Veggie Sloppy Joes: Adding More Greens to Your Diet

It's amazing how much we've come to rely upon what is most convenient, as opposed to what is best for our bodies. Instead of taking the time to cook healthy, nutritional meals at home, we rely upon the likes of McDonalds or Burger King to fix our dinners. We even trick ourselves on a regular basis, telling ourselves that ordering a chicken salad from a fast food restaurant means it's healthy or, even better, fooling ourselves into believing that the greasy burger and french fries we're getting at the dine-in chain restaurant is good for us, just because we can go in and have a waitress bring it to our table. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Whether you're looking for the best way to cut calories and shed pounds, or if you're simply exploring avenues to get your family eating more nutritious meals, cutting out the junk food is the first step; teaching them to replace the unhealthy stuff with nutitious food alternatives is the second. Nice green, leafy vegetables and fresh fruit are essential to any good diet. Not only are they low in calories and high in nutrients, they also provide essential roughage and fiber that helps keep our bodies working right.

Unfortunately, not everyone likes to eat their vegetables, particularly children. But don't despair! Instead of standing over your child and their plate of lima beans, forget the drab and try something fun, new and exciting:

Veggie Sloppy Joes

Fortunately, I'm lucky enough to have a teenager that has no qualms about going into the fridge and getting himself a raw carrot or a stalk of celery, when he wants a crunchy snack (amazing, I know!), but I still find it a challenge to meet the daily servings of fruits and vegetables that we're supposed to eat. Sure, you can toss some blueberries in your cereal or spread half a banana on a piece of toast for breakfast, but who wants to eat a salad, every single day, for lunch and dinner? It gets old fast and, let's face it - cooking your vegetables means losing a lot of those healty vitamins and nutrients.

One great alternative is taking your healthy, raw diet items and changing them to resemble something else. A great example of this would be the wonderful Veggie Sloppy Joes that I made for dinner tonight. These were inexpensive and easy to make, yet they tasted absolutely amazing! For a great, crunchy raw diet treat, try making some of these for lunch:

What you will need -

1 cucumber (you might want to go seedless, but I don't mind them, so left them in)

1 green pepper, cored out

1 medium sized red or yellow tomato, cored out and de-seeded

2 stalks from a celery heart

1/2 a medium onion

Several leaflets of fresh parsley

Light Miracle Whip (or mayo if you prefer)

Romaine or leaf lettuce

Onion rolls

Making Your Joes -

1) First off, I went and diced the cucumber, green pepper, celery, onion and the parsley, and mixed them all together in a medium to large bowl (after thoroughly washing them, of course). The tomato's optional - I don't like them, so I omitted them from mine but diced up the tomato and added it with my son's.

To give you an idea on the size, I chopped everything up so that it was about the size of diced onions that you'd use on hotdogs, etc., so everything was pretty uniform.

2) Next, to the mix, I added a dollup of Miracle Whip. This would have to depend on how thick you like your Miracle Whip, but I tend to go pretty light on mine anyhow - just enough to coat everything lightly. If you're not a fan of Miracle Whip, feel free to add your favorite light mayonaise.

Mix well and then set the bowl aside for a moment.

3) Next, take an onion roll, cut it open and take the romaine lettuce to make a little bed on the bottom half of the roll. I only used half a leaf per sandwich, so you'll have plenty left over for a healthy salad tomorrow. Yum!

4) When you're done with preparing your rolls, then add a couple of spoonfuls of the veggie mix to the sandwich. Put the top of the roll back on and voila! It's a light and crunchy vegetarian sloppy joe. If you don't like onion rolls, you could certainly substitute for a wheat roll or a nice multigrain bread, as well. Just be sure to bring a spoon too because, like any good sloppy joe, you end up with a lot of yummy stuff on the plate too!

5) Dig in and enjoy the crunchy fun!

Yield
Makes 8+ sandwiches, so it's great to keep in the fridge for those quick sandwich snacks