Since December and its traditional fatty (ok, and delicious) foods passed by, how about starting a new era, one in which you make a leafy green dinner almost every day?
Thank God Christmas and New Year’s Eve have passed and we can now go back to our regular diet! Finally, we don’t have to feel pressured to eat every time we visit some friends, nor prepare an ungodly amount of food when our friends are coming by. We can now eat only when our body asks for it. Also, we no longer have to eat starters, steaks, sides, salads, and desserts during one meal.
If you also see this January as a month of going back to your regular diet, you can try our leafy green dinner ideas. Your body will thank you for starting to eat leafy greens again and, if you eat them every evening, you might also lose some of those pounds you’ve gained in December.
If you try eating leafy greens more often, you might feel an energy boost. Leafy greens are one of the most nutrient-packed foods you can eat. So, try having kale, arugula, spinach, baby spinach, lettuce, cabbage, bok choy, Swiss chard, or endives at least once a day. Preferably have them in the evening, for a light dinner and a good sleep.
Leafy green dinner ideas
1. In salads
Probably one of the first ideas that come to anyone’s mind when they hear “leafy green dinner”, is a salad. A salad with spinach, baby spinach, arugula, lettuce, or kale, anything green, any raw vegetable, or even roasted veggies. Your leafy green salad can be sweet or savory. Also, you can wrap your salad in an omelet or stuff it in other vegetables. Don’t just stick to baby spinach and lettuce, try other leafy greens too, like kale and cabbage!
2. In smoothies
Greens are one of the healthiest foods around and it’s highly recommended to eat them as often as possible. So, you can have leafy green smoothies for dinner. You can enrich their taste and texture with fruits like pineapple, kiwi, apple, or by adding honey or maple syrup. Adding a touch of ginger will give it a spicy kick and extra exotic flavor, plus a boost for your immune system! Of course, you can have these smoothies in the morning too!
3. In soups
You can add spinach, for example, in almost any soup, whether it’s a vegetarian one or not. You can blend it into a cream or just throw in one handful of spinach at the end of the cooking process of a pot of chicken soup! One of the benefits of cooking with spinach is that it has one of the lowest cooking times among vegetables, about 2-4 minutes, so it’s time-effective, too.
But spinach is not the only leafy green you can use in soups. Cabbage, savoy cabbage, kale, bok choy, Swiss chard, and even endives can turn into soups.
4. Pies, tarts, and… quesadilla
You can use leafy greens in muffins, pies, tarts, and basically in anything you can bake. But you can also use them in quesadillas.
You may be tempted to think that most of them can be made with spinach, but you’d be wrong. There are cabbage pies, kale or chard pies, and endive pies. Just don’t make pies too often in the evening!
