Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Deceptively Delicious

My mother in law recently gave this book to me and I was excited to try it.  I had wanted to do some "sneaky chef" type stuff because my kids, especially my three year old, hates almost all vegetables.  It's hard enough to get them on the table sometimes in an appetizing way- even for Eric and I- not to mention getting the kids to actually eat them! So, I hoping this will get us all eating more of what we should be eating.

According to Jessica Seinfeld, the first step to deceiving your way to a healthy, kid friendly meal, is to make all the vegetables ahead of time and freeze them in 1/2 cup portions.  Never having actually tried any of these recipes, I bought $40.00 worth of vegetables and spent the afternoon steaming, roasting, and pureeing twenty-some bags of vegetables.  Later on I thought, gee, maybe I should have just done a couple bags and tried the recipes to see if they actually worked... But no, I'm an all or nothin' kind of girl!

For dinner, I made flat bread pizzas. The secret ingredient: pureed spinach. The verdict: EXCELLENT! This one's a success for us! I especially loved that I could put  anchovies and olives on my individual pizza without hearing, "my slice tastes fishy- gross!!".  It was probably the easiest recipe in the book, but I took pride as my son (after trying to scrap off the spinach) told me it was a very good pizza.  Of course, we had to reassure him that the green stuff was just part of the sauce and it doesn't taste like anything (not a lie).  After a bit of wining, he finally took a few bites and had to agree it was good- despite the appearance of green bits in the sauce.  I hoping the chicken nuggets I am making tomorrow have the same effect. They are made with pureed sweet potato! I will fill you in on the progress of the twenty-some meals I will be making with the secret ingredients in my freezer ;)

3 comments:

Megan said...

My sister gave me that book last year. Maybe I'll dust it off and pick up some veggies this weekend.... and I'll do it the same way...all or nothin. Keep me posted on what other recipe were liked

Allison said...

Our son went to the country's only Nutritional Sciences Preschool and as a result, never had a problem with veggies with either boy. They loooove raw spinach, raw beans etc. Unbelievable.

One thing they taught us was that children love to play with food. So...they love to dip food in things, they love it if you make shapes of the food (like a smiley face on a pizza etc.) You can put different veggies and dips in an ice cube tray, for example, and set it out for them to nibble on.

Sounds like a great book!

Mandy said...

Kudos to you for trying this! I bought this book...but never even got around to pureeing the veggies before I sold the book. It's a lot of work to hide those veggies!!! But if the recipes are tasty, it's totally worth it. take care!