Lazy ways to eat more vegetables
There are a handful of interviews I’ve done over the years that rearranged the furniture in my brain.
One was with a mind reader — though he’d reject the term — who insisted that the trick wasn’t magic at all, but attention. Another was with a researcher who studied, among other avian curiosities, “geese divorce,” and who taught me that if you ask someone sincerely where they spend their brain space, they will often tell you something surprisingly intimate. (Also: geese leave each other. Who knew.)
And then, last year, there was Roy Choi. We were talking about vegetables.
Specifically, how he hoped to get more of us to eat them — really eat them — in his cookbook “The Choi of Cooking,” which grew out of his own reckoning with health.
“On the outside, I was a chef,” he told me. “During the day, I was prepping and tasting green beans, spinach, buchu, daikon, snow peas, garlic, galangal — constantly putting good food in my body, even if it was just a bite at a time. But the minute I punched out? Everything flipped. Red Vines. Frozen lasagna. Spaghettios. Taco Bell. I called it doomscrolling, but with food — eating my way down a dark hole.”
He kept that up for years. And then, as he put it, his body broke down.
“I started seeing the same thing in people around me, especially folks from my generation. We grew up on fast food, and now so many legends are dying at 50, 55. I was living that unsustainable life. But I was able to confront it. And I know a lot of people still can’t. That’s part of why I made this book. It’s not just for folks already deep in wellness. It’s for people who haven’t even taken the first step.”
Here’s the honest truth: I haven’t loved a cookbook quite like I love “The Choi of Cooking” in a long time — precisely because it refuses to posture. Yes, there’s a Kimchi Philly Cheesesteak. Yes, there’s a Cold Bibim Noodle “Salad.” But there are also vegetable-forward hits like Calabrian Chile Broccoli Rabe and comfort bowls like Veggie on the Lo Mein Spaghetti. It’s not ascetic. It’s abundant. It doesn’t demand sainthood.
It asks for small, steady recalibrations.
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(Perhaps fittingly, my return to writing “The Bite” last year came through an ode to the maximalist salad — inspired, in part, by Choi’s old-school salad bar–style Big F**king Salad, piled high with greens, corn, button mushrooms, apple slices, orange segments, cheese and something crunchy for good measure. A bowl that felt less like penance and more like possibility.)
Choi isn’t the only person in food who has had to renegotiate his plate. This January, Pete Wells — who served as food critic for The New York Times from 2012 to 2024 — wrote candidly about what years of professional eating had done to his health. By his final year on the job, his doctor told him he was dealing with prediabetes, fatty liver disease, metabolic syndrome, sleep apnea, acid reflux, and obesity.
He spent two years, as he put it, relearning how to eat. Not through calorie math or punishment. Through small shifts. Fewer extremes. More vegetables.
“My assumption,” he wrote, “is that, like me, a lot of people simply want to eat less of the stuff we know we’re supposed to avoid and more of the stuff that’s better for us.”
That framing stuck with me. Not avoid more. Add more.
A pep talk for people who have tried this before
If you’ve ever woken up on a Monday with heroic intentions — this is the week I become a vegetable person! — only to find yourself staring into the fridge on Wednesday night, holding a limp bag of spinach and ordering takeout instead, you are not broken. You are not uniquely lazy. You are not constitutionally incapable of washing a carrot.
For many folks — and I say this as someone whose diet has veered aggressively beige for entire seasons — vegetables simply fall outside their default rhythms. If it’s not already in the loop, it feels like a production. Who’s putting it on the meal plan? On the grocery list? Who’s washing it, chopping it, remembering it exists in the crisper drawer before it liquefies?
If you struggle with executive functioning at all, you know how much life runs on grooves. When you’re tired or stressed or burned out (as so many of us are), even a “simple” new habit like eat more vegetables can feel like adding one more administrative task to an already crowded desk.
That’s not a willpower problem.
It’s a friction problem.
And friction can be reduced.
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Believe me, I say this as someone who has been in the beige trenches. Since the pandemic, I, too, have been relearning how to nourish a body with an immune condition that flares — and which, post-30, appreciates a little more of the good stuff. Fruit. Vegetables. Whole grains. My mental real estate around food is finite. I would rather spend it figuring out how to enjoy adding something in than obsessing over what I need to cut out.
That’s what the next 12 ideas are about. Not transformation. Not sainthood. Just lowering the barrier between you and something green.
Let vegetables be comfort food
(Ashlie Stevens ) Large pizza, extra veggies
When you’re first trying to get more vegetables in, it helps to notice where you already adore them in the wild.
For me, it’s rarely in a virtuous bowl. It’s at restaurants — when vegetables arrive glossy, salted, unapologetic.
Think of your own mental scrapbook. The steakhouse creamed spinach, perfumed with nutmeg and unapologetically rich. Brown-butter–glazed squash collapsing at the edges. Maple-slicked Brussels sprouts with charred leaves that shatter under your fork. The South Carolina crab shack fried green tomatoes with a ramekin of remoulade. The Italian joint with a killer veggie supreme and breadcrumb-and-cheese–stuffed mushroom caps. The diner with stewy green beans flecked with bacon, sliding up next to a square of cornbread. The French brasserie with paper-thin radishes, good cultured butter and a pinch of flaky salt.
That counts.
Getting in more vegetables isn’t a purity test. You don’t have to swing from cacio e pepe to iceberg spritzed with lemon juice overnight. There is an in-between — and no rule that says you can’t travel there with a little cream, a little cheese, a little butter pooling at the bottom of the pan.
If vegetables feel like deprivation, you’re less likely to reach for them. If they feel like dinner, you might.
Let the grocery store show you the way
You do not have to generate vegetable inspiration from scratch.
Beyond restaurants, supermarket salad bars, deli cases, freezer aisles and prepared-food counters are full of ideas you can borrow shamelessly. Creamy cucumber salads flecked with dill. Sesame green beans. Roasted carrots with harissa. Brussels sprouts with bacon and balsamic glaze. Someone has already done the flavor math.
Take a slow lap sometime — even if you have no intention of buying anything that day. Just notice what makes you pause. What you lean toward. What you think, Oh, I’d eat that.
No pressure to purchase. No pressure to recreate it at home immediately. We’re not assigning homework.
We’re just noticing.
If a lemony kale salad keeps catching your eye, maybe that’s a clue. If the elote corn disappears fastest from the hot bar, maybe that’s another. Let curiosity guide you before discipline does.
The grocery store is a test kitchen you don’t have to pay for.
Add one indulgent thing
(Ashlie Stevens ) Cheese, please
Once you’ve clocked where vegetables thrill you in the wild, steal the formula.
Most beloved vegetable dishes have a little flourish — one element that tips them from virtuous to irresistible. A drizzle of cheesy Mornay. Toasted Panko breadcrumbs. Shards of crisp bacon. A handful of toasted nuts. Even just a glossy pad of butter melting into something green and ribbed and tender.
It’s a time-honored equation. Broccoli in cheddar cheese sauce. Cabbage sautéed with olive oil and bacon (a favorite of my grandmother’s). Thanksgiving yams under a pecan crumble. Anything — truly anything — labeled “au gratin.”
This isn’t about drowning vegetables in dairy until they forget who they are. It’s about adding one point of richness, one spark of crunch, one salty edge that makes you want another bite.
If you’re trying to get excited about vegetables, give yourself permission to make them delicious on purpose.
Take the shortcuts. Lose the guilt
A couple summers ago, I realized I could walk to the Trader Joe’s in the next neighborhood over and haul the bags home without it feeling like a CrossFit challenge. That little discovery led to a dinner formula that carried my small family through the season:
1 pre-made protein.
1 frozen side.
1 salad kit.
This resulted in combinations like:
Pulled smoked chicken + frozen mac and cheese + cabbage slaw.
Frozen meatballs + fiocchetti in pink sauce (plus a bag of peas) + Caesar salad.
Chicken mole + frozen roasted corn with cotija + elote chopped salad kit.
It was not aspirational. It was not artisanal. It was dinner.
At first, I felt vaguely conspiratorial — like I was getting away with something. Like this wasn’t “real cooking.” But that was the summer I realized shortcuts weren’t a moral failure. They were a strategy.
Earlier this year, I wrote about my breakthrough with frozen, pre-chopped onions — the $2 bag at Jewel-Osco I had avoided for years because of a faint, inherited resistance to paying someone else to do something I could technically do myself. I could practically hear my female ancestors whispering, Just go chop the onions.
But here’s the thing: there are nights when you don’t have the spoons to deal with a knife. Or a cutting board. Or washing either.
And if the choice is between chopping onions from scratch and ordering takeout, or opening a bag and making soup, the bag wins.
When you’re trying to add more vegetables to your life, embrace the shortcuts that get them onto your plate. Frozen. Pre-chopped. Salad kits. Deli sides. Vegetable trays.
If it gets eaten, it’s working.
Master one bag of frozen mixed vegetables
(Ashlie Stevens ) Frozen peas and carrots
You know the one. The humble bag with peas, carrots, corn, and those tiny, anonymous green bean chunks. The vegetable mélange of childhood pot pies and plastic school cafeteria trays.
Keep one in your freezer.
That single bag can be the backbone of more dinners than you think: stirred into fried rice with a scrambled egg and a splash of soy sauce. Folded into shepherd’s pie under a blanket of mashed potatoes. Tucked into beef and barley soup. Tossed into a quick stir-fry with whatever protein you’ve got. Added to a pantry pasta when you realize the crisper drawer is a lost cause.
The beauty of the mixed bag is logistical, not aspirational. You’re not chopping four different vegetables. You’re not buying four different vegetables and watching half of them wilt. You’re opening one bag and pouring.
If you’re in a season where prep feels like the barrier, let the factory do the knife work. Your job is just heat and seasoning.
There is something deeply comforting about building a meal around a bag that costs less than a latte.
Let dip do the heavy lifting
If the phrase “eat more vegetables” conjures a supermarket tray with glommy ranch and sweating baby carrots, I’d like to gently update that image.
The vegetable isn’t the star here. The dip is.
Make finding a new favorite dip your hobby. Store-bought absolutely counts. Tribe’s red pepper and feta. Plucky Pickle dip. Trader Joe’s Everything but the Bagel dip. There has never been a better time to outsource your flavor.
Or go homemade and make it a little ritual. Chris Morocco’s Tahini-Ranch Dressing has not left my kitchen since I first tried it. Alyse Whitney’s “Big Dip Energy: 88 Parties in a Bowl for Snacking, Dinner, Dessert, and Beyond!” is basically a manifesto on the subject.
At home, I default to a simple formula: creamy + hot or herby + acidic.
This has led to some winning combinations, like:
Cream cheese + spicy giardiniera + lemon zest.
Labneh + minced hot dill pickles + a spoonful of brine.
Greek yogurt + salsa macha + lime juice.
Once you have something cold and punchy waiting in the fridge, vegetables stop feeling like a task and start feeling like a vehicle.
Become a spoon salad person
Like dip, this tip is about working with vegetables instead of against them.
If the idea of attacking a giant leaf with a fork makes you feel like an omnivorous dinosaur waiting for extinction, consider changing the format. A spoon salad doesn’t ask you to wrestle anything. It invites you to scoop.
The rule is simple: chop (or blitz) everything small enough to fit comfortably on a spoon, and sturdy enough not to slump into mush. Think less towering Caesar, more distinct pieces of confetti.
Grain and bean salads are an ideal starting point. Farro with chopped cucumber, red onion and herbs. Lentils with diced carrots, celery and parsley. Chickpeas with bell pepper, feta and olives. The key is proportion: if your base is the size of a lentil or a grain of rice, aim to chop your vegetables to roughly match. No oversized tomato wedges lurking like boulders.
Dress generously. Acid helps. So does salt. So does a little olive oil catching the light.
When everything is bite-sized and cohesive, vegetables stop feeling like a side project and start feeling like the main event. Plus, there is something deeply satisfying about eating dinner with a spoon. It feels efficient. A little smug. Entirely manageable.
Break out the blender
(Ashlie Stevens ) Blender
Hiding vegetables in food is usually framed as a parenting tactic — a way to smuggle spinach past a suspicious toddler. But the blender deserves a rebrand. It’s not deceit. It’s transformation.
Some of my favorite soups begin as a loose armful of aromatics and whatever vegetables are lingering in the fridge. Olive oil. Salt. Red pepper flakes. Oregano. A spoonful of bouillon paste. A swipe of miso. Too much lemon zest. I roast the vegetables until they slump and caramelize. I blend them until they’re silky. I return them to the pot with a glug of coconut milk.
Suddenly, what was once a pile of odds and ends is a velvety, spoon-coating soup.
The same magic works for pasta. A little pasta water and a shower of Parmesan will turn blended squash, stewed greens, roasted red peppers — even broccoli — into something glossy and luxurious. You don’t need cream. You need friction and starch.
Veggie cream cheese? Peak form. Whipped carrots folded into ricotta? Absolutely.
Vegetables you don’t have to look at still count.
Roast, marinate, repeat
This one changed my weeknight life.
At the beginning of the summer, I started roasting trays of vegetables — squash, eggplant, red onions, bell peppers — with nothing more than olive oil, salt and pepper. I’d let them blister and slump just slightly at the edges.
Then, while they were still warm, I’d do something crucial: ladle over more golden olive oil, a shake of oregano, red pepper flakes, and a splash of red wine vinegar. Not enough to drown them. Just enough to let them marinate as they cooled.
Into the fridge they went.
For days afterward, I had a jar of deeply savory, softly tangy vegetables ready to scatter over everything. Sandwiches. Frittatas. Grain bowls. Flatbreads. Scrambled eggs. Even straight from the container, standing in front of the fridge like a person with excellent taste.
Roasting gives you sweetness. Marinating gives you punch. Together, they turn vegetables into infrastructure.
If you’ve ever wished your meals had “a little something,” this is it — already waiting.
Make dinner out of just sides and salads
Every November, we all quietly admit the truth: the sides are the real reason to show up for Thanksgiving. The creamed spinach. The honeyed yams with pecans. The stuffing with crisped edges. The zippy slaw. The turkey, meanwhile, looms — well-meaning and faintly ceremonial.
So why not skip to the good part?
As I wrote about last week, all-sides dinner — regardless of the season — isn’t a cop-out. It’s a template. One that’s generous, flexible, and quietly solves a lot of weeknight problems, including how to get in more produce.
If you’re feeding picky eaters, let everyone choose one thing they love. If vegetables feel like an obligation, tuck them into lemony beans, dense spoon salads, roasted carrots with yogurt or a produce-packed pasta that eats like comfort food. Variety does the heavy lifting. A plate composed of several small things feels abundant, even when it’s low-lift.
If you want a simple formula: one hot side, one cold, one green, one beige.
Think in color, not rules
If “eat more vegetables” starts to sound like homework, try reframing the assignment.
Don’t think in nutrients. Think in color.
Eating the rainbow only becomes moralizing if you treat it like a compliance chart. But as a creative constraint? It’s electric. Suddenly, dinner is less about virtue and more about composition.
Picture a burrito bowl layered in reds and greens: cabbage slaw, sweet corn, charred bell peppers, red onion, shredded lettuce, jalapeños. Or a Mediterranean-ish sheet pan of squash, eggplant, and onions, finished with thin-sliced cucumbers and a fistful of herbs. Or a stir-fry streaked with carrots, peas, more red cabbage and glossy peppers catching the light.
When you build around color, abundance does most of the work. A plate with five shades of something feels generous, even celebratory.
And if the only goal for tonight is: can I add one more color? — that’s enough.
Go sweet when it makes sense
Vegetables don’t only belong on the savory side of the plate. Think: Carrot cake oatmeal. Zucchini bread still warm from the oven. Honeyed roasted squash spooned over thick yogurt with a drizzle of maple syrup. We accept bananas in pancakes without blinking. We fold pumpkin into pie and call it tradition. There’s no reason carrots, squash, or zucchini can’t pull similar double duty.
Sometimes adding more vegetables isn’t about forcing them into dinner. It’s about noticing where they already want to be. If a vegetable tastes good with sugar and spice, let it. If it feels cozy in breakfast or snack territory, invite it there.More vegetables doesn’t have to mean more discipline.
Sometimes it just means more cake-adjacent situations.
And that counts.
This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. If you enjoyed it and would like more essays, recipes, technique explainers and interviews sent straight to your inbox, subscribe here.
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