Making Asparagus A-peeling

I always tell my patients, the worst thing that can happen to their diet is complacence. When you stop working to improve your diet, it will inevitably go in the opposite direction. So I recently set some goals for myself to improve my own diet.

1) Eat more meals at home
2) Cook more meals at home
3) Use more home-cooked meats, rather than processed/packaged meats
4) Bulk up on vegetables at lunch and dinner
5) Use only whole grain products at home

A lot of this has to do with finding products and recipes I enjoy, but also making time to prepare meals ahead of time. At first, this meant using a lot of frozen vegetables and microwaveable rice, and cooking meat in large batches for several days. But eating 90-second brown rice and frozen broccoli everyday can get a little boring, even if it does help me meet my goals. So now that I have a regimen that I am comfortable and happy with, it's time to shake it up a bit.

Asparagus is going to be in season in Maryland soon (this asparagus was from Mexico), so I recently was looking up recipes to use at the produce market at work. We planned to hand out recipes, and have a recipe prepared to taste test. I found a recipe that used uncooked, peeled asparagus in a salad, but I was concerned with how labor intensive it might be. So, I tried peeling zucchini yesterday for my shrimp scampi, and today I bought asparagus to peel and added in some grape tomatoes to my leftover shrimp. Both were delicious!

Peeled asparagus or zucchini are perfect for a saute, in a pasta dish to substitute for some of the noodles, or cold in a salad! I hope this inspires you to try something new, whether it involves asparagus or not!

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