, but I don't worry about counting the occasional serving of fries (like, once a month or so). Potatoes are vegetables too, and I'm not fussed about fat.
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