My Favorite Vegetable Recipes

Today is National Eat Your Vegetables Day.  Who know, right?  Yes, there really is a day set aside for everything.  In honor of this special day, I’m gathering my favorite veggielicious recipes and sharing them with you.

1.  Brussels Sprout Salad

This salad sounds a bit strange, but it is ridiculously delicious.  It does take some work to peel apart the leaves of the brussels sprouts, and you do have to blanch the leaves once you’ve harvested them, but this salad is so worth the work.  I realize that this is more of a winter salad, but it’s so good, I just had to share it here.

2.  Garden Minestrone

Soup and salad is a classic combination, so why not follow up one of my favorite salad recipes with one of my favorite soup recipes?  Most of the vegetables in this soup will be ready at the Farmers’ Market in a few short weeks, so why not put them to use in a light, fresh soup?  For a gluten-free version, just leave out the pasta — the beans will lend plenty of satisfaction without the added help, and that gives you room to make your favorite corn bread recipe to serve alongside.

3.  Calico Coleslaw 

This colorful side dish is a fun way to get your veggies.  This is not a creamy coleslaw — the orange flavor works beautifully with the red cabbage, sweet carrots, and red bell peppers.  This makes a huge batch, so you might want to cut it in half if you have a smaller household.  It doesn’t keep more than a day or two, so eat it quickly!

4.  Panfried Kale

What kind of food blogger would I be if I didn’t take a second to talk about kale?  Kale is a nutritional powerhouse and its uses are so diverse that I could probably dedicate an entire blog to kale alone.  Today, however, I’m just going to share my very favorite recipe for panfried kale.  This recipe is so simple, it shouldn’t even be a recipe.  Olive oil, lots of garlic, kale, salt, and pepper are all you need to make this incredibly easy, incredibly healthy veggie side dish.

5.  Sweet and Salty Broccoli Salad

One of my very favorite veggies is broccoli.  I can happily eat broccoli in almost any form, but one of my very favorite forms is broccoli salad.  This is a fantastic salad to make the day before you plan to eat it, whether you’re making a small batch for your family or a big batch to share with friends.  I took this to my annual church picnic and brought back an empty bowl!  Yes, it is that delicious.

6.  Chocolate Zucchini Cake

I bet you thought I wasn’t going to talk about dessert, didn’t you?  And if you did think I was going there, you probably expected carrot cake.  Well, I do love a good carrot cake, but my very favorite veggielicious dessert is chocolate zucchini cake.  It’s moist and chocolate-y with such pretty specks of green throughout it from the zucchini skin.  Of course, if you don’t like seeing little specks of green in your chocolate cake, feel free to peel the zucchini.  Yes, even dessert can be filled with delicious vegetables — you just have to be creative about it.

I hope these recipes have inspired you to try some new flavors, or to revisit some old favorites.  What are you cooking this weekend?

Catherine Hall

About Catherine Hall

Catherine lives in Bangor, Maine with her family. She gained her appreciation for food and cooking from her grandmother and learned most of her technical knowledge from watching the Food Network. When not in the kitchen, Catherine can be found outdoors attempting to grow vegetables (not always successfully), practicing yoga, and taking Capoeira classes in downtown Bangor. Catherine can also be found walking around town with her Guiding Eyes guide dog, Caleb.