I know in the summer people say they eat lighter than in the winter because of the fresh produce and sunshine and blah blah but for me, it's harder to eat healthy because of all the fun. Barbecues! Drinking outside! Baseball games! However, for some reason I've been on a good roll lately thanks in part to the following three healthyish things I've been eating a lot of lately that don't make me sad due to the extreme health of it all. Bear in mind this is not all I'm eating. But I'm a big believer in eating healthy so you can eat unhealthy (see my thoughts on food-chaperones here) and these have been figuring heavily into my rotation of late:

Scrambled eggs with broccoli

I attend boot camp once or twice a week at my gym (a title the gym came up with, which is a caveat I put forth because I mentioned "boot camp" once on Facebook and an actual veteran took exception to me acting like I apparently felt I was on the same level as real people in the military). Our teacher asked us all what we ate for breakfast (oatmeal for me) and informed us that the only right person was the guy who said "bacon and eggs." "Eat eggs for a week and it will transform your life," our instructor proclaimed. I like a challenge so I went for it and I've been eating eggs now for a month and still haven't gotten sick of them. Do I feel as though my life has been transformed? Not per se but I think I am a bit leaner and feel more satisfied taking a couple extra minutes to actually cook something in the morning. For awhile it was just plain scrambled or hardboiled eggs which was bringing me down. However,  we had some extra cut-up broccoli laying around from a party and I realized it goes great with the eggs--even though "eggs and broccoli" sounds so healthy, it's not soul-crushing like that egg white omelet you get at brunch when you really want pancakes.  I cut the broccoli into tiny little pieces and saute it in some Pam for a few minutes until it's bright green and gets a little nutty smell. Then I add a couple of beaten eggs--the heat is a little bit higher than what you're supposed to cook eggs at but I think that works here because if they're too soft I feel like the water from the vegetables stays in the pan and everything is limp and you get a smaller serving size. I like rather robustly cooked eggs here.

Roasted tomato soup

Sometimes this is my mealtime vegetable side, sometimes it's the main attraction. I make this for weeks until I can't stand it anymore. It works with storebought tomatoes but is much better (or I feel much more virtuous, anyway) with farmer's market. I buy several pounds' worth in a bunch of different varieties (heirloom, plum, cherry) and bring them home. I line a couple of pans with tinfoil (because I hate washing cooking sheets) and halve the big tomatoes--I don't deal with the small ones, they're fine on their own. I drizzle some olive oil on there, poke them around, add kosher salt and pepper and roast at 350 for 45 minutes. For the last 15 minutes I also put in a small pan with about eight garlic cloves, also drizzled in olive oil, so those get roasted too--one of the original recipes I adapted this from advised roasting the garlic with the tomatoes the whole time but I always end up with garlic briquettes by that point. I dump all the tomatoes in a pot and if I am patient (which I rarely am so my fingers get burnt a lot), let the garlic cloves cool before snipping off the ends and squeezing the roasted garlic and the garlicky olive oil into the pan. I add some chicken broth (about 4-6 cups; use veggie broth or water if you're a vegetarian. Or nothing at all!) and some basil and blend it all together with my immersion blender. I add more salt as necessary and then eat it for a week. Right now I like it with shaved pecorino romano because that's what we have (shaved is better than grated because then you get nice big melty hunks with your spoonfuls.) I used to make two versions of this soup from two different recipes until I realized that I liked different parts of each recipe plus it's the kind of "recipe" that doesn't really need any exactness. A few times I have been out of chicken stock and so made some chicken soup in an envelope and added that instead.

Carrots and peanut butter

You know how you eat peanut butter and celery and think "This peanut butter would be so much better if I didn't have to go through the living hell of eating the hard straw that is celery?" Here. Now you can eat peanut butter and a vegetable and not deal with celery. I know it sounds crazy but it works. It makes sense once you give it a try--the peanut butter makes you realize that carrots are actually sweet and compliment the salt. I don't like my carrots to be too wet and slippery for this so sometimes I do this:

where I cut the ends off a bag of baby carrots and let it drain into the sink. Don't let it fall into a pot of dirty water though the way I always do.

There you go. Now that you've eaten some healthy things you can feel good and go get some ice cream. What's been your healthy food jam of late?