[Godsend2290]

My biggest issue is that I eat out too often and have no experience with how to cook. Simple things like spaghetti and grilled foods I can handle, but I'm looking for ways in which to cook vegetables to make them more enjoyable, and recipes which aren't too complicated but will still fire up my taste buds. I'm looking to lose some weight, roughly fifteen to twenty pounds, and cutting fast food out is top priority. So help me out if you can, I would really appreciate it.

[Vasili]

You could try stir fry's I guess, very easy to do apparently but I guess the best way to eat veg is entirely up to your palette; do you like to eat soft or crunchy things? Do you like to roast stuff? Salads? Risotto? Soups? What kind of foods do you enjoy and eat besides fast food? What foods did you grow up eating as a child?

Here's a list of stuff I guess you'd like for veg;

Carrots (sweet, good with just about everything)
Peppers (spicy, depends on type, usually used in a lot of food such as Mexican or Italian)
Onions (a must in a cooking perspective),
Garlic (also a basic must),
Leeks (Onion flavour, great for soups),
Peas (sweet, great with red meats),
Cabbage (nice when wilted, you can make cabbage wraps with them),
Spinach (very good for you, great on the side or as a salad or even in a risotto)
Rocket (another leafy veg which is very good for you)
Potato (actually not bad for you as long as you avoid frying, baking or mashing would be fine)
Peanuts (unsalted and not cooked in oil, try adding them to stir fry's or other asian dishes)
Lentils (great side dish with meat, they're very universal and can add a lot of things to them)
Beans (most types really, just make sure not to eat baked beans if you want to lose weight)
Celery (a must in a lot of sauces, you lose more calories than consuming it)
Parsnips (a lovely sweet vegetable when roasted)
Parsley (commonly used for decoration but has great flavour)
Chives (add to eggs or potato dishes, got a nice onion flavour).

I recommend you look for spices, veg is always made better when you add seasoning to it like pure basic salt and pepper or even something a bit more exotic like paprika/cumin etc. Its difficult to write you out a menu when we have no idea what foods you like, at this rate you might as well just google dishes.

[Apache249]

From what I heard, the celery loss in calories comes from the energy spent chewing the celery versus the caloric content of the celery, not from the celery itself. Therefore, putting it in a sauce, presumably pureed will not yield the supposed negative caloric content of celery.

[Vasili]

It won't be actually adding anything either, making a soup from cerely and celeriac is basically fat free (besides the butter/olive oil you use to cook the veg).

soups are a very good if you're looking to cut down eating, they keep you full for longer.

[Godsend2290]

Yeah I have never been too big of a fan of soups but for the sake of a better diet I'm willing to make a sacrifice, not to mention that the ones I've had were always just canned soups. I love salads, and steamed veggies, but prefer crunch to anything else when it comes to the way a vegetable is prepared.

[Fortesqueh]

Another good thing about soups is that you can make a big batch and eat it for several days.

Heck, when my mother did hers the taste got better each time we heated it.

[The First 11'er]

spices really help when it comes to vegetable because they drown out the shit tastes and bring out those wonderful delicious tastes

be sure to use a lot of spices and mix it up else you'll quit fairly soon