Many years ago, when I was in my early 20’s I decided to choose the Vegan way. I’ve since married a man who only eats meat and potatoes, and have a 6 year old who I’ve felt the need to expose to different types of food, cooking, and eating. I am no longer a total Vegan anymore, but I personally prefer to include more fruits and veggies than meat products in my diet.

Veggies are good for you - we all know that. But why? Well, because they are of the most natural state, and our bodies are able to absorb their vitamins and minerals and put them to good use.

I will quote: 

“Vegetarian diets offer a number of nutritional benefits, including lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein, as well as higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E and phyto-chemicals. Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than non-vegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer.”

--American Dietetic Association, June 2003 position paper 

So, you like veggies and you want your family to also. Now what?

How about a "Cooks Nite Out"? Have the entire family go the grocery store and each pick a couple of things that we each really like. Yes, that means items from each part of the food pyramid. Do it together, have fun with it, and bring the stuff home! Shop together and talk about ideas of what you will make later that night.

My daughter literally ran to the colorful bell peppers - she picked one red, one yellow, one orange and one green - just because she liked the colors. This was a start!

I in turn, walked over to the onions and choose one red spanish onion, and one white vadilia onion.... Hmmm sounds like we are going to brainstorm here.

I turned to my hubbie and asked what his thoughts were. A pepper and onion omelet? Pepper and onion pizza? How about flatbread with peppers, onions and olive oil - cooked on the grill? He wasn't sure, so we continued on our journey.

Asked what he wanted to make - but didn't get an answer.... not just yet. We continued on our journey!

I choose to get a few ripe vine tomatoes, along with a bunch of fresh basil and a fresh piece of mozzarella cheese. My daughter felt that the colors - red, white and uh, green - were great together, and she was really getting excited about bringing the items home.

Of course, hubbie wandered into the meat department. He was enticed by the supermarket's current sale, and picked up a package of sweet italian sausage. It's all good - we need to work together to keep everyone happy!

Our simple menu consisted of the following:

Stir-fried peppers, onions (yes, and some sausage that we made on the grill and added later, just for Hubbie).

Tomato, Basil and Mozzarella salad. We sprinkled some Balsamic Vinegarette dressing on it. I added some green olives to my salad, Hubbie decided to eat his (Tomato and Mozzarella) on a toasted piece of fresh Italian bread.

We also had some chicken consomme (chicken broth!) afterwards. We were all full and had a great time shopping and preparing our meal together.

While we had the family work together - do the shopping together and choosing what they found to be interesting and possibly their favourite veggie - helped very much with our mission!

We knew that Dad was going to get some sort of "meat" into the equation - and we let him do that.  Funny thing is - he never once "barked" about the veggies that we made and were serving!

See how creative your family may be, and have fun with it. Getting them all involved and seeing the end result (which with colorful veggies - isn't hard to do) - makes it so worthwhile.

Best to you all.