Two (Surprisingly) Nutritious Foods

You may not think of watermelons and mushrooms as being fruits and vegetables that are superior in nutrition or healthfulness.

Probably you think of watermelon as being mostly water (duh!), and the same for mushrooms. But it happens that both of these foods are packed with vitamins and healthful phytochemicals (plant-based substances that are very good for the human body), and I have read or heard more than one source recommend including more of them in our diets. So I have been trying to follow the recommendations and eat more of both of these. I like them, and I'm trying to remember to buy them when I go shopping. As to watermelon, there's this consideration for me: being a one-person household, I don't want to buy whole watermelons; and individual slices for sale in the supermarket seem to be a very poor buy.

As to mushrooms, I have several ways in which I like to prepare them (not into raw vegetables as a rule). It seems to me that there are two varieties of the common white button mushroom that most Americans think of first when we think of "mushroom": the ones that you ordinarily see in supermarkets, packaged in a half-pound package (don't ever buy the already-sliced ones because once they're sliced, they lose nutrition); and those sold in bulk.

The packaged ones are of a very uniform, medium size, and stay very nicely white in your refrigerator for days. I personally prefer to buy bulk mushrooms at the produce store. They are not so uniform in size and may be larger; and they begin to turn brown a day or two after you get them home. But I like their cooking quality. They genuinely brown as you are sautéeing them, whereas the smaller, whiter ones don't. And I think they might be tastier.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein