First let me tell you where I got such a large list of vegetables.
Lets talk about some, for instance that I like.
A famous restaurant I like to dine at is Olive Garden, they have a great menu, but I usually get Angel hair spaghetti. Another restaurant is Panda Express, started by a man and his wife some years ago, there’s one in Fremont, California.
My daughter Cherie brought over a great dinner the other night. A New York steak and a baking potato along with sauteed onions
Here’s a great idea for lunch tomorrow have a salad with those vegetables that make a great salad, and start planning on which to use.
First let me tell you where I got such a large list of vegetables.
One of my 4 dictionaries is the Chambers Dictionary, it has a Thesaurus. Depending on what word you want information on you may get an added bonus.
For food I got this big list of vegetables. Vegetables include:
artichoke, asparagus, aubergine (or North American eggplant), baby corn, beetroot, bok choy (or pak choi),broccoli, Brussels sprout, cabbage, calabrese, capsicum, carrot, cassava (or manioc), cauliflower, celeriac, celery, chicory, courgette (or North American & Australian zucchini), cucumber, daikon, fennel, garlic, globe artichoke, Jerusalem artichoke, kale, leek, lentil, lettuce, lollo rosso, marrow, mooli, mushroom, okra, onion, parsnip, pepper, potato, colloquial spud, pumpkin, radish, rocket, shallot, spinach, spring onion, squash, swede, sweetcorn, sweet potato, turnip, water chestnut, yam
Lets talk about some, for instance that I like:
artichokes, asparagus, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, zucchini squash, onions, potatos, mushrooms.
There’s more, but that’s enough for now.
For a healthy diet you should include vegetables in your main meal.
I have noted from observation that the average citizen in the U.S. is overweight. Back when I was growing up in the 1940s people for the most part were slim, that probably was due to diet.
In this day of the fast pace people are on the go, and eat a lot of fast food, where they should be paying attention to the number of calories contained in the food they’re eating.
I’ve eaten a lot of food from McDonald’s, Wendys, Jack in the Box, Carlos Juniors, Kentucky fried Chicken, Popeye’s Chicken, etc. and enjoyed it. But if possible, home cooked meals can offer a more balanced diet, with a visit to a fast food restaurant not more than once or twice a week.
I hear fast food restaurants are offering on their menus low caloric items of food. I know so many of their menu items are scrumptious, but remember your weight.
Getting back to vegetables I’ll talk about some, but my list of vegetables is so big I’d have to go into book mode to write about them, and many of those vegetables I’ve never heard of, I’m sure they’re good though.
For Potato Cooking
The potato is a root vegetable, meaning it grows underground. Known as a staple food like rice and beans. In using the word staple, means to anchor, but in this reference, a base, a food that stays with you for a good time.
Rice for example is a staple food for the Chinese quisine, beans is a great staple food for Mexican fare. Beans come in many varieties. A good meal for example is Pinto beans, my daughter’s mother Anntha could cook a pot of Pinto beans you couldn’t beat. Beans well cooked will keep you full for some time.
There are many different potatoes, which come in many sizes, white, red, the large Russet baking potato, the White potato, a sort of flat like rectangle potato, is very good, The Red potato, more ore less round with a very thin red skin, you don’t need to peal it. Also the Klondike gold is a great all around potato.
The potato is eaten in many ways, cooked in a pan, baked, massed, scalloped, cut into small slices and served with breakfast in a restaurant. Yum yum french fries, you name it.
Potatoes, rice, and rice pilaf, also pasta, are a filling food, for example. If your dinner consists of a steak and some Vegetables you probably need some Potato etc., to fill up on.
The Artichoke
The artichoke is around say, 3 inches in diameter and 4 inches tall. With small leaves you pull off and say dip the end in mayonnaise, then pull off the small portion of its meat with your teeth and eat.
Once the leaf ends are eaten you pull off a thistle portion, and there is a round base so thick that is very good to eat.
Mayonnaise is good with the artichoke or you may prefer something else to garnish it with.
The Avocado is a Fruit
You can make guacamole a dip, I don’t know how to make, but its very good, I’ll let you figure that out.
Guacamole can be used as a garnish on different foods, like, steak, tacos, sea food
Avocado is very good on a sandwich sliced, by its self or other goodies on a sandwich.
This fruit is much use and in demand. But it must be at the right of ripeness to eat.
Bell Peppers and Some Peppers
The Bell Pepper can be found in the produce department of the grocer store. They come in different colors, green, red, yellow, and so on, Some may be sweeter than other colors, I like the green.
A nice bell pepper when at home and cleaning cut open and pull out the insides, it will then be hollow in the inside, rinse its and its ready to use.
Bell Peppers can be cut into a few pieces and added to a tossed green salad, added to a cooked dinner, and large ones stuffed. Stuffed bell peppers are great, the ingredients for the stuffing does vary, check a recipe for what to use for the stuffing.
For peppers there many, here’s some that my granddaughter’s boyfriend Doug, grows in his grandmothers back yard: Jalapeno, serrano, habanero.
Doug says he likes growing these peppers, but mostly he gives them away. Hmm, well, they are very hot. Here’s some info Doug gave me on some peppers:
- Peppers you get in a salad at the Olive Garden restaurant are tiny pepperoni, Doug doesn’t grow them.
- Unit to test the hotness of peppers, scoville.
- Scoville test on pepperoni peppers, between 100 and 500.
- Scoville test on Jalapeno pepper, 2500 and 8,000.
- Scoville test on Serrano pepper, 10,000 and 23,000.
- Scoville test on habanero pepper, 150,000 and 575,000
This is an overview, as peppers themselves vary in hotness and flavor.
Peppers when cleaned by cutting the end off and removing the seeds will be milder. Also Jalapeno peppers served at a restaurant, probably came in a jar in a form of pickling.
The Carolina Ripper, a restaurant that serves this blistering red hot pepper, will have you sign a release paper, eliminating them from any liability that may arise.
This pepper is so hot it comes in a special package to the restaurant, and is handled specially when served.
I mentioned the above as peppers are liked by the many, but do your research on them, which will come as you get into them.
Corned Beef Einner
Buy 2 nice looking packaged corned beef in a meat market, at home trim off the fat unless you like some fat.
Place the corned beef in a pressure cooker, add some water, maybe 2 cups, or a couple cans of beef broth. Place the lid back on.
When you place the pressure cooker on a burner to cook, the cover has a small hole in its center, a small metal unit with a metal pet is placed in the hole. This little unit regulates the steam in the pressure cooker, so the steam doesn’t build up to much.
Regulate the heat as directed by the pressure cooker directions. Cook for 1 hour, maybe 50 minutes if 1 hour gets the meat overcooked.
While the corned beef is cooking start cooking the prepared potatoes, the red potato is a good one for this recipe, and cabbage in separate pans. Don’t overcook the cabbage.
Caution: make sure all the steam is out of the pressure cooker before removing the lid.
Placed the cooked potatoes and cabbage in the pressure cooker with the corned beef, let soak some. The juice of the corned beef is what make the cabbage and potatoes taste so good, along with that great tasting corned beef.
For Broccoli and Cauliflower Cooking
Prepare them for cooking, then place in a pan with some water, add salt, pepper, and some garlic butter or plain butter.
For Asparagus Cooking
After they’re ready to cook, place in a pan with some water, add salt, pepper, and some garlic butter or butter.
Asparagus after cooked is great eating by dipping the end of the asparagus on some mayonnaise placed on your plate.
For Corn Cooking or Peas
Corn can eating in many ways, from a can, fresh frozen, corn on the cob smeared with butter, a dash of salt added.
For fresh frozen, just open the package, place in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and pepper, ad butter, cover with saran wrap, cook in the microwave, don’t overcook.
Corn on the cob, place the cleaned cob in a pan of bowling water, cook until done, again don’t overcook.
For fresh frozen peas, just open the package, place in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and pepper, ad butter, cover with saran wrap, cook in the microwave, don’t overcook.
For Brussels Sprout Cooking
The little fellows look like miniature cabbages. Place in a pan with water, ad salt and pepper, with some butter, cook until done, don’t overcook.
Preparing Cabbage for Cooking or as Coleslaw
I learned this from my daughter’s mother. Chop up some cabbage and put in a frying pan, add some bacon grease, stir and cook a few minutes.
Then put the cabbage in a pan and add some chicken broth. Don’t overcook, Chinese restaurants cook their Vegetables to a point when they’re tender, but not overcooked.
Cabbage can be cooked in water in a pan on the stove, season to taste. Cooked cabbage placed in the juice of corned beef is very good.
For Coleslaw
Harries Hofbrau, there’s 3, 150th avenue below San Leandro, San Jose, and San Francisco. They have excellent coleslaw, and Corned Beef, plus other great food, if you want a treat visit Harries Hofbrau.
Popeye’s restaurant has great coleslaw, chicken breaths, mashed potatoes, other goodies. Kentucky Fried Chicken did have great coleslaw.
For Carrots Cooking
Little carrots are the best to use. Place the carrots in a pan with some water, add salt, pepper, and some garlic butter or butter. Cook until done, don’t overcook.
Carrots salad is yummy.
For Zucchini Squash Cooking
Zucchini squash can be cooked in many ways. Salt, pepper, and butter are good flavoring items. Check recipes for other spices, and ways to cook zucchini squash.
A few years ago I’d have my daughter buy some zucchini, say around 12, maybe 6 or 8 inches long. Rinsed, I’d cut a little off the ends and slice the squash in 3 quarter inch pieces.
Place the cut squash into 3 different Corning Ware microwaved large bowls. Season with salt, pepper, and a tablespoon or 2 of garlic butter or butter.
When I wanted to eat the contents of one of the bowls, I’d place the bowl in the microwaved until it was done. Don’t overcook.
I would eat the whole bowl it was so good.
Cooking with Onions or Eating Raw
Note, the onion is a root vegetable, meaning it grows underground. There are red, yellow and white, onions, Onions are more for flavoring.
But there is the not to long thin green onion, it is the top part of a young onion, you can eat plain with other food, look for in the produce department.
Onions that are strong and make you tear when pealing, will flavor stews and soups very good. White Vadalia onions that don’t have a hot taste, but have the onion flavor are good to add zest to a hamburger or hotdogs.
Onions dip is very good with chips, so many ways to use the onion, what a great vegetable.
Cooking with Garlic
Note, garlic is a root vegetable, meaning it grows underground. The Vegetable garlic is a peculiar shaped flavoring item, with many segments or cloves of garlic attached together.
Each clove has a skin around it that you peal off, then the garlic segment is ready to use. You can buy in a glass jar, crushed garlic from Christopher Ranch, there’s an oil in the garlic, maybe to keep it from spoiling.
You get more flavor from crushed garlic than garlic salt. About 30 miles or so from San Jose is the city of Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world.
Each year they have a garlic Festival, so much food with garlic is made and sold, like garlic bread for instance, the many items are amazing to eat.
As you drive from Gilroy on highway 152 you pass some miles of farmland growing crops. Then you drive over Pachaco Pass, a mountain range around 3,000 feet high, on the other side is a huge reservoir, passing it you come to the I 5 freeway.
Gilroy has a Park great for kids and adults alike, rides etc., admission is nominal.
The Dutch Oven, Cooking With
This cooking pot is large, made of Iron with an Iron lid.
If you want to cook a chuck beef roast for example, about 4 pounds. With a boneless chuck roast, cut 4 slices around it, insert a garlic clove in each slice.
Place in the Dutch Oven along with the roast, add some water, some potatoes, small carrots, celery, a red onion, add the lid. Place on a burner on the stove, heat moderately.
This should give a nice dinner, very flavorful. The Dutch Oven has been used for cooking for eons, and does a great job.
Mushrooms are Great for Enhancing a Dinner
At the Sizzler restaurant some sliced mushrooms can be added to Rice Pilaff in your dinner for only 2 dollars, they’re so good. The mushrooms maybe covered with garlic butter and salt and pepper.
Caution: Only eat mushrooms bought at the produce area of a grocery store. Picking wild mushrooms is a danger, as many people have died eating wild mushrooms they’ve picked, unmistakably that were poison ones.
They are recipe books with many ways to prepare mushrooms that you’ll like.
Here’s a recipe for mushrooms my daughter Cherie uses and gave me.
- 2 pounds of mushrooms
- A cube of butter
- A cup of wine, whatever you have, you could have a preference
- Some Kitchen Bouquet
- Saute an hour on low
Why an hour? This is to get the liquid wine down to a nice sauce.
This recipe for mushrooms is great. Recipe books are great to have, as you will note, how great dishes can be made from a proven Recipe.
It’s nice to have some Recipe books you’ve collected, that give you some ideas on different dishes, and of course you can make a change to the Recipe if desired.
A lot of vegetables can be considered a side dish, and have the nutrients to keep the body healthy, and of course if prepared well make the dinner so much better.
I remember when I was a kid I didn’t like peas, but now I love them, especially fresh or fresh frozen.
In the produce section of a grocery store, when in season fresh snap peas are great to eat, try them.
Dinner time in a household is a great time to enjoy, I can just see one of the young ones saying, pass me some more vegetables mom.
I like to have some fun with a couple of vegetables in the way I pronounce them, the potato and tomato:
For the Potato potahto, or spuds or taters.
How about the tomato, lets see, tamato.
Since I mentioned the tomato, it is used in so many ways:
tomato juice, tomato soup, salads, diced or sliced on hamburger or hotdogs, spaghetti sauce
Italian dishes are known as great food, tomato sauce is used a lot in Italian scrumptious Recipes.
Celery
Celery is a tasty vegetable. Break off a leaf stalks from the celery stalks, the leaf stalks is sort of channel shaped. Cut it into short pieces, say 4 or 6 inches long, fill with a nice tasting mixture. I used to mix some sour cream together with something else that was good for a filler. Also some people like peanut butter to fill the celery with.
The Cucumber
The cucumber cut into a few thin slices is good in a tossed green salad. Cut into long pieces, its good to dip into a good tasting dip.
Cooking with Flavor
Cooking with flavor gets us into using various spices and certain Vegetables, adds to the meat we use, sausages and so much more.
The tomato along with the potato are two of the most used vegetables. How they’re used is fun to talk about.
A famous restaurant I like to dine at is Olive Garden, they have a great menu, but I usually get Angel hair spaghetti, its the thinnest spaghetti. Their menu calls it pasta instead of spaghetti, misleading.
You can get their spaghetti with a number of different sauces. I like their marinara sauce plain. It’s a tomato sauce, along with Italian sausage warm.
Another restaurant is Panda Express, started by a man and his wife some years ago, there’s one in Fremont California. They are a fast food chain with fabulous Chinese food, and are located in other cities and countries.
Their Chinese food is different than Chinese restaurants that I’ve eaten in past years, which was great.
Now let me comment on some of Panda Express’s great food.
- Honey Walnut Shrimp
- Orange Chicken
- Chow Mien
- Beef Broccoli
- Green Beans and Chicken
And of course more.
At the Panda Express’s restaurants you walk up to a counter that the food is separated by glass, you point to the food you want, and a person in back of the counter puts the food into a box. Then walking to the pay area you pay for the food picked out, and the box is given to you and your on your merry way home.
My daughter Cherie brought over a great dinner the other night, A New York steak and a baking potato along with sauteed onions The New York Steak she seasoned with, Lawry’s Seasoning Salt, and garlic salt, it was great.
The baking potato she buttered up and seasoned. For the sauteed onions she used a red onion and fried some in a skillet. I raved about those sauteed onions.
The red onion when your cutting up one on a cutting board will probably draw tears, but will add great flavor to a stew or some soups. The red onion also will make a great sauteed onions to add more flavor to a steak.
Here’s a great idea for lunch tomorrow have a salad with those vegetables that make a great salad, and start planning on which vegetables you’ll have for dinner that night.