Crunchy and Delicious, Colorful and Nutritious: Words to Eat By

If you’ve ever been in the kitchen with me, you will have heard me chant this phrase if I am trying to come up with a meal or I am particularly satisfied with how one turns out. Crunchy and Delicious, Colorful and Nutritious. These are the four words I tend to judge food by. Let me break them down.

Crunchy

Fruit and veg kept in its rawest, most natural state retains the most vitamins and minerals. ie. Don’t boil your veg to smithereens. Sauté it, steam it bake it, blanche it….or chop it up and eat it ‘as is’ for maximum nutritional benefit.  

Delicious

Obviously, you want food to taste good. Don’t skimp on flavour! Enhance it with a touch of seasoning, find flavours that complement one another…my favourite resource for this is Niki Segnit’s Flavour Thesaurus, in which she pairs two flavours together. Sometimes obvious and well-loved, like basil and tomato, sometimes more exotic and inspiring like cumin and cucumber. 

Colourful

Having a wide variety of colour on your plate often means that you are eating a wide range of vitamins and minerals. Dark greens like spinach, kale and broccoli have E,B, K, iron and calcium. Oranges, sweet potatoes, cantaloupes and carrots have A and C. Variety is the spice of life, friends, and the more the merrier. For quite an extensive list of food by colour, click here.  

Nutritious

Try and get most of the food groups on your plate…protein, carbohydrate, fiber, (good!) fats, minerals, and vitamins. Proportion is key here. For example, you do not want equal parts fats and vitamins. I find the Eatwell plate by the FSA helpful.

So there you have it, my catchy phrase to help you plan and judge your meals. Just remember: Crunchy and Delicious, Colourful and Nutritious! (Or as I like to abbreviate it: CDCN!)   

A recent CDCN meal

Scrumptious!