The Daily Five

I love green smoothies with kale, spinach, celery, cucumber, ginger, and a green apple. This was a fun post to read! Thanks!

Thank you, Cate, for that great post! Being a vegan, I love to read about other people's relationships with vegetables. I am always inspired to do better, as just being a vegan does not mean that one makes the best choices all the time! And Kelly, that smoothie sounds great..I will try it!

Cool! I had never heard of a CSA until now. It really is hard at times to get those 5 a day. I try to just eat what tastes good, but still get a variety. I like feeling like I can easily get 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day without having to sacrifice taste. I make it easy- I add fruit to my cereal or oatmeal in the morning, indulge in drinking fruit juice, use lots of veggies in my stir-fries, and make veggie burgers. A portobello mushroom topped with a sauteed onion and some tomato? Too easy.

Forgot to include my favorites! Definitely strawberries, kiwi, and tomato. Favorite veggies are cooked broccoli, cucumber, and peas.

Great post! I've started frequenting my local orchard/farm which now has organic veggies for sale. Fresher and cheaper than WF.

Great finds. I love farmers' markets!

My favorites include all berries, peas and avocados, you name it. Love your picks, especially the green pearl necklace.

I love fresh vegetables! Awesome post:)

I love your finds!!!

Love your post and love veggies! Can't live without them =D

We I was a child my parents planted trees and vegetables, potato as well. All the summer we ate fresh fruits directly from the trees and berries, we harvested our own potato and onion, and home made conserves during the winter. Now I understand I was the luckiest child in the world. It's incredible how humanity get things complicated - genetically modified aliments and pesticides and other things.... Still now I love all about fruits and vegetables and I ate a lot of everything everyday :) And I try as I can to support local producers.

Fab post, Cate! I am a big fan of sweet potatoes! I eat them baked, mashed, fried & blended into my morning smoothies. They are so delicious & so packed with nutrition. Living in South Carolina means that it is easy to get them fresh from local farmers. Mmmmm!

I'm so lucky, in New Mexico I found out the local farmers accept food stamps. They set up a coupon contour at the market. I hope everyone has access to local fruits and veggies, no matter what there situation is.

I have been enjoying a daily smoothie that I make in my VITAMIX blender, it mostly consists of all organic, mostly local kale, spinach, watercress, parsley, cucumber, celery, apple, pear, nectarine, banana, and the juice of one lemon - I LOVE IT so much, and sometimes I include frozen organic wild blueberries & strawberries - this way, I am getting many servings & it tastes SO GOOD! - plus the energy that I get from it is tremendous!

Oh I LOVE fresh vegetables, and enjoy eating the produce from my friends local farm. The taste of organically grown vegetables is beyond compare!

I can't imagine life without my CSA. We've come along way since the Le Sueur canned peas. Great collection Cate!

If only everyone was happier about eating their veggies - I'm a teacher who battles daily at school lunches - the rule is protein, carbohydrate and 2 veggies (one of which green) - lunchtime can be the hardest part of the school day!

Great selections... Especially I love real orange earrings!

Love this post! I enjoy hearing about others' journeys with considering food from a healthful and environmental perspective. Thanks for sharing yours!

We experimented with straw bale gardening, and despite the ants we actually grew cucumbers and squash. Swiss chard will grow through the winter, and it has to be rinsed & recooked so we were told. Our brussel sprouts are mouth watering. LOVE VEGGIES! This is the best time of year when the temperatures are bearable. Celery lowers blood pressure & it is full of vital supplements. Smoothies sound great...will have to try it out.

We grow some of our own food, and every year the garden gets larger. I just sent our check to the CSA for the fall shares this morning :) I have learned that if I only buy fresh and local, it has to be seasonal, which makes everything interesting and I have also taught myself to do a LOT of water bath canning. Basically, the less we buy at the store (and trying to stay around the perimeter), the better we feel mentally and physically. You can really tell when you have eaten something processed (at a friend's house, for example), because you don't feel so great afterwards... Last Friday, I made beet and ricotta gnocchi with sauteed beet greens (no waste!), and it was awesome!!! I'm loving this time of the year - stocking up on pie pumpkins, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, yum!

My favorite fruits and vegetables are the ones that I grow in my backyard. I had a good crop of eggplant and enjoyed making eggplant parmesan. My freezer is full of green beans and raspberries. Tomatoes eaten within minutes of harvest are the best!

I love fruits and veggies,they are 75% or more of my daily menu! Since 2008 apples are the winners for me, I changed my morning bagel for sliced red apples with a little bit of cinnamon, and since then it's what I have with my coffee and I love it!

What a great article. I can relate to the frozen veggies with butter, can we say boring? We are so lucky to live in the California San Joaquin valley with fresh fruit stands, farmers markets and now restaurants specializing in fresh produce of the valley. We recently had the most incredible seedless purple grapes, crispy thin skins and great flavor.

Great article. I love to grow my own!!

Great collection, it is making me hungry. Yet, you should have a garden, veggies out of the garden are the best!

When I was a little girl,I really liked frozen peas with butter,as well as fresh steamed Brussel sprouts.I still do. One of our friends,her family has a small farm..or big garden,whatever you want to call it!So we get some of our produce from them,and often find vegetables we've never eaten before. I like lettuce,different kinds of squash (including Delica,yellow,sweet meat squash,and zucchini),pumpkin,cabbage,avocados,carrots,beets,potatoes,turnips,cherries,watermelon,and of course lots of other things.Weirdly enough I only like cucumber if it's got the seeds scooped out and doesn't have the skin on it,in salads or with goat cheese.My mom or I can use that part for juicing. I like Delica squash so much I want to make an ice cream recipe out of it.

Great post! I love most vegetables especially caulifower, avocados, cucumber and tomato. Fav fruits are a juicy nectarine, apricot or peach, melons, strawberrys and grapes! Yum!

I love eating local and am so thankful to be surrounded by so many great farms!

I love love love all of your Etsy finds! I too am blessed with lots of local produce and a backyard garden. My current favorite would be our Brandywine heirloom tomatoes that are so tasty!

Eating locally and seasonally is definitely the logical healthy way to do it! Thx!

planted my first successful vegetable garden this year. still picking fresh red peppers for dinner! :)

awesome post! I made my very first acorn squash that had not been pre-peeled and packaged this weekend and it was amazing..and local!

This post is great - love how the collections help along your story! My favorite fruits: bananas; veggies: hmmm I'll say celery, especially when eaten with peanut butter!

Currently smitten with rocket.

I especially like the Popeye image.

Awesome!

This is wonderful, fantastic finds. Thank you. I love that cherry headband, so sparkly and fun. :D

Love your choices - Yes, I too hated veggies when little but now enjoy them - always a challenge to get them into my day though still... but important! thanks for the reminder! ;)

I love raw spinach too! It is nice to substitute raw spinach on BLT's instead of lettuce. LOVE corn on the cob! My parents had a gigantic garden when I was growing up, so I got spoiled on big luscious red tomatoes that had far more flavor than the grocery store ones do. Great post, thanks!

Apples..real ones! ..ant watermelons and tomatoes Yum! This is a really great post idea! =))

Wonderful post -- makes me hungry just reading it!

i lack fruits and veggies in my diet. i suck. =(

I love Kale! I've got kale growing in buckets, tubs, in the ground, in a wheelbarrow and just planted my winter crop in the cold frames. I massage fresh kale with lemon juice, add cucumbers, tomato, and goji berries. a great breakfast salad!

Eating seasonally is great and cheaper too! In Australia you can find oranges from the USA in our supermarkets (now we buy all our produce at Farmers Markets and our local green grocer) Also, big thanks for including my collage illustration as the posts title image :-) Psst... I love all fruit and vegies except for pawpaw.

I love spinach, carrots, and corn. And with fruits I tend to go with granny smith apples, plums, strawberries and blueberries.

I have a difficult relationship with apples, I find them a little boring sometimes but I love soft fruits - cherries, strawberries, blackberries. All so tasty!

I've recently learned how to make my Mum's delicious carrot and potato soup, now I think I've been bitten by the soup bug as I keep researching new recipes to try XD

Great story, Cate!!! I grew up on a vegetable farm so freshly picked, raw veggies were abundant and delicious - there is nothing sweeter to eat than a raw ear of corn while sitting on the back of the wagon traveling back to the Farm Stand with our baskets full. Everything just tastes better standing in the garden rows, picking and eating - peas, stringbeans, a freshly dug potatoe (with the dirt wiped off, of course) :) Yum!

Thanks for this post, Cate. Sorry to say, I don't quite hit the 5 per day goal. :( I want to start experimenting with smoothies. Also, now that our Pennsylvania weather is getting cooler, I'd like to find some savory soup recipes to make.

I too grew up eating canned or frozen veggies and hated them. Started eating salads in my teens and that's still my fav way to eat them. Romaine lettuce and carrots are my favorite veggies, and I eat frozen blueberries and bananas in my oatmeal every morning. I make fruit & veg smoothies frequently. Everything organic and local whenever possible.

We also have a garden here. Nothing like a fresh tomato! Thanks for this post. from Lynne

Fantastic collection! green smoothies have taken a back seat to homemade veg and wild mushroom soups now that the weather is cooler.

Great post! love veggies!

Your from Richmond?! Awesome! (sorry for the random comment, it's just so exciting to see so many people from here popping up on the net :D)

I enjoyed it!

Growing up, I hated veggies too - but my husband and I want to set a good example for our children, so we are learning ways to make them taste amazing so our future babies won't every have to think they are gross!

This couldn't be more timely. I just purchased my first CSA box. I was nervous at first because we always purchase lots of fruits and veggies, but they seem to turn bad within a few days. But the box came like a present on Christmas morning anyway filled with peaches, plums, pears and some other fruit I've never had before along with seasonal veggies. The difference between fruit and vegetables from the local farm and those from the grocer is staggering. They are so much fresher, sweeter and last much longer when you buy them locally. Plus, only 10 percent of food purchased in California is from California! Can you believe that? This shouldn't be so. The more we can purchase locally, the more sustainable our community will be and not to mention you'll benefit with FRESH, long lasting food!

We live in a small apartment so we don't have much room for a garden.. but that is our next step! We want to be able to take it a step further and grow our own food. Especially herbs. And I especially want to start growing the ingredients I use in my soap to minimize our global footprint. We'd also like to have a few chickens... well, I'D like to have a few... I'm still working on convincing my husband who is a very urbaner (is that a word?). :)

I want my little three month old to eventually, unlike his sister, really enjoy the taste of veggies. It's so good to see veggies celebrated!

Have always eaten seasonally....grow some of my own veggies...and now am planting more fruit trees. Love depending on my own ability to grow food.

Great post, but I would have loved to hear some advice on how to eat healthy and fresh fruits and veggies when you live in a cold climate. I live in Alberta, Canada near the Rockies so our growing season is about two months a year. Any suggestions about growing herbs inside or how to can veggies?

Thank you all for your comments and delicious sounding smoothie recipes. Among my favorite fruits and vegetables are peaches, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, asian pears, crisp juicy apples, local tomatoes, arugula, brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, winter squash, asparagus, edemame, parsley, swiss chard, to name a few.

The goodness of seasonal fruits and vegetables cannot be denied. I especially love Jersey corn, tomatoes, and blueberries. Yum! Today I roasted two fresh eggplants and will turn them into a fabulous dip for pita chips by simply peeling, chopping, and adding olive oil, garlic, a chopped tomato, and salt (optional). Yum, yum!

Great finds!

Love it!!

What a fantastic post!!

I too struggle with the 5 a day. I often will make a smoothie to fit them all in!

..oh, except for Peas, of course!

Great reminder to be good to ourselves by taking advantage of what local growers can offer.

As a gardener, I love all these picks! Perfect for some gift ideas for the holidays!

I love kale! I just discovered it this year. Hey, I live in Florida, and we have to import it most of the time! But I also love sugar pumpkins - great for soup and muffins, and seeds! When you eat local, you are most of the time avoiding GMOs, so eat local and eat organic! Love your post!