Here are some ways to eat more veggies, cooked! I love cooked vegetables. Out of a can, fresh out of a garden, out of the freezer. I could eat a can of cooked carrots at every meal. I mean I don’t. But you get the idea.

1. First off, just decide you’re going to do this. It’s a priority. Every time you sit down to eat, make sure there are some veggies on that plate. Potatoes don’t count. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t eat potatoes, just that when you’re looking at vegetables, don’t think of your potatoes as a vegetable.
2. Frozen veggies are super easy to work with. Bonus- they are not that expensive! Make whatever you’re making as a main for dinner and throw some microwave veggies in to cook.
3. Watch what you put on those veggies- if you load up your broccoli with butter and salt, well, you don’t need a doctor to tell you that’s not going to be good for you in the long run. Try some herbs and spices. A little olive oil maybe. Try to think of your butter as something you use a little more sparingly. Go for the plain vegetables more often than you eat the ones with creamy sauce or cheese on top. Make higher-fat saucy vegetables more the exception than the rule.
4. Eat 2: This is a way that I boost my veggies, usually a couple nights a week. I’ll have a salad, a protein, and also a cooked veggie. Btw I don’t count potatoes as a vegetable because of their starch content. I love potatoes, don’t get me wrong. But in the context of food groups, I consider them more of a starch. Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com
5. Add it to your starch: Say you’re cooking some pasta. Throw a small bag of frozen broccoli in for the last 5 minutes. Now you’ve got pasta and veggies. Easy-peasy.
6. Puree them! Pureed cooked veggies are so yummy and they act as a thickener. Think pureed carrots, parsnips, turnips- the root vegetables.
7. Throw them in the little steamer tray while you’re cooking rice in the rice cooker. That way when your rice is done, your veggies are too!