Week 7 of the 2024 NDSU Extension Field to Fork Webinar Series.
This presentation is with Julie Garden-Robinson, NDSU Extension Food and Nutrition Specialist and Professor and is titled “Being Creative & Safe with Fruit & Vegetable Preparation and Storage”.
Links discussed in this presentation:
https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/extension/programs/nourish
all right well uh welcome
everybody uh hello my name is Scott
Swanson I’m usually the one hanging out
in the background kind of monitoring
things on Zoom so you may not have seen
me before but today I get to be your
host uh for the field of Park webinar as
always it’s brought to you by North
Dakota State University extension this
is the ninth year we’ve done the series
and we are so glad you’ve joined us
today a special shout out to our welcome
or special Welcome to our watch parties
we have out there so so glad you’re
getting together um enjoying some
fellowship along with some of the
learning you’re doing um we have
archived all the webinars from the
previous years and the links to those
are on the field of fork webinar
page we also are providing a certificate
of attendance on the website and that is
posted with the recording on the next
slide we will show the upcoming webinars
uh we hope you can join us for those as
well and the slide after that we have
the webinar controls and because of our
large number of our
participants we invite to post your
questions and comments in the chat so
let’s go ahead and practice finding that
as many of you already have been doing
you guys know the routine fairly well
but go ahead and look at the bottom
there and see the chat uh button and
ignore the Q&A box if you click chat to
open up the chat and you can go ahead
then on your right hand side and type in
your city and state I see many of you
are doing that
already our next slide we provide the
acknowledgement so as you’re typing in
your city and state uh we want to
mention we have a special request
the program is sponsored in part with
grant funding from the usda’s
Agricultural Marketing service so we’re
going to ask you to complete a short
online survey that will be emailed right
after today’s webinar as a thank you
there will be prizes provided to the
lucky winners of the random drawings uh
when you do get that survey you’re going
to need to scroll down a little bit uh
to find today’s date because we are
combining the data from 2023 and
2024 so again welcome to today’s webinar
I am pleased to introduce today’s
speaker although for most of you you
probably don’t need an
introduction uh Julie Gard Robinson is a
professor and food nutrition specialist
for andu extension she does research and
Outreach in the areas of nutrition food
safety and health and coordinates the
field of work program she writes she has
written a weekly column called Prairie
fair for almost 27 years Julie take it
away well thanks Scott we’re kind of
switching roles today so glad to have
everyone here and your from all over the
place we love to share our resources
from NDSU extension with all our North
Dakota friends as well as all our new
friends from around the
country uh this is our
non-discrimination
statement and I’m GNA go ahead and get
into my talk and we’re going to be using
the chat and we’re going to use some
other features of Zoom today so Scott is
going to help me out a lot but today
we’re going to talk a lot about fruits
and vegetables in the diet I am a
registered dietitian uh what counts as a
serving or a cup of vegetables what are
some of the health benefits what are
some ideas for using fruits and
vegetables I think you might be I think
you might be surprised at the current
statistics on fruit and vegetable
consumption so I want you to just Ponder
real
briefly how many fruits and vegetables
have you had
today so did you have
any an orange for breakfast or some
juice or maybe you had a smoothie with
vegetables and everything in it what do
you have for
lunch and in this presentation we are
including dyable beans like Black beans
kidney beans all those sorts of beans as
a vegetable they can either be a protein
or a veget vable so I’m going to give
you just about 30 seconds to think about
how you’re doing so
far all right so are you
thinking let’s go
on and this is how we count fruits and
vegetables in the current my plate
guidance that we use which is based on
the US dietary guidelines for Americans
which comes out every five years every
five years we get recommendations and a
lot of times they don’t change a whole
lot most of the time they at least hold
even on the amount of fruits and
vegetables we eat and a lot of times it
increases so as you can read a cup of
raw or cooked vegetables or vegetable
juice or two cups of leafy greens can be
considered as one cup from the vegetable
group and I’ll be covering very shortly
just how many cups each of us should be
should be consuming to meet the
guidelines so pretty soon in the world
of North Dakota and probably in your
States as well we’re going to see a
burst of color coming from nature I
haven’t seen any grass popping up in my
yard yet I live in
Fargo um but the more colorful your
plate the healthier EST healthier it is
for you so take a cue from nature take a
look at all those flowers this happens
to be a I think looks like fall and
anyway that is a good cue that we should
be having more colorful fruits and
vegetables not Skittles but um colorful
fruits and vegetables on our plate for a
lot of
reasons this is one of our guides I
wrote a number of years ago but it’s
really been a very popular publication
it’s called what color is your food it
is available on our website if you
simply Google that title and NDSU
extension it’ll probably pop up pretty
easily but this kind of goes through in
more
depth all the information about pigments
and so on and some of the health
benefits of different colors of fruits
and vegetables
so we are going to take a brief look at
the current guidelines for nutrition for
all of us and this is also colorful But
it includes more than fruits and
vegetables because we need a balanced
diet we need a lot of different types of
foods on our plate if you look at uh the
red and green items fruits and
vegetables really that should be half of
your plate that’s the current guideline
recommendation make half your plates
fruits and vegetables and then a little
over a quarter grains especially whole
grains and then another quarter protein
and proteins can be from a variety of
sources both plant and animal um or
both and dairy is the last food group so
this is a pretty good synopsis of a
healthy diet and you can kind of think
think about that as you’re planning your
own your own
diet so in the world of fruits and
vegetables we used to say servings and
some of you might remember eat five a
day that stood for five servings of
fruits and vegetables well about 10 or
actually more than that more than 10
years ago this my plate
appeared and um we’ve been using it we
use it for children and adults people of
all ages and it’s a really good visual I
think for the recommendations for a
healthy diet so now we consider items in
cups instead of servings so that has
taken a long time to help people figure
that
out so now on this slide you can take a
look
um if you’re a woman ages 51 plus two
cups is the recommendation for V
vegetables know and go down the line a
little bit more for younger women males
out there uh three cups up to age 50 and
then two and a half cups for 51 plus
because you might notice if you keep
eating a lot of food as we get older um
it’s much easier to gain weight so we we
kind of relax the amount of food you can
certainly eat more than this it’s that’s
always a good thing to eat more fruits
and vegetables than what is
recommended uh here are the fruit
recommendations if you’re female 19 to
30 two cups 31 plus one and a half cups
off your mail two cups all the way from
19 till
forever
so how are you how are you
doing some days I do really well and
some days I don’t
even with all my background in nutrition
so I’m gon to ask Scott to launch our
first poll and I don’t think we’ve used
polls
before so before you write anything in
the chat if you have access go ahead and
and
vote this is like phone a friend on one
of those game
shows pull the
audience and it looks like 10% one
and now I’m going
to not tell you the answer quite
yet but we will I’ll tell you shortly
because I have another Poll for you on
average what percent of children meet
the fruit and vegetable recommendations
is it 5 10 20 30 or 40 that should be an
E I guess instead of a
three if you have kids you can think of
your own own kids maybe your kids are a
head of the
curve and we’ll go on it looks like most
people majority thought
10%
okay so a little bit more information
then I’m going to tell you what the
answer is to that first of all we’re
going to shift into categories of
vegetables um my plate divides
vegetables into numerous categories and
you you can see they’re based on color
and again for a reason because each of
these colors gives some indication of
the nutrition that’s
present and I will tell you that most
people sure change themselves on these
dark green which include you know dark
green leafy vegetables
broccoli cooked or raw lots of different
things that are green
and the other group within vegetables
that people sure change themselves on
are the
orange
vegetables and we Clump together red and
orange and they include all fresh frozen
canned red and orange vegetables so you
can think Tomatoes red peppers carrots
sweet potatoes winter squash pumpkin so
think about your own consumption that’s
this webinar is a little different than
some of the previous ones because I
really want you to personalize this and
think about what you could do and set a
goal I’m not going to collect your goal
but based on what you hear today are you
meeting the recommendations or is there
something you could change but these two
groups the dark green red and orange are
the ones that people are short changing
themselves on and then we have other
categories beans and peas those include
all cooked and canned beans peas
including lentil chickpeas pinto
beans this category does not include
green beans or green peas because
they’re green and then we have starchy
vegetables that includes white potatoes
corn green peas and if you’ve been
watching the news lately there is a a
movement so to speak to move potatoes to
be a grain I’m not sure that I would
agree with that because they have a lot
of attributes such as high potassium
levels of our vegetabl but we’ll have to
see what
happens uh another category are other
vegetables so all fresh frozen and
canned things like I guess that’s where
the green beans go and onions and
iceberg lettuce so they’re in that other
category um iceberg lettuce if that’s
your leafy green I guess that you
prefer I would encourage you to go with
the dark green like the spinach the Roma
because there are many more nutrients in
those dark green leafy vegetables than
say our Iceberg which know it’s very low
in calories has a little vitamin
C crunchy but not nearly as healthy for
you as those other darker
greens and then we finally have our
fresh frozen canned and dried fruits and
fruit juices so there you go all those
things like bananas grapes melons
berries raisins they’re all very good
for you and and I’ll try to divide up
all your fruit and vegetable intake to
include different things on different
days if you find yourself going to the
grocery store or the Farmers Market or
whatever wherever you shop try to pick
something a little different now and
then to make sure you’re getting all
this
nutrition that your body
needs so I’m giving you some
homework so tomorrow
I want you to write down all your fruits
and vegetables that you have throughout
the day and also I didn’t include snacks
so there’s your homework I’m not
collecting it no grade but uh you’re on
the honor System and I hope that you you
know take this as a launch pad to
meeting your recommendations for for
fruits and vegetables because so many of
us are
short I still haven’t told you the
answer yet have I it’s coming I promise
why should we eat fruits and vegetables
anyway why is everyone always telling
you why are there all these messages
everywhere well it’s because they
provide so many nutrients they provide
vitamins A and
C and one note if you pick up a
nutrition
label on any product almost any product
will have a nutrition label they no
longer
include vitamins A and C because those
two nutrients are often fortified in
other products maybe juice products
those sorts of things so instead they’ve
added vitamin
D and pottassium
um as Replacements because they couldn’t
make the the nutrition label to cover
the whole box or bag or whatever it’s in
so there is a change but I do encourage
you to compare nutrition labels
you know one to another when you’re
making your selections for whatever you
buy um fruits and vegetables also
provide fiber and then we have a fancy
word there phyto chemicals phyto means
plant natural plant chemicals and many
of these act as antioxidants they’re
like the boxing gloves that go in and if
there are you know free radicals but
could promote cancer or other diseases
these natural phytochemicals which all
those colorful fruits and vegetables
contain in abundance can fight off those
Invaders in your body so that is where a
lot of the research is going on right
now so some of the nutrients out and
many other things that you know we
probably don’t even know yet in the
world of nutrition there’s ongoing
research so because we are trying to
promote eating more fruits and
vegetables we are trying to help protect
people against a lot of chronic diseases
cancer diabetes heart disease even being
overweight or obese can be helped by a
diet high in fruits and
vegetables and I bet everyone listening
has had a direct experience maybe
yourself maybe a family member who’s had
or has one of these diseases and if it’s
something as easy as eating more fruits
and vegetables that could help lower our
risk why not do
it oh wait there’s
more eating more fruits and vegetables
also supports muscles it helps our
immune system it helps our bones and
joints because there are many nutrients
that our bones and joints need as well
and our eyes and it’s not only the
carrots folks it’s those leafy greens
and corn and there are pigments within
those vegetables that can help promote
good Vision I can’t remove your need for
glasses or contacts but it can certainly
help prevent macular
degeneration which is a leading cause of
blindness um fruits and vegetables the
nutrients contained within also keep our
skin healthy our digestive system
healthy and even our teeth healthy
so there’s a lot of good reasons to eat
more fruits and vegetables if you find
that gee I’m I’m short I’m not consuming
as much as I want or need so I do have
something
else that I want you to know about and
you can still sign up and maybe I’ll ask
um a who’s helping out today if you
could pop the link for our nourish
website into the chat
we’re actually going to launch another
course it’s just if you’ve already taken
it it’s the same ones we’re working on
some new ones but we’re going to launch
April 8th it’s free there are prize
opportunities and you can still sign up
it takes you know 30 or 40 minutes to do
these online modules they’re kind of
like what you’re watching right now
except they’re recorded not
live um and you’ll have about three
months to do the seven modules
and they cover topics like getting
better sleep because nutrition does play
a role and not getting enough sleep can
affect your nutrition because you may
think you’re hungry when you’re actually
tired and another um module that we’re
covering includes skin eyes bones joints
heart brain digestive system um muscles
is in the works so if you’re interested
and you have you know 40 minutes a week
for yourself and I hope you do um please
consider signing up our participants so
far have really enjoyed it and some of
our our County offices actually several
are offering the live
classes and you’d go to a place and take
the
class thank you for the nice comment
over
there um so I have some handouts that we
have posted posted on our field to Fork
website and one of them is um creative
ways to use vegetables in your meals
there’s a pocket guide that goes
directly with this presentation so as I
go through in short time some of the
hopefully creative ideas maybe things
you’ve never thought
about um ways to prepare fruits and
vegetables you’ll be able to download
that and you can go through and circle
it because all the information is is
there you don’t have to take a lot of
notes today uh we also have a growing
together cookbook that my students and I
created a couple years ago in
conjunction with Fargo Morehead
gardeners and we can also post a link to
for that on the field of fork website so
we’ll we’ll work on that I don’t think
it’s there quite yet and then we have a
a Facebook site that has Daily Posts so
I just want you to be aware that these
webinars are not the only thing and our
field to Fork website has a lot like
dozens of handouts with recipes if you
prefer to cook with recipes some people
like to you know make it up as they go
but we have a lot of resources and I
hope you check them out as always
they’re free and you know I’m also
looking for your ideas as you hopefully
fill out that survey that we sent out to
you after this
these programs because that’s how I as a
coordinator of these decide what topics
are going to be featured from year to
year okay here’s the
answer who how much how many people meet
the fruit and vegetable recommendation
so if we average this you know it’s
right around I’ll just say closer to 10
so about 11% of adults meaning that
almost 90% of us do do not meet that
recommendation for about four to four
and 1 half cups of fruits and vegetables
in total and children are not doing very
well um you can see it if you combine
those two numbers it’s about
5% of kids in the United States meet the
uh fruit
recommendation and you know in total
fruit and vegetable recommendation so
we’re not doing too well as adults or as
children so there’s a lot of things that
we can do to change
this so um some of you if you are
parents might have children who were
selective eaters sometimes we call them
picky eaters that’s not the best term
well I call them
selective and these are some tips that
experts have for people who are trying
to entice their children to eat more
fruits and vegetables and come closer to
those
recommendations one is to set a good
example um we always tried to I have
three children and we always tried to
provide a lot of different vegetables
and I remember one time I made brussel
sprouts and my husband referred to them
as little
brains and uh guess how many brussels
sprouts were left on plates after that
comment
so not always a good idea to try to be
funny
another idea is Don’t force the
issue you have to keep providing these
opportunities to taste things for kids
it takes 10 or 12 exposures to a food
and we never want to make them eat food
I mean that might have been the way some
of you some of us were raised but then
food becomes a
fight and a struggle so may make it
available let them choose and then
another piece and I’m actually doing a
workshop with a lot of child care
providers this
weekend is to encourage gardening among
children and also at the grocery store
or the Farmers Market having them help
select something and prepare it because
researchers have shown that if kids help
Garden if they help select the food at
the store and if they help you cook
prepare the food they’re much more
likely to eat
it and another tip real common in the
world of nutrition is when you’re
introducing a new vegetable whether
that’s a Brussels sprout or something
else offer it with something they
already like like maybe macaroni and
cheese or or something that you know
they’ll consume so familiar and less
familiar not everything
unique try different prep methods and
we’ll be talking about those today
and of course you always want to make
Meal Time Pleasant um it should be a
nice opportunity for people to get
together and you know just
talk so I want you to think as I go
through these next ideas uh after I talk
about food safety what are some ideas
that you you might want to try what what
have you not done to prepare fruits and
vegetables but first we are going to
talk about
safety and we do have a handout all
about produce safety it’s called fight
back for
bacteria and it should be um with the
archived section of the field to Fork
site so they come up with a few steps to
think about to make sure that produce is
kept safe and for those of you who are
Growers um doing this more on a
commercial level periodically we offer
the class called the food safety
modernization act produce safety course
or fsma um that gives you a lot of depth
about food safety so I’m just giving you
one slide so when you go to the grocery
store you want to check for damage and
bruises most of the time you can cut
that away and use the rest of the fruit
or vegetable that’s not going to hurt
you but Tech technically where the
bruise is located that’s more likely
where you’re going to have the
microorganisms growing so as I said most
of the time you can just cut it away um
of course this goes without saying but
within this handout and this comes from
the partnership for food safety
education you always want to use clean
utensils and just sprince with water we
don’t recommend using soap unfortunately
that message got out earlier you know
back in 2020 during the start of the
pandemic and people were washing their
fruits and vegetables with soap no soap
is not meant for us to consume so there
are some produce rinses that are
certainly safe but plain old water uh
use a brush if necessary that’s the
current
guidance um keep fruits and vegetables
separate from any contaminants so that
could be raw meat juices or you know
other items such as that all the way
from your grocery
cart in the store to your home so be
real cautious and then our
recommendation once you cut up fruits
and vegetables it becomes perishable so
we have this 2hour timeline that comes
from US Department of Agriculture or
USDA where you keep that fresh produce
that’s been cut peeled or even cooked
you have about two hours serve it out
get it in a shallow container put it in
the
fridge and if you are not going to cook
fresh fruits and vegetables and they
become contaminated maybe you’re
making you know a salad and you’re also
making something that’s going to be
cooked you you really do need to either
cook or toss fruits and vegetables that
have touched meat juices and will not be
cooked because you can kill
microorganisms through cooking but
it’s not a good idea to
um to consume raw meat juices as we all
know so now I want you to go to the chat
again which fruits or vegetables are
linked with the most outbreaks of
foodborn illness what do you
think I’m seeing lettuce and melon Roma
lettuce what do other people think
cantaloupe
spinach spinach lettuce
apples bean sprouts very
good when when these outbreaks
happen that means that at least two
people have gotten sick and it’s been
tied back to this to the same food
that’s sort of the definition of a an
outbreak so I’m going to show you the
next slide this is um sort of a
compilation of many years of the FDA
outbreaks so you can see and someone a
couple people got this or several people
got this right leafy greens and someone
else talked about sprouts and then we
look at
melons Tomatoes appear
here berries
and often the berries have been
contaminated with like the rinse water
or where they’re growing that kind of a
thing herbs have been linked to some
foodborn illness outbreaks cucumbers
green onions we heard about those a few
years ago and in some cases you can see
it’s
unknown but leafy greens sprouts and of
course I just told you to eat more leafy
greens so you want to be especially
cautious about those and one comment
I’ll make about leafy greens is when you
when you buy them in a package that says
triple rinsed ready to eat it truly is
ready to eat um food safety experts are
more worried about consumers taking the
safe stuff out of a bag and then
rewashing it and maybe contaminating it
than just dropping that content of that
leafy green pre rined bag into a bowl
and eating it so they are safe to eat
from the bag if it says they are safe to
eat trust me those um food manufacturers
do not want you to get sick foodborn
illness outbreaks can be very costly
from a legal
standpoint so now we’re going to just go
through a through whatever I can get
through in the next um next 20 minutes
or so so fresh apples we certainly can
enjoy those fresh you can boil them and
make
applesauce have you ever tried grilling
apples just slice them into slices brush
with butter place on a grill and you can
top with cinnamon or honey really nice
side dish especially with something like
pork or chicken or any other food you
like it makes a tasty dessert and much
lower in calories of course than having
apple pie uh if you haven’t tried drying
that’s another area where we have a lot
of guidelines have put together uh in
our food preservation section so very
simple it’s a good idea with apples
because they are high in antioxidants
and that’s what causes them to turn
brown so you have to do
an um an antioxidant treatment such as
lemon juice or citric acid or fruit
fresh but you can you can dry things in
a food dehydrator that’s probably the
easiest way but you can also bake in the
oven at a very low
temperature and
uh let the oven or let the apples sit in
there for a couple hours and they’ll get
nice and crisp so you can check that
out bell
peppers well just like anything else you
can rinse them chop them or Julian them
make those thin strips
uh great for topping Fresh Salad U it’s
a good way to to build in some
vegetables and by the way uh we do call
a bell pepper a vegetable but
botanically it’s technically the fruit
of the plant it’s where the seeds are
located but in my world we we call it a
call it a
vegetable um try sautéing bell peppers
um cut them lengthwise into strips you
can heat olive oil or your favorite oil
any any oil
is going to be a little bit healthier
than a solid fat then you add your
peppers cook about 10 minutes there you
go you have a really tasty thing and one
of the red bell peppers in particular
are very high in vitamin C they’re one
of the best sources of vitamin C even
better than you oranges for example and
again grilling we’re coming up to
grilling season I’m I’m hopeful that
it’s going to be warm soon in my world
um but again it’s very simple to grill
both fruits and vegetables you just cut
them up brush them with your favorite
oil and doesn’t take very long it
depends on how hot your grill is we do
have a u handout on our website it’s
called Grill something different and it
includes some really tasty recipes if
you prefer to work from recipes but you
know don’t only grill meat when you’re
um using your grill and I I bet there
are a few Grill Masters out on the call
today broccoli just like the others of
course we can eat it fresh
uncooked um one of the really good ways
to to cook food is um without adding
calories is to steam it and it keeps
that beautiful
color and you there’s also steamer bags
for of vegetables of course you can buy
in the frozen food section most grocery
stores so that’s another way that’s
actually considered
steaming but you know try steaming
broccoli uh sautéing just like the other
definition just add some oil to a
skillet let it heat up a little bit and
then add your cut up
broccoli and when it turns that
beautiful bright green that’s
chlorophyll and gets tender to your
liking you don’t want it to be mushy you
want it a little bit you know of to the
tooth almost like pasta and then it’s
done ready to
go I love to roast
vegetables um broccoli fettes on a
baking sheet with a little oil and some
desired seasoning takes about 20 25
minutes it’s a pretty hot oven about 425
degrees but really delicious and brings
out lots of flavor and your kids might
think they’re eating candy
okay here’s my beloved brussels sprouts
one of my very favorite vegetables so
roasting them is also a delicious way to
prepare them takes 35 to 40 minutes on
in this hot oven you want them to be
kind of crisp on the outside and tender
on the inside so you might have to do a
taste test and see how you like it and
you do want to Brown them evenly so
you’re going to just keep moving them
around little bit shake the pan from
time to time and like with the others
you can also steam them um there’s a lot
of really nice steamer baskets that are
available doesn’t take very long 5 to
eight minutes you want them to be a
little soft and tender and of course
brussel sprouts are readily available
also um in the grocery store and I
helped with a a Children’s Garden I have
for a number of years and anyway they
were absolutely amazed when they saw how
brussel sprouts grow there’s a big stock
and they were like what is this that’s
the Brussels sprout so I think they were
quite intrigued and they were almost at
War about who would get to take the
Brussels sprouts home and and make them
so I think we just had to divide them
up another way to prepare brussels
sprouts again is to do the sauté method
kind of slightly coat them with oil and
allow that to caramelize a little that’s
that’s the development of the sugars
with the heat and there’s natural sugars
within you know all of our fruits and
vegetables takes about six or eight
minutes and a good way to finish is to
have some fresh lemon juice or lime
juice if you like and a little garlic
and some salt and pepper to taste so
really a delicious thing you probably
have seen brussel sprouts more often on
restaurant menus they’re they’re very
delicious cabbage love cabbage grew up
growing lots of cabbage I’m from
Minnesota originally and we it grew
really well where I grew up anyway of
course fresh you can make Co Sal and so
on delicious in soups you can boil it it
will have an
aroma but actually the the flavor is is
not very intense in in uh cabbage once
it gets into a soup and you can also
roast it this was one of the recipes
that we tried when we made the growing
together cookbook we actually made
wedges and we made almost like cabbage
steaks and we roasted those and they
were very good so that is another way to
think about doing this and I will say
that what I’m sharing with you now is
part of a pocket guide so it folds up
into like a little
map and
um and many extension offices have it
and it’s also on our website so you can
look at the big map on your screen I
guess
carrots now carrots as I said are good
for your eyes they’re they’re really
necessary for helping us prevent night
vision loss so they they feed a portion
of the eye that helps support night
vision you can’t see in the dark
completely but certainly helps support
our night vision so eat more
carrots and certainly again you can
roast them just cut them up into
coin-sized pieces use some different
flavorings um try some cinnamon or chili
powder for sightly hot some salt and
pepper uh some people like a little
glaze of Honey or a little butter and it
takes about 25 to 40 minutes on a pretty
high oven about
400° and roast them till they reach your
desired
tenderness um
boiling as as you’d suggest only take
seven or nine minutes so pretty quick to
to boil and if you have the
opportunity you’re cooking something
else it’s really easy
to add some carrots just chop up some
carrots if you’re making chili or you’re
making soup it’s a good way to fortify
those other fruits and
vegetables or other menu items with
fruits and vegetables cauliflower same
as the others
fresh but um some more novel things
besides the roasting I’m mentioning how
to do it
sauteing steaming but one of the I was
really surprised by this one time my
daughter was in probably junior high or
middle school at the
time and she had learned how to make
mashed
cauliflower and that’s all she wanted
and I thought oh if you’re going to eat
cauliflower and all I have to do is mash
it with some potatoes hey we’re let’s
have at it so it’s a really nice
combination you can either do the
cauliflower just boiled and mashed or
you can add it to mashed potatoes it’s
so worth a try and certainly try these
other methods like sautéing and steaming
as well
chickpeas actually considered a
vegetable um most of the time we would
probably buy them canned and an easy
thing to make with chickpeas is hummus
and if you’ve never tried making hummus
it’s very simple just takes a can of
chickpeas about a tablespoon of lemon
juice some olive oil fresh garlic if you
like and cumin salt and pepper and blend
it up in a blender or a food processor
and I I will guarantee that you can make
your own hummus for a lot less than what
you’d pay to buy the commercial hummus
and it doesn’t take more than a couple
minutes you know a few minutes to make
this so try that out try making your own
hummus you can also roast canned
chickpeas so rinse them off toss them
with olive oil salt pepper cayenne
pepper fu want a little kick spread on a
baking sheet and roast for 30 or 40
minutes if you have someone in your
family who can’t have gluten for example
roasted chickpeas which become kind of
crisp can be a substitute for um
croutons on salads they also are a
really tasty snack and you can make we
have a lot of recipes for these as well
um we have a whole collection of pulse
related recipes because chickpeas is in
that pulse
family
cucumbers can’t wait for some fresh
cucumbers um of course we can eat them
fresh have you ever had cucumbers in a
smoothie it’s kind of has a nice green
flavor I’d call it but it’s a good way
to um to incorporate some very low
calorie ingredients into a
smoothie and we also tried making a
spread with uh finely chopped cucumbers
could be chopped up in a food processor
um you can mix in some cream cheese and
Seasonings and suddenly you have a
really tasty spread for you know for
your sandwich so you could add it to
your bread add some egg salad or chicken
salad and you got this extra little
crunch this extra
flavor uh dry beans
can’t emphasize how good they are for
you they are uh really one of our best
sources of dietary fiber and if you’ve
ever been to the doctor or whatever your
health care provider’s license is um
they probably are telling a lot of us
that we should be eating more fiber that
is another nutrient lacking well if you
want to take care of it eat more eat
more of our pulse foods like beans and
chickpeas lentils they’re very high in
fiber and of course we can use beans in
many ways from soups canned ones go
really well in
salads um tacos you can use all of these
as meat extenders so you can add some
lentils for example or beans to Tacos
you can even make black bean brownies
and we have a pretty good Black Bean
Brownie recipe on our website if you go
and look at our overall
website uh how about grapes well we are
stared to grow more grapes in North
Dakota um in fact one of our speakers
that was on previously we talked about
garlic um she actually does a lot of
work with grapes so maybe we’ll have a
grape industry that is very large in
North Dakota someday but of course you
can eat grapes fresh and if you want
something that’s almost like candy you
can put them in the freezer and you can
have a very refreshing snack and you
also can roast grapes believe it or not
so add a little oil salt pepper whatever
seasonings you like and roast for about
30 minutes and you can even use that
because it it gets almost a sweet like
Flavor you can use it as a topping on
ice cream or enjoy it as a side dish or
put it in a
salad
so
herbs lots of things with we have we
have five handouts all about each of
these herbs so we have
basil um and here’s a little tip for
Basil which is great on fresh pizza
which you could even Grill you can make
your own margarita pizza with basil
fresh
mozzarella and fresh
tomatoes but if you want to um explore
an easy way to cut up basil you just use
a knife to cut thin stripes thin strips
and um after you roll up the leaves and
suddenly you have these nice long strips
of Basil it’s a nice little tip and you
can put that as I said on Pizza you can
add to salad soups make your own
pesto uh cilantro this a Love or haate
relationship a lot of people have with
cilantro to my daughter cilantro tastes
like soap she’s a super taster but um
you know a lot of people
certainly like cilantro very common in
Mexican
foods uh you can chop it up add it to
pasta salad rice salsa anything you know
any way you like it if you happen to
like
cilantro I love it in fresh
salsa uh Dill some tips on how to use
that want to remove the large stems cut
into smaller pieces you can mince and
use in side dishes and add to your
potato salad seafood or even if you make
your own salad dressings it just adds
that fresh
flavor and all of these herbs and we
have a handout I work done several years
ago with a former horiculture specialist
it’s called harvesting herbs for
healthy cooking or something like that
Name Escapes me but we do have a hand
out that talks all the way from growing
the herbs to using
it um
mint again you can cut them up similar
to what I described with basil roll them
up cut into strips and here’s where you
can explore the Mediterranean diet make
a tabuli salad uh you can add to
Lemonade you can make your own mint tea
and they grow like wild so don’t plant a
lot of mint in your garden because it
might take over but there’s lots of
different flavors of mint available so a
lot of fun good starting item for young
children they like to watch these grow
and and so on you can also dehydrate
your herbs and you can bring some of
these into the house and overwinter them
and have them as little house
plants little culinary host plants uh
Rosemary um really good and chicken
turkey Pork and Beef My Rosemary grows
into giant
bushes but it’s it’s a really tasty
addition to macaroni and cheese pizza
you can add it to your roasted ve
vegetables you’re all going to try now
so really tasty way to improve you know
the flavor of of
foods uh leafy
greens hit some of the high points
because I’m almost out of time but you
can certainly add spinach Swiss chard
kale to soups you can
sauté spinach you can make kale chips so
again these directions everything I’m
saying is on the handout that is with
our archived um items onions the main
thing I’m going to talk about now is try
caramelizing them they are delicious you
can make your own homemade onion soup
but you have to be patient when you’re
caramelizing onions and some people
actually use their their um slow cookers
to do the caramelizing for them because
it’s a slow heating process of course
you can Grill them and you can sauté
onions potatoes we’re working on a
potato guide right now one of our former
speakers was Susie who is our potato
breeder so my students and I have been
working on some brand new potato recipes
and yesterday they made the potato br
brownie recipe and it was a huge hit so
in coming time there will be a potato
recipe with for brownies available very
tasty I’m sure you’ve all had many of
these but one thing I’m going to
highlight if you have an air fryer I
wasn’t a big fan of air fryers for a
while because I had a convection oven at
the time which does the same thing but I
changed ovens and now I have an air
fryer and it’s pretty handy you can heat
up
um french fries that maybe you you ate
at a restaurant and it’ll taste just
like when you were having them at the
restaurant and you were just portion
controlling yourself as we were the
other day and air frying for about 25
minutes works really
well pumpkins pumpkins again they’re one
of our dark orange they’re very high in
fiber very high in carotenoids which our
bodies used to make vitamin A good for
our eyes good for her skin but you can
also roast pumpkin and yesterday one of
my students made a delicious pumpkin
soup with apples so that will be worth
coming in the
20125 uh field of fork calendar so again
similar to the other ways that you can
roast but very delicious and a different
way you just need to blend up that
roasted vegetable and apples in our case
and it made a very tasty soup so
something to look forward to uh we’re
almost to the end raspberries of course
fresh and raspberry sauce is very
delicious um for each cup of liquid
you’re going to use about a tablespoon
of
cornstarch and uh you can use this as a
sauce over ice cream cheesecake or
pancakes so raspberries again high and
anti
oxidants well I grew up really liking
rutabagas believe it or not because we
grew them and I love to dig them up and
it’s like wow they’re really weird
looking but they can be mashed they also
can be
roasted and you know as I said I I hope
that you’re seeing some things maybe
you’ve never tried have you tried
mashing rutabagas if the flavor is too
strong try blending your mashed
rutabagas with mashed potatoes and make
a mix uh snap peas again lots of
different ways uh fresh you could sauté
them and you can eat the whole
pod very common in Chinese cooking to
have pea pods uh you can boil them and
you can also roast them so make make use
of your your
oven for some of these different
items uh strawberries one of my favorite
ways uh when fresh strawberries come
into season which usually in may we
start seeing them in high quality in
stores try making a strawberry sauce or
a freezer strawberry jam when F uh
fruits and vegetables are in season
they’re at their lowest cost and highest
quality uh someone I saw was asking
about squash and actually we have we
have two handouts on our on our website
and they are linked within our fields of
fork collection one’s about summer
squash and one’s about winter squash and
they include lots of recipes and ideas
so again
sautéing roasting steaming and you can
also try making chips out of summer
squash such as
zucchini so add little bit of olive oil
or another oil you like some seasonings
maybe a little salt if you like that
and then you just bake them flip them
over and you know in all takes about 18
minutes to to make your
chips and we couldn’t uh have a session
about fruits and vegetables without
talking about sweet corn so delicious
comes in little about mid mid toate
summer in North Dakota Minnesota
probably much earlier for some of you on
this call but we do have um we have some
recipes that show you how to grill and
it’s a simple process um putting them on
the grill cooking about 10 minutes you
can add whatever seasonings you like and
get a little bit of char because that
brings out that sweetness that
caramelizing that can happen during the
heating
process uh Tomatoes people love tomatoes
they always ask us lots of things about
tomatoes of course we can eat them fresh
um we can roast them as well and one
thing I don’t have have on here is you
can Grill Tomatoes they’re actually
pretty tasty on the grill and you can
stew them and you can preserve them we
have many guides about how to make salsa
and can and freeze tomatoes so if you’re
looking for ways to you have a bumper
crop of tomatoes we can help you just
check out our website or many of you are
you know you all have access to a
Cooperative Extension in your States as
well uh how about winter squash well try
roasting it try adding some extra
ingredients um really simple put the
flesh side down after you cut it in half
and roast until it’s to your softness
that you
like um I’ve never tried growing turnips
I’ve tasted turnips but those can also
be roasted and this is so simple
roasting is such a simple thing and it’s
so on Trend with um some of the culinary
uses of food s lately you can also sauté
them and it doesn’t take very long
really to make all of these
things so that brings me to the end and
I’ve I’ve used up my time but you’ll see
my um my contact
information what I want you to take away
is that most adults and children do not
meet the recommendations for fruits and
vegetables they’re really really healthy
for us and we do hope that you aim for a
variety of colorful fruits and
vegetables from all the subgroup groups
because that will help you meet your
nutrition needs and you probably will
not even need to take any kind of
supplement if you eat all of these
different fruits and vegetables uh be
creative and I hope that you check out
our free
resources and there is my email and my
direct phone line because I’m sure we’re
not going to get to a lot of
questions so Scott any questions well
there is a there’s a few obviously price
on popping in we can try to go through
them fast see how many you can get
through decide how long we want to stay
on yeah let’s take a few well we’ll go
back to the top first one was uh
wondering about swapping cups of fruit
and vegetables like maybe can you eat
more fruits then of the vegetables to
try to even things
out yeah you certainly can uh if you
prefer one or the other um fruits well
they’re they’re pretty similar they’re a
little bit natur naturally higher in
Sugar so they might be a little bit
higher in calories but if you would like
to eat more fruits than vegetables have
at it aim for you know four four and a
half cups in total per day and less
juice oh I’ll jump to the juice one then
so does juice qualify as a vegetable on
the chart you were showing back when you
had that depends on what the juice is so
tomato juice is a vegetable orange juice
is a fruit
but juice in particular typically
doesn’t have as much
fiber and some of the other it tends to
be higher in calories and has less fiber
so what we really recommend is that you
you know eat more Whole Foods instead of
juice but it still counts and it depends
on what the you know what the starting
point was sure couple of ones on
measuring so one was how do what is the
recommended way to measure leafy
greens um just use a cup and you know
push it into a cup if you go to um I saw
some questions popping in and I won’t
know the answer to how many clementines
does it make a serving or whatever yeah
but if you if you go to my plate
choosemyplate.gov
um that has charts of every possible
fruit or vegetable
that you can think of but again for the
leafy greens you you know you don’t want
to push them down but you’ll if you want
to see how big a cup or two cups would
be take out a measuring cup and then
take out another one put it on your
plate and just see what it looks like on
your
plate all right this one said that her
family eats a lot of spinach and she was
recently told that her 14-year-old
should not be eating a container of it
within a couple of days thoughts
how big is a container yeah I don’t know
um yeah you don’t want to focus so
heavily on one thing um the main rule of
thumb with spinach and dark leafy greens
is to look at what medications you might
be on um those are per like say spinach
is going to be particularly high in um
something that could interact with
vitamin K with um kumaden like a blood
thinner so if you any of you happen to
be on a blood thinner and they’ve said
really watch your intake of leafy greens
listen to that because those can
interact sure but um you know I if my
kid was eating a whole bunch of spinach
I’d probably try to you know buy a
smaller container of spinach and spread
it out over time I think I’ve heard this
question before so is corn a veget vable
or a
grain um for our world corn is a
vegetable like corn on the cob is a
vegetable you know the whole kernel corn
is a vegetable if it’s in the form of
cornmeal is you’re going to make
cornmeal muffins that’s a grain gotta uh
for some of the recipes you were showing
uh when you mentioned brussel sprouts
this person was wondering can they use
frozen brussel sprouts for the
recipes absolutely use use Frozen um and
some cases you might want to thaw them
in the microwave first so they don’t get
overcooked during during um you know
your cooking time so so thw them and
then you can
proceed are there any resources that
tell you the vitamins and minerals in
each ve fruit or
vegetable um if you really want to dig
into depth the USDA does have a nutrient
data base and you can it’s search
and you can type in spinach or bristle
Sprouts or whatever you’re interested in
and buy the cup and it’ll tell you
exactly what is in that uh we have a
more condensed version um we have a
group of about five handouts about
vegetables and it kind of condenses down
a lot of this
information uh into a simple chart but
if you really want to go in depth then
you you would go to the USDA you know
database and look it up sure I think I
know this answer but I’m going to want
to hear your thoughts so do you actually
need to peel
carrots um you really don’t I I would
scrub them off really
well yeah but you really wouldn’t need
to and and no one asked me about baby
carrots baby carrots started out as
bigger
carrots and they’re cut
down and uh Min carrots are you know Min
they’re small they’re petite yeah so
there’s two different
things uh caramelizing does that take
out all the nutrients no not at all
um it it just is a way you know you’re
you’re gonna probably lose some of the
nutrients from the extended cooking time
heating time like vitamin C is a little
bit fragile but you still will have you
know certainly the fiber the flavor you
know most of the pH chemicals so enjoy
some uh we have a really good onion soup
recipe under the onion section of the
field to Fork
resources all right there’s just a
couple more here um do you need certain
kinds of pumpkins for
cooking yeah very good question most of
the time we want to go with the small
Pumpkin they’re usually called sugar
pumpkins there’s some you know if you’re
buying the giant Jackal Lantern big
carving pumpkins those tend to be
stringy and not good for culinary use so
most of the pumpkins that you can buy at
the grocery store and the produce aisle
they have selected those to go to the
you know the produce aisle because they
can be used in our
cooking scking with pumpkins quick um
why can’t we can them this person’s been
told that it has to be Frozen not canned
good question um technically you can can
chunks of
pumpkin but not mashed pumpkin so under
our pressure canning resources or if you
go to the National Center for home food
preservation there is a way that you can
can the
chunks never a water bath caner don’t
ever can these sorts of things in a
water bath caner you need a pressure
caner and you need to follow the current
guidelines times pressures and all that
but you can’t can
mashed pumpkin like what you can buy in
the grocery store because we wouldn’t
have we wouldn’t be able to achieve the
safety in the center of that mashed
pumpkin inside a jar at home those all
of those you know if you buy Libby’s
pumpkin or whatever
brand they have many many food
scientists who are monitoring that that
is a safe product with home canned items
we have to go with what has been tested
by USDA or by universities or the
national Center so even if
you even if you see something on the
Internet from Pinterest or you know
something like that that says oh yeah I
do this no you want to go to a a a
reliable resources resource that has
been tested and is safe so chunks okay
Mash not good good information got one
last one I think it’s a good one to talk
about because it’s about MSG and extra
salt and healthiness and so this person
read an article that lists ways to make
vegetables taste better drizzling with
various Citrus juice and a dab of
vinegar or red pepper flakes but it
finally at the end it added a half a
teaspoon of MSG for four to six servings
of veggies what do you think about the
added
MSG well adding
MSG probably not our best idea you know
it’s it’s sodium mono sodium
glutamate it is considered a flavor
enhancer some people get really bad
headaches or major reactions and they
often associate MSG with they call it
Chinese restaurant
syndrome um
so I I think there’s better ways to add
flavor you mentioned the really good
ones the fresh Citrus some you know
maybe fresh herbs your favorite spices I
would go with
that if you don’t have a reaction to MSG
and sodium is not an issue for you you
know maybe try it but I I would go with
the other avenues
first all right well that was the last
one there was a couple other ones in
there but I’m pretty sure you touched on
a lot of the kind of some stuff related
to it in your talk and a lot of good
comments in there too from from most of
the folks too they threw in some
different uh recipes or ideas that they
have for certain fruits and veggies
um some really interesting ones that I’m
sure most people saw in the chat so
thanks for all the uh communication
today folks but yes that is it Julie
good job all right thanks everyone and
join us next week you asked some
questions about food preservation so I’m
bringing in another expert of one of my
colleagues um she’s from Kansas State so
save up all your questions about uh safe
food preservation because she also works
with a lot of Entre entrepreneurs in
Kansas
so thank you
everybody and you can this presentation
as I presented it is available as a PDF
on the field to Fork
website