Produce Power... Are You Eating Your Freggies?

Adding color to my meals with fruits and vegetables, aka freggies, is easy for me. I am a volume eater and regularly rely on things like spinach, kale, and a variety of lettuces to add bulk to my salads... and I adore raw, crunchy veggies like cucumbers, carrots, zucchini, bell peppers, jicama, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, and so on.

I also like vegetables that are lightly steamed or gently stirfried al dente.

When I was a kid I didn't think I liked any cooked veggies other than peas, corn and carrots.  My Mother, bless her, overcooked everything and I didn't know that broccoli and brussel sprouts were not supposed to be limp and grey-green and mushy!

As a young adult, cooking and fending for myself, I learned to eat a wider variety of veggies, first by eating them raw, and then learning to steam or poach or roast them.... this is true of mushrooms, asparagus, tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, beets, parsnips, and even brussel sprouts.

I have always loved apples and bananas and pears... and I have added kiwis, grapes, oranges, and peaches to that list, too... oh, and all kinds of berries.

It was a fun and boisterous meeting. There were lots of ideas floating around about how to get our family members who are veggie-phobic to eat more of them and to try new ones.

One of the things that I enjoy, with some of my online  buddies from across Canada, is to play what we call the Rainbow Game.  We challenge each other to have at least one fruit or vegetable from each of the colors of the rainbow, over the course of the day.

Why, yes, in case you are wondering, red wine does count!

We also change it up sometimes by placing our focus on a particular color.  For instance on a green day,  I might have spinach and peppers in my morning omelet, kale chips at lunch, edamame for my afternoon snack, and broccoli at dinner... you get the idea.


I am so excited that we have decided to plant some vegetables and herbs in the containers that we bought for our balcony at the apartment..  I used to have a big garden when we lived in a house, before we moved onto the boat, and loved to grow my own herbs and veggies.  We also had apple trees and hazelnut trees in the yard. And even on the boat, I grew basil in the summer in a pot in the cockpit, and also sprouts in jars.

Do you like freggies?  What are you favorites?

Do you have fruit or nut  trees, or grow any herbs or vegetables?

Do you grow sprouts?

Other than tomatoes, which I have definitely decided on, any advice for me about what food plants grow well in container gardens?