Love Of Oats

A blog dedicated to balancing a healthy and fun life… with oats!

Monthly Archives: February 2010

Linking You Up

Here are some interesting article topics that I felt worthy of sharing with ya’ll… enjoy!

  • Truly living life to the fullest
    • I saw this story on the news yesterday and it really just brightened up my whole outlook on life.  I always joke around about how I can’t wait to retire so I had a reality check when I saw this NJ volunteer still active and on the go, fully devoted to giving back to his community, at 98 years old.  What an inspiration!!!
  • How to stay healthy when in a college atmosphere
    • I wish I had paid attention to articles like this when I was in college… although it has been many years since I was a college freshman (more years than I wish!), I know some of you might be interested in giving it a quick scan, check it out here :)
  • Posture is so important and mine is SO bad
    • I’m currently trying to implement these tips as well as beginning to practice yoga a tad bit more regularly!

RTH: Simple Step 4

Simple Step #4: Load It Up

It’s amazing that it took me this long to do something so simple to think about the concept of loading it up… I had made pasta for dinner the other night and even though I always make ww pasta, I very rarely add veggies to it, instead we have our veggies in the form of a side salad… I was trying to be creative and have as healthy a dinner as possible so I pretty much threw every veggie that I could think of into my pasta sauce… I simmered some organic tomato sauce first then threw in leftover roasted asparagus, peppers and onions, and lots and lots of steamed broccoli.  I then mixed it in with the pasta and topped it with parm cheese – it was SO good and SO refreshing.  Usually after I eat pasta, I am left with that full feeling, but this time, I actually felt great.  After this creation, it made me realize that I need to start thinking outside of the box.  There are wonderful ways to incorporate more vegetables in my daily diet in very delicious ways!  I do a fairly well job of getting my share of fruit in throughout the day but veggies often are set aside simply as a dinner meal in the form of one side of vegetables and/or a salad… Something as simple as adding some veggies to simmering sauce improved the nutritional value of a normally mediocre meal…

Anyway, the whole point of this simple step is to add more veggies in unique ways…

Here are some examples that I came up with:

  • Adding spinach/broccoli to lasagna
  • Making a more veggie-packed chili by adding more tomatoes, peppers, onions, corn, etc
  • Cauliflower in mashed potatoes
  • Stir fry with unconventional veggies thrown in the mix ~ go beyond the normal broccoli / pepper / onion mix and throw in some corn, eggplant, asparagus, spinach, you name it, add it, I’m sure you’ll be surprised at how well the flavors will mesh!
  • Add thinly sliced carrots to my pb or hummus sandwich
  • Bulk up a normal family favorite casserole by adding lots of veggies… My mom makes a killer broccoli cheese casserole and I have some ideas up my sleeve on how to make it more veggie-packed (stay tuned)
  • If you’re going to have a grilled cheese, add some spinach and tomatoes for an instant nutritional boost; same applies for pizza, add the peppers/onions/broccoli, etc.
  • Having some Annie’s Mac n Cheese?  Add in that steamed broccoli and enjoy!

The possibilities are endless, I just came up with the above list in a few minutes so I’m sure there are numerous more ways that you can think of… I’m hoping that I can continually improve at treating my body right through the goodness of veggies :)