I’ve been trying to get more veggies into my life. Katelyn, my health coach, really emphasized that you should be eating vegetables that YOU LIKE and not just vegetables that “you think you have to eat”. This is an important distinction! If you eat stuff you don’t really love (or like), you get unsatisfied, sad, bummed out, and then you just eat a bunch of junk to make up for it since you didn’t really eat what you wanted to eat.
For instance, I think lettuce is overrated and weird and I don’t really like it (I’m looking at you, iceberg lettuce), so usually I’ll have baby spinach or some other kind of mix of leafy greens with a tasty homemade dressing.
That’s a big thing that I’ve learned in my food journey – eat what I want to eat! Just make sure to add some vegetables to that plate! We’re really focused on adding to my plate, instead of restricting so that I have more “food freedom”. And I really find that I get filled up on the vegetables and good stuff and while I’ll still have some dessert, I tend to have less of it since I get full faster. It’s kind of amazing.
It was breakfast club at work this past week and I wanted to make something with vegetables in it. I stumbled upon a recipe for “Savory Carrot + Zucchini Pancakes” and I thought, “Would that actually be tasty? Let’s try it!”
Holy cow. The savory vegetable pancakes were super tasty! I like how light and fluffy they turned out and you can’t really taste all the vegetables in it so I feel this would be a good “sneaky vegetable” dish for someone who is either a) trying to get more vegetables into their life or b) thinks they don’t really like vegetables.
The recipe I used said to use “pancake batter” which left a lot open to interpretation. I used my go-to Fluffy Pancake recipe and just left the sugar out and added in the veggies (plus a lot of garlic).
I remember I told Jake about these savory vegetable pancakes and he was super skeptical and said “I don’t know if anyone else would want to eat those” but he was wrong because people totally had seconds. YESSSS.
I had a few leftover so I could enjoy them again for breakfast today! I just added a scrambled egg with green onions and grapes on the side of my savory vegetable pancake. It was delicious. These are super versatile, too. You could easy swap these out for different vegetables, add in some fresh herbs (chives? parsley? thyme?) and top it with different sauces to make it your own. Make these and get more yummy vegetables into your life!
Savory Vegetable Pancakes
¾ cup milk
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1 egg
2 tablespoons of butter, melted
3 medium carrots, grated
1 zucchini, grated
1 stalk of green onions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
Combine milk and vinegar in a bowl. Let it hang out for 5 minutes to “sour”.
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and pepper into a large mixing bowl. Whisk egg and melted butter into the “soured” milk. Pour the milk/egg mixture into the flour mixture and whisk to combine and lumps are gone.
Add grated carrots, grated zucchini, green onions, and garlic to the mix. Mix until the vegetables are coated in the batter.
Heat up a large skillet over medium heat and coat the skillet with your choice of cooking spray, butter, coconut oil, etc. Scoop about ¼ cup of batter into the skillet and cook for about 3-4 minutes. Check that the other side has turned golden brown and then flip. Cook until browned on the other side.
Sprinkle pancakes with finishing salt. Serve warm with a dollop of sour cream.
These keep pretty well and can be heated up again in the toaster oven!
This recipe makes about 12 pancakes.
