Ever since I publicly recommitted myself to eating more fruits and vegetables, I will not lie: every day has been a struggle. Every damned day. I dutifully load up at the grocery store, spending at least half my grocery dollars on beautiful tender leaves of lettuce and baby spinach, gorgeous apples, perfectly phallic bananas, and then in the morning, I rush out the door, leaving them behind to wonder what they ever did wrong. Poor lovely strawberries and raspberries, they do not deserve to turn into emaciated carapaces of mold and rot slurry in my refrigerator.

I've been relying on the tricks of my hippie mother, recently, to get in my veg load. Just like Anne's memories of her mom's tuna salad, I have fond memories of "sunflower trees." You see, one of the guaranteed ways to get my sister and I to grab a piece of raw broccoli or carrot stick was to set out some kind of light yogurt-based dip and then also, shelled sunflower seeds. The sunflower seeds will stick to the dip, which sticks to the veggie. The artful nature of the process, the lovely illusion of a tiny little broccoli tree, covered in snow and then dotted with little nuggets, it's practically impossible for a kid to resist. It's impossible for a 36-year-old to resist! The salty, the creamy, the crunchy, it's pretty delicious and doesn't even seem like it should be good for you. And also? Pretty filling stuff. Amazingly enough, I've found that I will still gobble through my stock of veggies/dip/seeds and then bemoan that I had eaten every last cruciferous stalk.

But there are only so many crudité you can devour before you start to yearn for a little more.

I had a major craving for a broccoli salad that I've often picked up for a quick lunch for $5.99 a pound at the deli: an addictive sweet and sour white dressing over broccoli (and sometimes cauliflower), paired with bacon and sometimes cheese, raisins and those delicious sunflower seeds. I searched for the components and found that it is totally even easier than I thought, and I had every single thing in my pantry and veggie drawer. Seriously, salad dressing or mayonaise (or veganaise), a little sweetener and some red wine vinegar!

I grabbed some fat free Miracle Whip, the sugar cannister and figured that rice wine vinegar would work as well as red wine vinegar (which I had just the last few drops as part of the holy trifecta of Thomas Keller's amazing Bouchon house dressing, which is necessary for my enjoyment of mixed greens). I whisked, I spritzed and then, with hope in my heart, I dipped a cautious finger and tasted. BLECH!  Super bad, way too sweet, like someone tried to make Miracle Whip into Cool Whip. Okay, a lot of the recipes on the Internet said that the salad had to chill for at least four hours, so maybe there was a magical chemical reaction that would happen when the dressing hit the broccoli? One could only hope.

I chopped up enough florets to fill the bowl, quickly diced up a tiny bit of red onion, tossed, covered and then threw it into the fridge and forgot about it. The next day, I checked it: things had definitely happened. The raw broccoli had wilted somewhat, getting a little tender, and the whole think looked a lot more like the stuff that the church ladies tote to their quilting bees. I crisped up some bacon and tossed with a little shredded cheddar and some golden raisins, then dished up a bowl as a snack before dinner. Except... wow. Delicious! I had to stop myself at the fourth serving, for fear of nasty broccoli farts the next day, and was way too full for dinner. And the amazing thing is that at only a tablespoon of sugar in the entire thing, you could easily tweak the recipe to be low carb or totally carb free. And of course, with some easy substitutions, the recipe can be totally veganized too.

I think my raw vegetable quota just got a lot easier to meet. It just confirms: the potluck ladies know all the best tricks.