Bland food makes for boring meals

Recently, I have had the opportunity to talk with a few of my friends about their eating styles and their desire to make food more interesting in order to stay more motivated to eat healthier. I find that when someone desires to eat healthier to lose weight or just to live a healthier life, they can tend to get stuck in a rut of a piece of barely spiced, lean chicken, steamed broccoli and rice. No matter how much you can eat the same meal over and over again, you will get sick of that and "fall off the wagon" and go back to the yummy comfort foods that normally aren't the best for you.

While talking with my friend Letitia about her desire to change her eating habits in order to be healthier, we talked about this concept of boring food. I asked her what she did with her vegetables and how she seasoned them to make them more appetizing. When I suggested adding rosemary to her green beans, she said she had never thought of that before. She asked me to post my recipe that I make on a very regular basis. I call it "Rosie's Rosemary Green Beans". If you have never tried pairing rosemary and green beans, try it this week (or when green beans are on sale in your grocery store :) and let me know how you like it.

1          pound green beans, rinsed and ends snapped

1          tablespoon light butter

1/2       teaspoon crushed dried rosemary

1/2       teaspoon sugar

1/4       teaspoon salt

v     Place green beans in large nonstick skillet in one inch water over medium heat and cover. Steam until desired texture. Add in butter and melt. Sprinkle with rosemary, sugar and salt. Stir until green beans begin to brown. Serve warm.

Serves: 4-6

Another aspect we talked about was spices. If you are anything like me, you don't like to spend $3-$4 on a bottle of a spice and not like it or use it. Admittely, I have become quite a spice junkie. I have an enormous collection of spices and mixtures. I like to pick them up whenever they look interesting, especially on vacation. I remember a trip everytime I use it in my cooking. The way I started out my collection was buying one new and different spice a month and trying to find a few uses for it in my cooking. Voila, I now have an entire shelf in my cupboard dedicated to these tiny bottles filled with yummy goodness. I love having spices and flavors on hand when I need them. I find if I have it on hand, I will use it as opposed to having to buy it in order to make a dish. It's all about convenience, right?!

If there are foods you have questions about like "what do you do with a butternut squash?", leave a comment, and I will post my ideas and any related recipes I have made up with the ingredients you are interested in. It's all about investigating flavors and trying new things.