Yummy Vegetable Tray Ideas

By Andrada Plaiderai 

Not once did I hear that vegetables are destined to accompany the meat, the eggs or at least the cheese on your plate. Many ask themselves with disarming sincerity: How can I have a meal without meat? Is that a real meal? Well, vegetable servings can substitute meat, eggs and dairy with great success and will also provide the necessary nutrients for your well-being.

But what about the taste, you may ask. It is very important to have your meal taste really good, so you will feel happy and satisfied with your choice. Let's see how to accomplish this goal.

1. Choose the vegetables with care, so you will have fresh and pleasant smelling products to work with. When you buy any fresh veggies from the market smell and feel them, look closely to their color and avoid anything that seems lifeless or treated with preservatives to endure more. Remember that you will cut it anyway, so you don't need the pepper to look huge, perfect and shiny. The smell will tell you more about the taste of any vegetable. It has to be fresh and strong.

2. Combine different textures. Your taste buds react better if you give them different sizes and textures to work with. Cut some in small slices or bigger chunks, grate or blend others, it really does not matter how you decide to prepare them, if they are mixing tastes and textures to your liking. An example that works for me is to cut small slices of onion, bigger ones of red pepper, grate the carrots and cabbages, chop some garlic and mushrooms and blend some hot pepper with different spices and olive oil. I love to mix all these and spread them on a plate with sliced leaves of lettuce.

3. Always remember the sprouts. In order to really top any meat plate use sprouts to enrich your vegetable serving. These tiny plants are so concentrated in nutrients and flavor that will just blow your mind. Think of them as little bombs of vitamin and micro nutrients that will explode in your mouth and take the vegetable meal to another level altogether. The secret with sprouts is to use more of the mild tasting ones like lettuce, sunflower, broccoli and less of the spicy ones like oregano, onion, leek, mustard and others.

A very important thing to remember with vegetable trays is that you need to eat them fresh. Unlike cooked food, if you let them stay more than a few hours they will lose their taste, nutrients and may even become toxic for you.