How to get more greens in

red Swiss chard

Getting more greens into your diet doesn’t mean you have to eat a humungous salad every day (although this wouldn’t be a bad thing, really). There are a lot of other things in the produce section that qualify as “greens” other than your typical salad greens, such as bok choy, savoy cabbage, Swiss chard, kale, and spinach.

bok choy

I like to add some bok choy to a package of frozen stir fry vegetables when I’m making an Asian-inspired meal, or serve it steamed with simply a drizzle of sesame oil, minced garlic and salt, coconut aminos or soy sauce. 

Spinach can be made into a salad, mixed with other lettuce leaves, or sautéed in butter and garlic.

While many of these greens can be eaten raw, I prefer them cooked. Some of them can be a little tough, and cooking softens them up and makes them more easily digestible.

I recently whipped up some greens by mixing a bunch of red Swiss chard and a bunch of purple kale together and adding a few things I had to get rid of in my fridge. I like the bright colors of red chard, but you can easily use regular green chard and regular kale.

Greens are especially good with some kind of fat: like bacon, or if you’re a veg, then grass-fed butter. The fat really adds not only flavor but a mouth-feel that a green vegetable just simply lacks. And it likely helps increase the absorption rate of the greens as well.

These two greens are powerhouses of nutrition. Swiss chard packs a huge amount of vitamin A. Swiss chard is especially beneficial in the maintenance of bone health. Great source of antioxidants. Related to spinach and beets, Swiss chard helps prevents inflammation and promotes lung and digestive health.

Kale provides an excellent source of vitamins B6 and C, carotenes, and manganese.

High in vitamins A and C it is a powerful antioxidant too. Many experts consider 

kale to be the healthiest vegetable on the produce stand. It’s a cancer fighter 

and helps to control blood pressure.

purple kale

So, here’s what I came up with.

Ingredients:

1 bunch purple kale

1 bunch red Swiss chard

1 medium sized onion, cut in half and then sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Bacon or butter

Salt and pepper, to taste

Lemon (if using butter)

Preparation:

Wash each leaf of kale and chard under cold running water. Dry off the leaves. Cut off the stems. Now if you want you can eat these too, but I find them a little too tough, even if cooked. I use my knife and run it along the stem, removing it easily, and then discarding it.

If using bacon:

Cut bacon slices into bite-sized pieces. Heat a large non-stick pan and add bacon, cooking until crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon and let drip on a paper-towel lined plate. Remove all but 1-2 Tbsp. bacon fat, to which you will add the dried, chopped leaves of both the kale and the chard.  Cook for a few minutes. Add the sliced onions and coat everything in the fat. Cook a few more minutes. Finally add the garlic. Turn heat down to a simmer and cover pan to steam vegetables. Total cooking time should be about 15-20 minutes, depending on how well cooked you like your greens. Season with salt and pepper.

Delicious with roasted chicken or pork tenderloin.

If using butter:

Add 2 Tbsp. of unsalted butter to a heated non-stick pan. When melted, add onions, chopped leaves and garlic, as above. Cover and cook for a total of 15-20 minutes. Finish off with salt and pepper and a few sprinkles of lemon juice to brighten the greens.

Good with grilled fish or chicken.

For more information on various leafy greens and their health benefits, click here.

Leafy Greens

Summer is the perfect time for salads. When the temperatures go up, it's natural for us to  crave cooling foods and not to want to turn on the oven. Most people think of salads as an appetizer course, but salads make great meals. They are versatile – they can be vegetarian or topped with eggs, seafood or meat. They can be raw, or contain cooked items, either warm or chilled. They can be finished with all manner of dressings: mayo-based, vinaigrettes, or even tofu based. The combination of greens used can determine the taste profile of a salad. There are so many types of lettuce available to us now. Some spicy, some bitter, other mild and sweet.

When I was growing up, I can only recall there being iceberg lettuce. Not much variety. Today we have mesclun greens, baby greens, Romaine, Boston/Bibb, arugula, maché, radicchio, frisée, Belgian endive, watercress, red leaf, green leaf, escarole and mizuna, just to name a few!  I like mixing lettuces, especially when it comes to some of the more bitter greens.

I eat a salad nearly every day. I love how I can get 3-4 cups worth of vegetables a day just by eating one. They are great at lunch because they don't cause that late-afternoon nap I want to take if I end up eating something more filling.

Salads are easy to prepare but do take the time to wash each leaf under cold running water. Place in a salad spinner and spin till dry. If your greens are wet from their rinse, the dressing won’t adhere to the leaves. Even pre-packaged greens, claiming to have been triple-washed, recommend that we rinse them again before consuming.

Place washed greens on a chilled salad plate to keep them fresh and crisp.

Dress your salad right before serving.

For best presentation and nutrition, mix different lettuces together and add vegetables of all different colors. 

Red: tomatoes, raw red bell peppers, roasted red bell peppers

Yellow: yellow bell peppers (raw or roasted), yellow squash

Orange: orange bell peppers (raw or roasted), carrots (shopped or grated)

Green: cooked asparagus or green beans, zucchini, broccoli, cabbage, herbs

Purple: red cabbage

Misc: mushrooms, cauliflower

Naturally, you can make an all-vegetable salad and leave it at that. But to take a salad from ordinary to extraordinary, and make a meal of it, consider adding some of these:

Fat! Yes, fat. It will make the salad that much more satiating (meaning, it will satisfy). Healthy fat, in the form of avocado, California or Kalamata olives, walnuts, almonds or other nuts, sunflower seeds and pepitas (pumpkin seeds), makes for a delicious salad.

Protein. Crumbled bacon, grated, crumbled, or diced cheese, hard-boiled eggs, cubed tofu, seafood like tuna, salmon or crab meat, cooked chicken or turkey, leftover steak.

But the ultimate determining factor in how good your salad will be is the dressing. I’ve said it before: store-bought salad dressings are junk. It’s not hard to make your own. Once you’ve got the basics down to making a vinaigrette, you can experiment and come up with a slightly different dressing every time, so you’ll never get bored.

Try using flavored balsamic vinegars like fig and orange, or my latest fave: cherry balsamic. Use apple cider vinegar or an herb vinegar.  For an alternative to vinegar use citrus juice: lemon, orange, grapefruit, or tangerine.

Use different oils: walnut, avocado or coconut. It doesn’t always have to be olive oil. And it certainly shouldn’t be a cheap supermarket industrially-processed oil.

Add herbs and spices: parsley, tarragon, cilantro, garlic, sliced red onion, green onion, or chives.

Don’t think of salad as boring. It is anything but.

This is one of my favorite salads. It’s so simple, it seems ridiculous to even list it as a recipe, but here it is. The second one is my favorite Spinach Salad.

Maché Salad

1 bag maché greens from Trader Joe’s

2-3 avocadoes, sliced or cut into cubes

Juice from 1-2 lemons

A high-quality extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil

Salt & pepper

Rinse and spin greens dry. Place in a large salad bowl. Add the juice of 1-2 lemons, then drizzle about 2-3 Tbsp. olive oil on it (add more or less, depending on preference). Add seasoning to taste, then toss. Plate onto 3-4 salad plates. Add sliced avocado on top, then serve immediately.

Optional: top each salad with a medium-boiled egg (not soft-boiled, not hard-boiled. Yolk should still be a little runny).

Christina’s favorite Spinach Salad

Spinach greens

Sweet and spicy pecans *

Crumbled cheese: either goat cheese, bleu cheese or gorgonzola

Sliced mushrooms

Sliced hard-boiled egg

Crispy bacon crumbles

Thinly sliced red onion

Poppyseed dressing (make your own)

*Toast pecans in one layer on a cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes (don’t let them burn or even brown). Definitely remove from the oven when you can smell them. Place them in a bowl. Melt some butter and pour over. Toss to coat nuts. Sprinkle on a tsp. or so of evaporated cane sugar, and a little bit of cayenne pepper and toss again. Allow to cool completely. Taste. Add more sugar or cayenne to taste. Try not to devour them all before dinner!

Food trucks

Everywhere you go these days you hear about food trucks. The concept seems to either enthrall people, or repel them. There's nothing new about them though. Food trucks have been around for a long time. America's first "chuck wagon" arose from the need to feed cowboys on long cattle drives. The first one was born in 1886.

Over time, the chuck wagon unfortunately morphed into the "roach coach", a nasty, unsanitary, greasy, bug-infested kitchen that visited dirty construction sites, feeding sweaty men. And unfortunately, a lot of the time the stereotype was true. Regular people just didn't frequent them.

But I'll bet most of us have eaten ice cream from the trucks with the irritating music at least once in our lives, and eaten from a hot dog cart like the ones you identify with places like New York and Chicago. Street food is eaten by almost 2.5 billion people every day. But what we are seeing today is a completely different animal. Even brick and mortar establishments are getting in on the action because food trucks are clearly a leading culinary trend.

There were a few adventurous souls in the big cities of L.A. and New York that started it all in 2008. Kogi BBQ and Nom Nom from L.A. were a few of the pioneers. With their success, more and more entrepreneurs got in on it, taking advantage of the low start-up costs. While a brick and mortar place can run into the hundreds of thousands before even opening, a food truck can cost anywhere from $20,000-$75,000 to start.

And reputation? Now we've even got Zagat's rating them.

Today's food truck has most definitely evolved, offering all sorts of foods we've never seen prepared and served like this before. Sure, there are the typical junk food offerings like hot dogs, hamburgers and fried foods, but also a whole host of gourmet ethnic foods (besides the ubiquitous Mexican) like Thai, Vietnamese, Italian and Indian, to desserts, ice cream and crepes, to the healthy ones that do vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free fare. 

The most successful ones are those that are internet saavy. Creating a strong following is vital, and they're using Twitter and other social media platforms to stay in touch with fans. People are literally watching where their favorite truck will be next.

Food truck events are popular. "Food Truck Thursdays" are a popular draw to places like car dealerships and fairgrounds. They can be found lined up at all sorts of special events, like festivals, street fairs, and sporting events. Where there are people, there are hungry people, and they need to eat! What better than a mobile kitchen that comes to you, serving interesting food, fast.

And how to stand out from the crowd? Long gone are the subdued and boring looks of the old roach coaches. Take a look at some of these beauties.

Outrageous decor and bright colors capture our attention. 

 Today's food truck wants to brand itself and be memorable.

I mean, how can you miss these things driving down the road? 

So it was no big surprise when the company I work for recently decided to get on the bandwagon. Every Thursday now we anxiously await to see what will roll in. Yesterday, it was a burger truck and a taco truck. While at first that didn't sound too exciting, we were actually pretty surprised after closer inspection.

I looked at the burger. Made from 100% angus beef and cooked a lovely medium rare, it rested on a fresh-looking specialty bun that had been beautifully grilled. People eating those were licking their chops. 

My tacos, one chicken and the other grilled veggie, were delicious. Wonderfully seasoned meat, the veggies spritzed with a red pepper sauce, everything full of flavor. Fresh herbs as garnish. The corn tortillas hand-made, not some pre-made, commercial variety. It was delightful! Better than I've had at many brick and mortar establishments.

The food truck has surely come a long way from its humble beginnings.