Since you say you’re prickly about advice, I will try just giving you the reasons for my suggestions and omit the actual suggestions when possible. Please let me know if that way of phrasing is actually helpful, or just annoyingly indirect.
Actually helpful. :)
I find I buy more vegetables when I am somewhere that sells primarily vegetables, like a farmer’s market.
There is a farmer’s market here, but it’s hard for me to get to—I don’t drive, and it’s on the other side of town. I will definitely see about getting a ride over there sometime soon, though—I’d actually forgotten that it’s that time of the year again. (Om nom nom blueberries. ^.^)
Some friends of mine subscribe to CSA or other vegetable-delivery programs, which takes pretty much all of the effort out of it.
Last I checked (over a year ago), there wasn’t one of those close enough to deliver to me. Also my impression is that they don’t allow their customers to customize their orders very much. I should probably check again, though, anyway.
I found that roasting works for me as a way of preparing solo vegetables...
I’ll consult Google about this later.
...smooth or fine-textured soup...
This would be hit or miss—there’s a very high chance that any soup like that would smell like not-food. (Cream of broccoli soup is one of the contexts in which broccoli smells like not-food, if I remember correctly.)
...sandwich...
The problem with this is that most traditional sandwich veggies have a short enough shelf life that it’d be silly for me to buy them—they’d go bad before I remembered to use them. Experimenting with non-traditional sandwich veggies might be useful, though.
Vegetables are more easily visually identifiable in some foods than others. Do you find you eat around the veggies to a different extent in foods that differ along this dimension, or is it a pretty uniform phenomenon?
It can, though soup isn’t a good test case—if I know that there are veggies in soup, I’ll make a point of identifying any chunks of things before I eat them, and if I don’t know that there are veggies in the soup, I’ll notice in pretty short order in most cases. What does work is things like casseroles where there aren’t obvious chunks at all—and especially if it’s not obvious in the construction phase of the casserole that something non-food-ish is being added. Casserole is one of the few contexts where I’ll eat mushrooms, for example—they’re usually clearly not food, but one of my favorite casseroles involves canned cream of mushroom soup, which is fine so long as I don’t think about it too hard, even if I end up finding a mushroom chunk or two, because nothing that looks like mushrooms goes into it.
You may be out of CSA range, but if you’re willing to forgo freshness Amazon.com now lets you subscribe to consumable items like this and receive them on a regular basis, for a 15% discount.
The problem with this is that most traditional sandwich veggies have a short enough shelf life that it’d be silly for me to buy them—they’d go bad before I remembered to use them
Insofar as remembering is important, this might be relevant: I’m experimenting with actually writing up menus for myself in advance. So far it seems to be helping me remember to use up all my vegetables.
There are also veggie-intensive sandwiches. I don’t think it would take very many hummus and cucumber sandwiches to use up a small cucumber, for example. A whole red pepper can probably be used up by 2 sandwiches, especially when roasted. Same with avocado (minus the roasting). And wraps can materially increase the veggie-to-bread ratio; you could probably use a whole avocado in a single wrap.
Actually helpful. :)
There is a farmer’s market here, but it’s hard for me to get to—I don’t drive, and it’s on the other side of town. I will definitely see about getting a ride over there sometime soon, though—I’d actually forgotten that it’s that time of the year again. (Om nom nom blueberries. ^.^)
Last I checked (over a year ago), there wasn’t one of those close enough to deliver to me. Also my impression is that they don’t allow their customers to customize their orders very much. I should probably check again, though, anyway.
I’ll consult Google about this later.
This would be hit or miss—there’s a very high chance that any soup like that would smell like not-food. (Cream of broccoli soup is one of the contexts in which broccoli smells like not-food, if I remember correctly.)
The problem with this is that most traditional sandwich veggies have a short enough shelf life that it’d be silly for me to buy them—they’d go bad before I remembered to use them. Experimenting with non-traditional sandwich veggies might be useful, though.
It can, though soup isn’t a good test case—if I know that there are veggies in soup, I’ll make a point of identifying any chunks of things before I eat them, and if I don’t know that there are veggies in the soup, I’ll notice in pretty short order in most cases. What does work is things like casseroles where there aren’t obvious chunks at all—and especially if it’s not obvious in the construction phase of the casserole that something non-food-ish is being added. Casserole is one of the few contexts where I’ll eat mushrooms, for example—they’re usually clearly not food, but one of my favorite casseroles involves canned cream of mushroom soup, which is fine so long as I don’t think about it too hard, even if I end up finding a mushroom chunk or two, because nothing that looks like mushrooms goes into it.
You may be out of CSA range, but if you’re willing to forgo freshness Amazon.com now lets you subscribe to consumable items like this and receive them on a regular basis, for a 15% discount.
Insofar as remembering is important, this might be relevant: I’m experimenting with actually writing up menus for myself in advance. So far it seems to be helping me remember to use up all my vegetables.
There are also veggie-intensive sandwiches. I don’t think it would take very many hummus and cucumber sandwiches to use up a small cucumber, for example. A whole red pepper can probably be used up by 2 sandwiches, especially when roasted. Same with avocado (minus the roasting). And wraps can materially increase the veggie-to-bread ratio; you could probably use a whole avocado in a single wrap.