Stealth Vegetables

In an attempt to provide adequate vegetables and fruits for my family, I added a stealth vegetable to a meal a few nights ago.

I made chili, I knew it was going to be a one dish meal, so I wanted to make sure to pack in some vegetables. I added a large can of organic diced tomatoes, but I do that every time. This time I added shredded carrots. The thick rich sauce of the chili hid the carrots. The carrots cooked and were tender. Mission accomplished.

I did not sit down and write out a list of New Year's Resolutions, but there are things on my mind that I want to accomplish this year. Don't get me wrong, I am definitely a list person. I love making lists, although they always seem so long ... I love marking through a task as it is completed and have the satisfaction of accomplishment, no matter how small or large the task. I hve come across lists that I have made, thankfully I have dated them, a year or two later and have found I have accomplished many things on that list even though I don't remember writing the list.

I didn't want to make "Resolutions", I just have a mental list of things I want to integrate into our daily life. One was start a new blog - well, that is done, you are reading it. I started one about four years ago, but abandoned it three years ago. I wanted a fresh start, so many things are different in my life now so I wanted a new blog to reflect that.

Sometimes we have one dish meals. Before finding out about having Celiac, we had homemade pizza quite often, once a week sometimes. Little Miss Muffet had even memorized the recipe. I would also make a salad to have with the pizza, but the salad was ignored. I don't know if we just got tired or bored with salads but they were ignored quite often, I was tired of wasting the money on salads only to see if the dogs would actually eat it. I decided it is just easier to add the vegetables to the pizza or whatever else might be on the menu. Tonight was stuffed baked potatoes. I seasoned the ground meat with Simply Organic's taco seasoning (it's gluten free). I thought about adding some stealth vegetables to it, but decided against it. There were the usual offerings; cheese, sour cream, onion, ground beef, sliced kalamata olives, but I also put out sundried tomatoes, organic baby leaf lettuces, mini sweet peppers (I love those things) and pepperoni. Okay, pepperoni isn't a vegetable but it was eaten just the same. I'll chronicle my attempts at stealth vegetables to save uneaten salads from the non-existant compost bin. In the middle of winter, there just isn't enough green matter to begin a compost bin.

Okay, all of this talk of food reminds me, I need to make out the menu for the coming week.