Veggie recipes for a veggie-hater?

Hmmm... I've tried to post this twice before, but my @!#$ dial-up connection keeps dumping me. So, here we go again....

I married a carnivore! The man despises veggies, except for the starchy, sugary ones his diabetic bad self should avoid, like spuds, English peas, and corn. He will eat raw carrots and broccoli -- if he can drown them in Ranch dressing!

If you're a veggiephobe, too (or cook for one,) are there any healthy veggie dishes that you do like? If I can convince him that people who don't like vegetables will actually eat so-and-so, I might get him to try it.

I am a diabetic and I was never a great lover of vegetables. I forced myself to eat more veggies and now have grown to enjoy them. The best way to consume large quantities of veggies is to mash them, but remember no butter to be added.
There is nothing wrong with peas, and corn. however Potatoes are not low GI. The best potatoes are Pontiac Potato as they are lower GI than others

GI
Peas 48
Corn on the cob 48

How about grilled asparagas? Take some whole spears and drizzle a little bit of olive oil on them, just enough to give them a very light coating. Then sprinkle some kosher salt or other large grind salt on them and place them on the grate of the BBQ grill over high heat. Cook them lightly so they remain at least partially firm, but long enough to get grill marks, roll them over and cook the other side similarly. (you can also substitute PAM cooking spray for oil)

They can also be spiced with more than just salt for variation. I like them drizzled with chinese pepper oil & salted because the oil imparts a firey hot spice to them. Garlic oils and mustard oils also alter the flavor slightly from regular oil. Zucchini can be cooked the same way.

I cook Ma Po Eggplant for my wife, she loves it. Take a pack of Extra Firm Tofu, cube it into small cubes and brown it in a large skillet. Remove it from the skillet. Cut up a large eggplant, into strips about 1/2" by 1/2' by 3" long. Saute them in oil until they begin to wilt, add in a chopped onion, some sliced mushrooms and put the tofu back into the skillet. Add in one packed of MaPo sauce (foil packets inside a box) from the chinese section of a large supermarket. If you can't find it, look for any mildly spicy Chinese marinade or similar cooking sauce. Cook until all the eggplant has withered completely and collapsed.

You can vary the dish by adding or removing some of the chinese vegetables like bean sprouts, various types of mushrooms. You can also remove the cubed Tofu and substitute about a 1/4 to 1/2 pound of ground hamburger or a similar amount of ground hamburger substitute (tofu made to look like crumbled burger meat). We cook variations of this dish regularly, it can be very low fat and low sodium depending on the sauce and your tastes.

As an avowed hater of most veggies, I have found the single largest reason I dislike veggies is the texture of overcooked pieces of goo!

I enjoy many more vegetables now than I ever did since I mostly grill or steam them. The important part is, they should be warm, but still have plenty of crunch left in them. Bobs suggestion of asparagus is on the spot...you just might want to warn him about the effect on his pee

Steamed broccoli, asparagus and snow peas are good. Grilled green peppers and vidalia onions are good.

DON'T MASH THEM!!

Why not just buy baby food if you are going to do that?!?!

Dave, I'll agree with you!!! The lovely Mrs B loves to take green beans and pressure cook them with a ham hock and an onion. It leaves her with a pot of goo. I will not touch them.

But take some nice fresh green beans and stir fry them lightly so they are still crunchy, but warm, toss on a little salt and I can eat a plate of them. Ditto with Sugar Snap Peas!!!

Jamus says he won't touch smushy veggies. I make a wicked broccoli cheese casserole, but he says it's too soft. I wanted to make whipped sweet potatoes -- one of the few veggies I've managed to introduce him to -- this Easter, but he vetoed them as "goo," so I baked 'em instead. We're going to pick up one of those electric steamers, I think, or at least a good steamer basket.

Having been raised on Suth'un cooking, I'm used to overcooked veggies. I'd probably love Mrs. B's beans, because that's how my Grandma cooked 'em. He's tried the green beans you find at Chinese restaurants, which I think are just swished around in a wok, and he liked them, so those are a great suggestion, as well as the sugar snap peas. I dunno about asparagus; I'm not a big fan of it myself but I'll eat it. I love stir frying, so I want to try that; I used to cook most of my meals in a wok, but that was before I met my pet carnivore.

I'm just overjoyed he's willing to try to watch what he eats. And I don't mean watch it fly from his plate to his mouth! Both of us have, er, blossomed in our six years together, mainly because I don't want to have to cook what would basically be two different meals for us, so I've eaten what he eats. I'd pretty much cut red meat and most fats out of my diet before I met him, but now that seems like all we eat.

Of course, the only reason he's doing this is because he saw a cardiologist earlier this week. It was a pretty good wake-up call. The doc told him that, even though he has frequent chest pain, he's too big to run tests on at any of the Phoenix area hospitals. Their equipment and exam tables are simply not rated to hold him. If he did need surgery, no local surgeon would touch him. As much as he dislikes the notion of changing his diet, he likes the alternative less.

You may want to look at some of the vegetarian diets, or near vegetarian diets. I was on The Rice Diet earlier this year and while I was not overweight, I had some issues and the doctor wanted me to try something for a while that would clense my system.

The Rice Diet book is pretty drastic, but is is pretty simple to follow, I was not hungry, not really happy with the lack of salt, but it did help me feel better and I lost 10 pounds really fast!!!

For years we've had a copy of THE MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK. It is from a vegetarian restaurant. Some interesting receipes in there too.

But I will admit that NONE of these receipes taste as good as a grilled rib eye steak!

B_Skurka said:

But I will admit that NONE of these receipes taste as good as a grilled rib eye steak!

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That's the problem: Jamus agrees with you!

Moosewood is a wonderful cookbook, one of the first popular vegetarian cookbooks, if I remember correctly. I shudder to think what Jamus would say if I tried to feed him something like tofu (although I like it myself.) When I pointed out to him that those little white cubes in hot-and-sour soup are tofu, I thought he was going to gag -- and he wasn't even eating it. I worked at an SDA hospital back in FL, and they didn't serve meat in the cafeteria. In-patients could have it, but that was it. I actually enjoyed "being forced" (as many of my coworkers saw it) to eat vegetarian meals. I've said many times that I'd happily go vegetarian except I'd miss liver too much. Yep, liver! I love the stuff (it's just so-o-o nasty to handle when you're cooking it!)