easy ways to eat more greens

plus a salad dressing guide (and my store-bought faves)

Candy canes, hot cocoa, so. many. cookies… if your house is anything like mine, sugary treats are ubiquitous right now. And I’m fully embracing it. ‘Tis the season! I’m also relying heavily on simple side salads, sautéed greens, and fistfuls of spinach snuck into absolutely every meal possible to give my gut microbes a fighting chance and to keep my mood merry amidst all the sugar.

I’ve discussed this before, but in 2020, I ghost wrote the recipes for a cookbook called Eat To Beat Depression and Anxiety. The author, Dr. Drew Ramsey, is a leader in the field of nutritional psychiatry, which incorporates evidence-based nutrition into psychiatry treatments. Put simply: nutritional psychiatry is the practice of using food to help support and improve people’s mental health. One of my top takeaways from working on that project was to make leafy greens a priority in my diet every single day — especially dark leafy greens like spinach, kale, and Swiss chard, which are particularly nutrient rich and fiber dense.

In case you too could use some good mood food in your life right now, here are some easy — and delicious — ways to eat more greens this month and beyond.

Whenever possible, I add a few handfuls of chopped fresh spinach, kale, collard greens, or Swiss chard to any hot meal I’m cooking, even if the recipe doesn’t call for it. Soups and stews, one-pot rice dishes, pasta sauces — dark leafy greens can wilt right in. Add them toward the end of cooking; they just need two minutes or so to wilt. Before you ask, I personally don’t use frozen spinach — I just don’t love the taste! But if you do, you can definitely use that instead.

PS, it’s not a hot meal, but you could also of course blend a few handfuls of spinach (or kale, but I find that spinach blends more easily) into a smoothie!

If you’re craving a quick hit of something green and warm, here’s my go-to technique for cooking delicious sautéed greens using whatever dark leafy green I have in the fridge.

Warm 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil over medium-high heat in a really large skillet. Working in batches, add 5 cups of greens (chopped if they’re large greens like Swiss chard or kale; whole if they’re small like spinach). Once the first batch wilts enough to give you more space, add more. Repeat until it’s all in there. Once fully wilted, scooch the greens aside and add 1 more tablespoon of oil and 3 thinly sliced garlic cloves. Sauté the garlic for 30 seconds, then stir it in with the greens.

Pour off any excess liquid in your skillet. Stir in a big squeeze of lemon juice or any vinegar (I love balsamic-y greens), a big pinch of salt, a little pepper. Yum.

I find that when my fridge is stocked with a really tasty homemade dressing, I’m more inclined to add a side salad to a meal (or just eat one for a snack!), because I don’t want to let it go to waste. And also because it’s delicious. If I have some good salad toppings available — nuts/seeds, shredded cheese, fruit, and/or extra veggies — I’ll add them to the mix, but a lot of times I just take any dark leafy green (kale and arugula are my faves) or crisp lettuce I have, toss it with a great dressing, and dig in.

Here are 10 recipes for our favorite salad dressings from the What To Cook archives. Print this guide off and keep it with your cookbooks, or stick it on your fridge!