Spend Just 10 Minutes a Day Chopping Fruits and Veggies

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll make the case for implementing the life changing habit of spending just 10 minutes every day cutting up fruits and vegetables.

Without fail, every New Years, I have some variation on the resolution theme of eating more fruits and vegetables -- either for me individually or for my family.  And every year, I have a couple of weeks of good intentions and then it inevitably goes out the window.  Why?  I like vegetables -- I like fruit.  But why is it so difficult to eat more of them?  What I determined is that I'll happily eat vegetables that are washed, prepared and are sitting out, but since it's such a hassle to cut them up and cook them, I will almost always pick something faster and generally, less healthy.  Almost anything is faster to eat than cutting up a vegetable -- crackers, cheese, leftovers, nuts, etc.  And unfortunately, almost all of those options are less healthy and more caloric.  

So, here is my solution and I swear, this has been game changing for me and my family.  I spend just 10 minutes in the morning cutting up stuff.  I don't plan to eat it then -- I actually can't stand eating fruit for breakfast, but I cut it up and put it out.  Generally, I try to cut up a couple of helpings of fruit (so, a pineapple, cantaloupe, or a couple of plums, peaches, or pears) and a vegetable.  The vegetable can be one that is eaten raw (like carrots, celery, and green peppers) or one that needs to be cooked (like cabbage, sweet potatoes, eggplant, or zucchini).  I don't spend any time cooking during this 10 minutes.  That would probably exceed my time frame anyway, but everything is all chopped up and ready to be cooked later on.  

I think it's safe to say that I may have more flexibility in my schedule than most people do, but surely all of us can find 10 minutes in our hectic schedule if it will make an almost immediate positive impact on our health, right?  After all, we try to set aside time to exercise and that takes WAY more time and energy.  For me, it is part of my morning chores routine.  Every morning, I unload my dishwasher.  Usually, as I'm doing this I listen to late night monologues on YouTube or The Daily podcast from the New York Times.  Once I'm finished unloading, I do my 10 minutes of chopping -- but you could fit this into your morning routine.  I find it best to chop in the morning so that when everyone gets home from work and school, there are healthy options for snacking.  For example, here is what I chopped this morning.  You can see the pineapple is almost gone -- I put out toothpicks as well for fruits like this.  Although people could theoretically eat the cauliflower raw, I'm planning to roast the cauliflower and cabbage tonight, so it's easy to just toss in some oil, season, and pop in the oven.  So, that brings me to the benefits of this 10 minutes of chopping practice.  First, 

Easier Healthy Choices

This is the biggy.  It is always easier to grab a handful of crackers, a pack of chips, or a cube of cheese than to cut up something healthier.  But what if the cutting was already done?  What if you could just as easily pop a couple of strawberries in your mouth as anything else.  AND because the fruit is out on the counter and accessible, it's easier and faster than even the quickest of junk food options.  This has made ALL the difference in my family on what people choose for snacks.  There is a huge contrast between the days I cut up fruit and the days that I don't get around to it.  If it's cut up, it gets eaten, if not, it doesn't -- simple as that.  The next benefit is that you can get a

Head start on dinner

I don't know about you, but I tend to spend a lot of energy on the main course for dinner and very little energy on the sides.  As a result, my vegetable sides tend to be whatever is easiest -- bag salads, pre-cut green beans, frozen peas, etc.  I like a wide range of vegetables, but by the time I'm thinking about making them, it would take too long between chopping them up and actually cooking them.  But because of my new chopping habit, we can have a much wider variety of vegetable side dishes.  Once I finish cutting up fruit, I use whatever time I have left over to cut up any other veggies in the refrigerator.  Then when I'm making dinner, it's quick and easy to saute or roast them since the cleaning and chopping is already done.  I can pop a tray of vegetables into the oven before I start on the main dish and have beautifully roasted vegetables by the time I'm finished.  I'll talk a little more about how I cook vegetables in a minute.  But finally, the third benefit is that you consistently will 

Use Your Produce Before it Goes Bad

I have never been someone who uses everything in my fridge before it goes bad, but now I am!  Thanks entirely to this new practice.  You can get a lot of fruits and veggies chopped in 10 minutes.  Think about doing this every day and you start to get a sense of how much produce you can prepare.  If I run out before my next grocery shopping run, I don't even care -- after all, that means we have consumed all of that produce as a family.  I will also do things like buy a head of cabbage not knowing quite what I'm going to do with it, but once it's chopped, you feel like you need to prepare it either that night or the next before it dries out, so I figure something out!  It's amazing, I use apples before they get to that shriveled dry phase, I use cauliflower before it grows mold, and I am pretty good about cutting up pineapple before it has brown spots everywhere.  There are definitely still times when I catch something a little too late, but they are far fewer now.  In addition, you start to get a sense of what you need to chop up earlier in the week and what you can leave for later.  I always prepare strawberries right after I buy them, but I can leave carrots and apples for weeks.  It's extremely satisfying to use up all of your produce.

So, we've covered the benefits -- you eat healthier, you cut down preparation time for dinner, and you save money because your produce doesn't go bad.  Let me just quickly tell you my go-to methods for preparing vegetables.  First of all, we like to have raw vegetables to eat with a dip of some kind.  So, that's like celery, carrots, green peppers, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, etc.  I always keep a batch of bean dip in the fridge for dipping.  Because it is used to consume vegetables, I will sometimes use my 10 minutes of prep time to make bean dip, which takes about 5 minutes.  In addition, I can also use the time to make our family favorite salad dressing, since it's used for everything from marinading, to roasting, to tossing with steamed veggies, to -- well, just dressing salad.  We always have that prepared and in the fridge also.  For cooked vegetables, I like to steam them in the microwave (that's for broccoli, acorn squash, green beans), roast them at 400 degrees, or saute them in either a homemade stirfry sauce or just olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  My latest favorite way to cook vegetables is in the air fryer.  They crisp up nicely and taste great with just a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.  

And that's it.  I hope you give it a try and let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!