Don’t overcook the veggies!! You’ll kill them.

I’m not talking about your kids, but about the vegetable’s taste and nutrition. I’m not a raw foodist, but I definitely see their point. The more heat applied to a vegetable, the more nutrients that are lost. Also, overcooked vegetables taste like poop – excuse the language.
If you can serve the vegetable raw, that will provide the most nutrition to your child. And even if you don’t like the vegetable raw, your kids may. See my earlier post about my son eating kale and bok choy raw.

If you are going to cook the vegetable, pay attention to it. There are so many times that I get involved with taking care of some argument among the kids or cooking the other parts of the meals, that I forget about the vegetable. I open the lid to the pan and it’s a dark green pile of mush. Shoot! Those are the nights that we have raw dinosaur leaves as our vegetable.

I find that most vegetables only take a few minutes to cook. I always tell my husband, who usually takes care of the meat dish, to give me a 10 minute warning when the meal will be ready. Most vegetables do not take more than that. For instance, I will steam kale for about 10 minutes and then do a quick sauté in sesame oil and a little soy sauce. We steam broccoli for about 5 minutes and it comes out a beautiful green with a little crunch to it. Yum!

Whatever vegetable you are cooking should still be a bright color after it cooks (bright green, orange, red, etc.). If it has started to lose its color, it has probably started to lose its nutrients, too.