Reader Question: Vegetables and Fruits?

Hi Dana

I bought your book in South Africa where we live and I happened to stumble across your blog today.

I appreciate your menu plans but I don't see much in the way of veggies and fruit? Is it because you normally eat them but don't add to the menu plan or don't you eat them at all? I am not a huge fruit fan but do enjoy fruit now and again but I am a vegetable fanatic and just LOVE veggies. Can one eat them with your meals (excluding the potato)?

Keep well and I shall keep checking your blog for info.

Thanks
M

Hey, M --

First of all, thanks for buying my book!

I do eat veggies, and indeed most low carbers wind up eating more vegetables rather than fewer. Why? Because we're the ones asking for extra steamed vegetables in place of the potato, or for the insides of a sandwich to be served on a bed of lettuce, that's why!

Vegetables vary some in carb content, but most of them are low enough that I eat them without keeping track. Certainly all the leafy stuff -- lettuce, spinach, endive, radicchio, etc, etc, etc -- is very low carb. Have a salad!

The most versatile vegetable in the low carber's fridge is cauliflower, and at 5 grams per cup, with 3 grams of fiber, we can afford it! Pureed cauliflower makes a great stand-in for mashed potatoes, as many low carbers know. But cauliflower can also understudy rice. How? Run it, raw, through the shredding blade of your food processor, then lightly steam the shreds -- I give a half-head's worth 6 minutes on high in my microwave steamer. Then drain and season with bouillon concentrate, herbs, sliced scallions or chopped chives, toasted nuts -- anything you might add to rice. I also use "cauli-rice" in place of bulgar wheat and cous-cous, especially in salads. I love "cauli-bouli" -- tabbouli made with shredded cauliflower.

In the same family as cauliflower are cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli, chard, and -- believe it or not -- turnips. All are low carb and super-good for you.

Summer squashes are all low carb, while the winter ones are high enough that I'm careful with them. An exception is spaghetti squash, which not only is pretty low carb -- 1 cup cooked spaghetti squash has 10 grams of carb with 2 grams of fiber, for a usable carb count of 8 grams -- but makes a super low carb noodle substitute as well. Pumpkin, too, is not terribly high carb, if not super-low; it has about 2/3s the carb content of butternut squash. One cup of pumpkin puree has 20 grams of carb, quite a lot, but 7 of those grams are fiber, so the usable carb count is 13. Pumpkin is very high in vitamin A, of course. Here in the USA, fresh pumpkin is only available from September to November. During those months, I like to use it as a substitute for sweet potatoes in soups and stews. It's also good roasted; I've done it glazed with sugar-free pancake syrup (maple flavored) and chipotle peppers. Yum.

Celery and cucumber are super-low carb, as you might have guessed, since you no doubt know they're super-low calorie, as well. Asparagus is also a carb bargain, with 10 grams of carb, 5 grams of it fiber, in a hefty half-pound serving. I love grilled asparagus; it's also wonderful tossed with a little olive oil and roasted at 500 degrees (that's fahrenheit; 260 C) for just ten minutes or so.

Button mushrooms are quite low carb, a mere 3 grams a cup. But some of the Asian varieties are higher -- shiitakes, for instance, have 21 grams per cup (with 3 grams of fiber). Don't assume a mushroom is a mushroom is a mushroom!

Tomatoes are technically a fruit, and unsurprisingly have a little more carb than some other "vegetables." The big beefsteaks that'll be coming into the gardens hereabouts in the next few weeks can weigh a pound or more each, and that pound will run 19 grams of carb, with 5 grams of fiber, for a usable carb count of 14 grams. Still, they're highly nutritious, and I adore them, so I'm likely to indulge. Especially since The Organic Gardening Gods next door keep bringing me fresh basil to chop onto my tomatoes. Yum!

Bell peppers are in the same family as tomatoes, but are quite low carb. An average green pepper has only 6 grams of carb, with 2 grams of fiber. Let that pepper ripen to red, and it'll gain about 1 gram of carb, but it will also develop considerably more vitamin C. Go for it! Hot peppers are also low carb, and of course their heat puts a natural brake on their consumption. I dare you to eat enough habaneros to gain weight, I double-dog dare you! ;-p

By the way, one sweltering night last summer, when I didn't feel like cooking, and neither of us felt like eating anything heavy or hot, I made a beautiful platter, like this: I arranged a layer of thick sliced tomatoes. Over that I made a layer of sliced green peppers. Then I made a layer of paper-thin red onion rings. On that I laid slices of mozzarella. In between all the layers I put chopped fresh basil. Finally, I drizzled the whole thing lightly with extra-virgin olive oil and a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar. We ate the whole thing with our fingers. It was just exactly perfect for a steamy summer night.

The other member of the tomato and pepper family is the eggplant. I confess to not having done a lot with eggplant, but I should. A pound of the stuff has 22 grams of carb, but 9 of those grams are fiber, so we're talking 13 grams of usable carb per pound. Surely I could come up with some good eggplant recipes!

The various members of the onion family -- onions, scallions, leeks, etc -- are among the carbier vegetables, but so essential to cooking and so healthful that it makes no sense to eliminate them. 1 cup of chopped onions has 14 grams of carb, with 3 grams of fiber, for a usable carb count of 11 grams. And those 11 grams are going to make all the difference to your soup, stew, or meatloaf. Go for it. However, I have been known to cut back on onions -- say, from three onions in a recipe to one -- to moderate the carb count. I have gotten excellent results this way, especially if I throw in an extra clove of garlic for just 1 gram.

This is getting super-long, and it's 9:30 and I haven't cooked dinner yet. I'm going to post this and finish up tomorrow.