I love fruits and veggies, AMA!

[Anonymous]

Ok, clearly, I am taking a bit of a pi** at the weird "DH eats fruit after dinner op," but I did notice that many people I know never eat fruits, and then plenty never eat veggies other than potatoes. So, for fun, which fruit and veggies are your favorites, and if you eat a ton of fruit and veg, how did you start eating them. Were you eating them when you were a kid, what did your parents cook, where are you from, etc.? So more of an AMA and me asking you away.
Is there a fruit you eat a ton of and can't stop?

[Anonymous]

I’m dying, OP. A few months ago my husband told me he wanted to transition to a more plant-based diet. Awesome, I said. I do 100% of the cooking - I LOVE to cook and I LOVE vegetables. Turns out I am a little more enthusiastic about eating all vegetables than he is… sigh.

I grew up in a rich agricultural area that produces a lot of the nation’s food, and grew up in a home that cared a lot about food good and cooking, so I grew up with constant access to excellent ingredients, farmer’s markets, new and interesting ideas, chefs… and I just grew and experimented from there.

My favorite things are grapefruit, fresh peaches, snap peas, great summer tomatoes, leafy greens, and winter squash. We belong to a year-round farm share now, so I try to cook with as many local and seasonal ingredients as possible.

What are your favorite things to cook? What cookbooks or blogs do you always come back to?

[Anonymous]

Favorite vegetables:
Beets (cold)
Eggplant (wish it were offered as a pizza topping more)
Red peppers (raw)
Carrots
Snap peas (raw)
Brussel sprouts (roasted and salted)
Arugula
Artichokes

Favorite fruits:
Crisp apples only (jazz, envy, rocket)
Blood oranges
Avocados (fruit ??)
Cantaloupe
Crisp red / green grapes
Bananas (very picky about ripeness. HATE overly ripe!)

[Anonymous]

I love most, with some exceptions (turnips come to mind). My parents ate a very plant forward diet, with no red meat and limited poultry/fish. I grew up eating a ton of kale, broccoli, bok choy, etc. It never occurred to me to not eat fruits and vegetables. My kids are the same.

[Anonymous]

Love vegetables /fruit too. Currently can't get enough of Kishu Kisses. Broccoli is my obsession (I know boring), but pantry is always stocked with College Inn chicken broth, garlic, slabs of parmesan and sharp provolone for grating, lemons. Killer pasta with broccoli maker.

What's your current obsession OP?

[Anonymous]

My family is very vegetable skeptical but love roasted broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, really any kind of hard vegetables. Sprinkle olive oil and any kind of seasoning on it and it tastes great. Can put tahini or teriyaki or other sauces on it too. Will roast with a fish or chicken thigh.

They also like soups with green vegetables, carrots, cabbage, etc thrown in, or fried rice/biryani/casseroles with peas, corn, carrots thrown in. I keep a variety of fruits on the counter so they can snack during day. I drink a green smoothie every day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Love vegetables /fruit too. Currently can't get enough of Kishu Kisses. Broccoli is my obsession (I know boring), but pantry is always stocked with College Inn chicken broth, garlic, slabs of parmesan and sharp provolone for grating lemons. Killer pasta with broccoli maker.

What's your current obsession, OP?

My current obsession is to grow my own cherry tree inside! But, lol, fruit wise I am addicted to tart cherries. I love tart cherries, and I make pies almost every week from them. They come in jars, and I only make it rolled in phyllo dough, more of the dough being a vessel for tart cherries!
So that is my current obsession.
But, I actually have more of an obsession right now with sour kraut. I buy whole pickled cabbage from a local ethnic shop and braise it with potatoes and smoked ribs and then I just eat the cabbage. In the summer I am into regular cabbage. (LOL. I am the Cabbage Lady!)
In summer, I am addicted to apricots.
Thank you for posting about Kishy Kisses, I used to love tangerine as a kid, but when I buy them here (of any citrus), they often taste terrible. I will try to find those today!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My family is very vegetable skeptical but love roasted broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, really any kind of hard vegetables. Sprinkle olive oil and any kind of seasoning on it and it tastes great. Can put tahini or teriyaki or other sauces on it too. Will roast with a fish or chicken thigh.

They also like soups with green vegetables, carrots, cabbage, etc thrown in, or fried rice/biryani/casseroles with peas, corn, carrots thrown in. I keep a variety of fruits on the counter so they can snack during day. I drink a green smoothie every day.

Roasting is the bomb! If you haven’t tried it with clean ordinary carrots, you must. Roasted carrots taste like a dessert.

[Anonymous]

*plain, not clean, although they should probably be clean as well 😉

[Anonymous]

Yes - Sumo oranges. I buy two boxes a week while they are available.

Good peaches are almost impossible to beat. And grapes with the right sweet/tart mix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes - Sumo oranges. I buy two boxes a week while they are available.

Good peaches are almost impossible to beat. And grapes with the right sweet/tart mix.

Oh - for veggies, everything but cooked carrots. I’m not big on turnips or radishes but pretty much everything else is fair game.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love most, with some exceptions (turnips come to mind). My parents ate a very plant forward diet, with no red meat and limited poultry/fish. I grew up eating a ton of kale, broccoli, bok choy, etc. It never occurred to me to not eat fruits and vegetables. My kids are the same.

OP here. I grew up similarly, close to med diet though. Fun fact, I lived in Madagascar for a while and got two food "addictions" there. I started to eat a ton of bok choy and mangosteens.
Boy Choy was served in local Chinese restaurants, and after the divine tasting, I started to buy it and cook it a ton.
Then I was at one of the thousands of local veggie and fruit stands and saw this purple thing, never heard about it before, Mangosteen. Had no idea what to think of it. So naturally, I bought a kilo of it. It was a very strange thing to open and figure out but ever since I am dying to eat them again fresh off the tree like I used to do there. Even there it was in season for a short period of time and I used to drive around town chasing the stand that had them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I’m dying, OP. A few months ago my husband told me he wanted to transition to a more plant-based diet. Awesome, I said. I do 100% of the cooking - I LOVE to cook and I LOVE vegetables. Turns out I am a little more enthusiastic about eating all vegetables than he is… sigh.

I grew up in a rich agricultural area that produces a lot of the nation’s food, and grew up in a home that cared a lot about food good and cooking, so I grew up with constant access to excellent ingredients, farmer’s markets, new and interesting ideas, chefs… and I just grew and experimented from there.

My favorite things are grapefruit, fresh peaches, snap peas, great summer tomatoes, leafy greens, and winter squash. We belong to a year-round farm share now, so I try to cook with as many local and seasonal ingredients as possible.

What are your favorite things to cook? What cookbooks or blogs do you always come back to?

OP here. LOL! So, you grew up eating fruit and veg the way it is supposed to taste, ripe and awesome, sounds great.
Something similar happened to me with DH, when we were young and just this past summer. When we first married, I made green beans for dinner. The meal was a ton of cooked green beans with onions and tomato sauce. DH said he loved it. So, I kept cooking it and must’ve cooked it 40 times in 4 months. DH says, “maybe we can try something else now?” I was, “you don’t like them?” He said, not I do, but can we try something else. So, I said, I’ve been cooking them so much since I thought you liked them, and I was getting tired of green beans too. So, I started cooking peas!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes - Sumo oranges. I buy two boxes a week while they are available.

Good peaches are almost impossible to beat. And grapes with the right sweet/tart mix.

OP here. I agree on good peaches. Why are they so hard to find?

[Anonymous]

Our Traditional home food has vegetables in almost every meal or is combined with fresh vegetables/ salad, so grew up eating vegetables. Still eat vegetables & cook traditional foods. Also good fresh fruits were always in a large bowl available for dessert / snacking.