8 ways to make veggies feel like treats

If you are getting tired of conventional veggie form factors, here are our favorite ways to make them feel like special treats:

1. Zucchini spiralized into noodles. You can eat them raw or cooked, and they have a different taste and texture depending on how long you heat them. Mix them heated with marinara, parmesan, turkey meatballs, or your own creation. Or try them in a cold pasta salad, mixed with your favorite confettied veggies, olive oil, queso fresco crumbles, black beans, or whatever you like on noodles. Toasted sesame seeds and a little sesame oil works on either hot or cold noodles. Yellow squash work great, too.

2. A grilled or roasted portobello mushroom turned into pizza. Just fill with spinach, onion, garlic, pesto, cheese or whatever you like.

3. Grilled eggplant slices as taco shells or “bread” for a grilled cheese sandwich. Just slice them thin, grill each side with a spriz of oil and voila.

4. Cabbage roasted into steaks. Slice purple or green cabbage into 1/2″ disks, spray with a little oil, then top with herbs, garlic, spices or whatever you like.

5. Cauliflower diced into rice or risotto. You can either put cauliflower in your food processor and chop it to bits before cooking, or just buy it ready-to-go at Trader Joe’s. As an extra perk, it cooks very quickly.

6. Riced cauliflower pizza crust. Here is a recipe from Cacique that I’ve been meaning to try: http://www.caciqueinc.com/blog/2016/01/cauliflower-crust-pizza/#.VtdLaZWCOrU.

7. Cauliflower as mashed faux-tatoes. Boil cauliflower and blend it ’til it looks like your favorite Thanksgiving treat.

8. Zucchini French fries. Roast or grill thin slices of zucchini, with salt and pepper sprinkled on, and perhaps a spritz of oil. Sliced portobello mushroom strips also work well.

Thanks to our clients, who taught us these tricks. We know you have more great ideas…will you share them with us?