In Hot Pursuit of Veggies and Fruit

For the past month I have been on a health kick. Or I should say mini-health kick. At least during daylight hours. The evenings are another story, like night & day.

For 18 years I have adhered to a vegetarian diet which sounds healthy enough, but I really don't eat much in the way of fresh foods... raw fresh foods. We prepare pizza once or twice a week, we have 2 or 3 vegetable casseroles in our lineup, and then our veggie burgers with txrad's homemade ketchup, homemade buns, and potatoes he slices for the oven fries. Almost everything we eat in the evening is fried or baked!

Lunch is worse. We often take the easy route on weekdays, when I'm working, and have a microwaved frozen veggie entree. There are clearly worse things we could eat, but there are certainly better things as well. The frozen entrees are pretty expensive considering the portion sizes and the ingredients. And they usually have excess sodium.

I started walking 2 or 3 miles a day on May 18th and the end of today will represent four weeks of walking. If I stick to my plan today I will have walked 70 miles in a month.

This walking regimen has resulted in an increased appetite. I've started boiling up some oatmeal for breakfast and topping it with a sliced banana. The first couple of times I think my body -- specifically my intestinal tract -- went into shock. Without going into detail, let's just say I think my body was asking, "what the hell IS this you're feeding me??"

Now that mind, body, and spirit are all getting along better (oatmeal, banana and gut are all slapping each other on the back going "Hey dude, nice to see ya!"), I'm ready to ratchet things up a notch. I keep hearing about the importance of five servings of fruits and vegetables each day and I'm ready to give that a whirl. Ketchup doesn't count as a veggie in my book. Ketchupgate taught me that. If only cheese counted as a fruit or a vegetable -- life would be grand!

Five servings of raw fruits and veggies is my agenda. Now that I have the banana thing under control, that leaves four to go, and this is not as easy as it seems. It's been so long since I have pondered eating anything raw, I'm having trouble naming five things!

Apples! There's an idea. Now three more! Umm...

Leafy greens! The salad I often crave could easily take care of the remaining three veggies. I just need to add a carrot and... what else?

Oh screw it. I'm too lazy too make a salad every day and I know it.

I have a better idea. All this slicing, dicing and chopping is going to take time. Let's just throw all that stuff in a juicer...carrot, apple, beet, celery, and DRINK it.

So, what's on your plate? Do you get your five servings of fruit and veggies each day?