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Easy Side Dish Recipes for a Well Balanced Dinner
Easy side dish recipes help you create a perfectly balanced dinner for the family. Without sides of fruits, vegetables, and starches, your meal is seriously missing essential nutrients that the body needs to stay healthy.
Dinner is the most important meal of the day because you tend to complete all of the missing pieces to the healthy food pyramid. For people on the go, which is most of us, breakfast and lunch are quick, not so healthy meals. To make up for this, we can load dinner up with healthy sides to complete the pyramid.
A dinner side should complement the main course with flavor, color, and complete the rest of the food pyramid. Main courses usually have lots of protein, sodium, fats and iron, but your body also needs three to five servings of vegetables and fruits.
There are several food items you can use as side dishes for dinner. They can usually be raw or cooked and should be served with every main meal of the day. Sides are easy because you have many options to choose from when selecting them to go with your meal.
Dinner Side Options
I categorize side dish foods differently than basic salads and appetizers because they are usually more filling and are traditionally served with the main course, not before hand. With this, you have many options to choose from which makes it easy for you as a cook to put everything together.
Easy side dish recipes include things such as vegetables, fruits, starches, or a combination of these foods. They can be as simple as you want to make them.
Fruits and vegetables give the body other essential vitamins that your body needs that don't come from meats or starches.
You can do a lot of things with fruits and vegetables to make them taste better and there are hundreds of different combinations you can use to make dinner fun and exciting for your family or guests.
Easy Side Dish Recipes for Dinner
The following side dish recipes are my favorite to serve with dinner. Most ingredients can already be found in your cupboards or the refrigerator so you shouldn't have a problem adding these to your meals.
Recipe for Potato Salad
If you have easy side dish recipes you'd like to share, please contact me and I will consider adding it to the site. Sides dishes are very important and should be included with all of your main course meals. Use this opportunity to complete the food pyramid for everyone.