Hiding veggies in everyday food, how do you do it? I have the book The Sneaky Chef. I have experimented and tried different things, but it doesn't seem to completely work. I hid some butternut squash in our mac n cheese and my husband was not thrilled (to say the least). So my dilemma is, how to you hide your veggies in your food so that your kids cannot tell?
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-Gretchen
7 comments:
I have the book "Deceptively Delicious" and there are some GREAT recipes in there! A hit in this house is pureed carrot or butternut squash grilled cheese. The book is a MUST HAVE for sure
I made some wonderful sweet potato muffins last night - you'd never know they were made with a whole cooked sweet potato (of course Ken's not hard to feed and he loves veggies!) Barb H
Gina,
I have checked out that book from the library. I may have to try it again.
Barb,
Those muffins sound wonderful. You will have to share the recipe sometime.
My kids are more apt to eat something if they've helped prepare it. Strangely enough my non-veggie eater LOVES zucchini bread and also when I change out the zucchini for carrots. I let them help me every time I make it and then when it's cool, they just scarf it down. I use a much more healthy recipe also (using whole wheat flour, dehydrated cane juice in place of white sugar, etc.) and they still love it!
Here is the recipe I use (I adapt it for healthier ingredients):
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001330zucchini_bread.php, but I don't put the nuts or dried fruit in it.
I also used to give my kids pureed foods (homemade baby food) as dips for things in place of ketchup. That worked for a while.
I think my biggest "hide" is spaghetti sauce. I always sautee up a bunch of bell peppers, onion, celery, mushrooms, and chopped carrots, then pour in my jar of sauce. Sometimes I even let these take the place of meat, but most of the time, I use both. It cuts down on the cost of using so much meat... the sauce is still chunky and good! Plus, no one knows they are eating a bunch of veggies!! (the flavor is AMAZING)
Could it be that the kids will eat the veggies if they're prepared in a different way? As a kid, I'd eat my vegetables raw (maybe steamed at best), but hated them cooked. It wasn't until I started cooking myself that I realized it.
My kids are suckers for dip. They will eat most vegetables raw with a little dip.
Spaghetti sauce is a good one to add a bunch of vegetables to - pureed or sauteed.
Frozen peas. I started giving these to my kids when they were teething. The frozen pea felt good on sore gums and they would chew it up. My son actually requests his peas still frozen now.
And the best tip of all, when you are prepping dinner, give them a plate with veggies. They are hungry, they want to eat and what better to fill up on then veggies. I either use fresh with dip or frozen that I have steamed in the microwave.
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