Thank you everyone for your input. Keep the suggestions coming! I just got back from the store~
Baby carrots
Broccoli
cauliflower
cherry tomatoes
romaine lettuce
one red and one yellow bell pepper

I also bought regular blue cheese dressing. I am not a big sauce fan, same goes for dressing so I think I will use a minimal amount. I like my food more, well I guess some would say dry. My thought was if I have a salad that has virtually no fat, a little fatty dressing would be okay.

There is an super yummy chicken salad that I love at one restaurant that has sliced avocados on it. I find the avocados almost replace the dressing as I put even less on when those are on the salad so maybe I will try those in place of dressing in the near future.

I bought so many veggies I now don't know where I am going to fit in the fruit; I also bought apples, oranges and bananas. I told my Husband that I couldn't believe all the healthy stuff we had on the cart. He thinks my body is going to go into shock! :p

I told him my plan to try and fill up on fruits and veggies during the day to get my recommended daily amounts and hopefully not have a lot of room left for the not so healthy stuff. He agreed that it sounded logical. We will see how it goes starting tomorrow. :cool:

Agree! Same goes for canned fruit although that's not as bad as the canned veggies. I use to think they were okay until I started eating fresh fruit.

I never liked many veggies at all. But after a few months i love every vegetable out there it seems. The more you start eating them, the more you body will crave them. Try a chinese style stir fry without meat for a veggie dish i have every night. Or i cut them up and get them moist with water and then sprinkle seasoning on them and then put on a baking sheet in the oven for 20 minutes.

Avocado fat (in moderation) is good for you. I make guacamole with them and eat copious amounts of it on taco salad. For guacamole I just squish the avocado up a little and stir in a dash of cumin, salt & pepper, a couple of TBL of salsa and some Greek yogurt, very yummy and super healthy.

I hate to say it, but green bean casserole is basically heart attack in a baking dish. Seriously read the labels on the soup and onions if you don't believe me. Green beans are pretty yummy raw. I make dip out of Greek yogurt and light ranch salad dressing that knocks them out of the park. They are also good stir fried, with just a tiny bit of cooking spray, splash of soy sauce and a small handful of slivered almonds, which we call "green bean almondine".

Snow peas are good raw as well, but you have to buy the fresh ones to enjoy them that way. If you buy the frozen ones I would recommend stir frying them with a small amount of cooking spray. I toss them into all kinds of dishes, anything even remotely oriental and any recipe that calls for peas is a good place for snow peas. They actually taste much like peas, but are bigger and usually a bit sweeter. I grow them in my garden and the kids walk along and eat them off the vines, that's how good they are fresh. And it's not just my weird kids that eat them, all kids seem to. We even had trouble last year with the dog eating them right out of the garden.

Lizzycritter did a really good job explaining kohlrabi. It grows really fast, so why it's not a grocery veggie is anybody's guess, Farmer's markets usually carry it. It's somewhere between a turnip and cauliflower in flavor. It can also be eaten raw, we usually slice them into rounds and put dip or cottage cheese on them like crackers. You can also saute it in a bit of oil or butter, or marinate it with Italian dressing and grill it.

Pumpkin is a veggie, and it's also very good for you. It actually helped the Pilgrims survive the second winter and many winters after that, and it also kept their cows alive. In this modern world we really don't eat pumpkin except for pumpkin pie at holidays, but we should. We probably don't eat it anymore because our ancestors ate it at nearly every sitting and called it "New England Constitution". It's counted as an "orange" veggie (you're supposed to get 3 servings of orange veggies weekly - minimum), it has tons of vitamin A and fiber? It's also low cal, about 80 calories/cup, low fat and versatile. It makes great soup, it's good baked and mashed with a little salt and low fat sour cream. Or you can make it sweet with a bit of honey and spice it up like pumpkin pie and enjoy it hot or cold for dessert. You can also use it in quick bread recipes and cookies.

Oh and I'm going to second that "canned veggie" business. Canned veggies are disgusting. I'll bet if you tried homemade soup with carrots in it, you would love them. Okay maybe love is a bit much, but I'll bet you could eat it just fine and even enjoy the experience.

My faves in the frozen veggie aisle are:

- Asparagus
- Edamame
- Sugar Snap Peas
- Brussels Sprouts
- Any of Green Giant's new "Health Blends" (They're so easy and yummy for a quick lunch, but maybe a tad high in sodium)


My faves from the fresh produce aisle:

- Sweet Potatoes
- Avocado
- Baby Spinach-based salad (with other awesome greens)
- Grape Tomatoes
- Cucumbers
- Beets (I keep forgetting to buy them, but they're on the list too :D)

I am eating my lunch now. I made a salad. I guess it's a salad because it has lettuce but it's like no salad I ever made (more veggies than ever before).

2 C romane lettuce
1/4 C red bell pepper
1/4 C yellow bell pepper
4 grape tomatoes
1/2 C brocolli
2T blue cheese dressing - regular

So, you know I can't say I have ever had raw brocolli. Always seen it on the veggie trays at parties but went for chips and dip instead. ;) You know, I really like it! Add that to next week's shopping list!

I also found that the juiciness and flavor of all the veggies really made it to where I could eat it all with only 1 T of dressing. Since I use the regular kind, that's certainly a bonus.

Looking at what is considered a serving size of veggies - I have 5 just in that salad! :cool:

I have recently read a lot about kale and that it may be one of the healthiest foods on the planet. I found a great website that expains the nutrional benefits of kale (and other leafy greens). It also has recipe ideas of how to use it... they even suggest putting it in fruit smoothies! Whole Food Mommies - Nutrition, Whole Food Plant Based Diet Blog and Recipes

I love kale! I tend to add spinach to almost every soup I make for the added nutrients, but kale adds a little extra something if you use that instead. I bought a calorie counter cookbook recently and they have a recipie for 'kale chips'. You basically make a little seasoned oil mixture, toss the kale leaves in it, and bake them off. You can sub these for chips or pita wedges with dips for added nutrition, plus you get to control the amount of oil used, unlike when buying chips.

Good advice to try as may vegetables as you can, prepared all different ways:

My favorites:
Spinach (raw or cooked with rice and fennel and onions)
Mixed Salad Greens (raw)
Escarole (boiled or sautéed with oil and garlic)
Broccoli Rabe (broiled and seasoned with lemon and oil)
Broccoli (steamed)
Dandelion Greens (boiled and seasoned with lemon and oil)
Artichokes (fresh (warning! - a lot of work) and stewed with peas, onion and fennel)
String Beans (fresh steamed)
Green beans; flat (stewed with carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, parsley etc.)
Carrots (raw, boiled or cooked in soups, stews, etc.)
Kale (braised in the oven)
Swiss Chard (braised in the oven)
Peppers; sweet (raw or roasted)
Peppers; hot (roasted or added to dished)
Okra (roasted with hot peppers, onions and tomato)
Avocado (guacamole or sliced in a sandwich)
Cucumber (raw with sea salt)
Tomato (not technically a vegetable)(raw, great in soups, stews and roasted)
Asparagus (roasted or steamed)
Sweet potatoes
White potatoes
Yuka
Corn; fresh; in-season (not technically a vegetable)(boiled and salted; baked)
Beets, bulbs and greens (boiled and seasoned with vinegar)
Mushrooms (not really a vegetable)(sautéed, roasted, grilled)
Celery
Onions
...endless

Okay, this one has me confused...You don't mean all those pesky weeds we just killed in my yard do you?