For the record, I have a copy of Deceptively Delicious, and sorry Jessica Seinfeld, but your recipes are crap. Many of them have less than a quarter cup of veggies in the WHOLE RECIPE, which means my kids get what, like a tablespoon of veggies in their serving? No thanks, I’ll use my own crafty techniques.
Harper and Roman’s love as of late: smoothies. I love them too because I can sneak all sorts of stuff into them. Ingredients in my smoothies include: butternut squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, prune juice, carrot juice, and flax seeds. Harper and Roman think they are chock full of yum, and well, they are!
This all started a few months ago when I pureed a huge batch of food for Ada and put it in the freezer. I had all of these cubes of veggies sitting around, and thought I would just toss one into the blender with their liquid dinner and see what happened. They gobbled it up, or rather, slurped it up, so I put in more and more veggies. Now a typical smoothie recipe is something like this:
- 1 snack size yogurt – usually strawberry flavor
- 1 handful frozen berries
- half a banana or other fresh fruit
- 3-4 one-ounce cubes frozen pureed veggies
- 1 tablespoon flax seeds
- OJ, prune juice, carrot juice or water
- Honey, if it needs sweetening
My other methods aren’t quite as sneaky. Lately I’ve been really into (gasp) fried food. It’s not as bad as it sounds… I don’t think. I have a basic batter recipe and I’ve been dipping just about everything in it and frying it in a little bit of olive oil. Harper likes “the crunchies,” and Roman will eat anything with ketchup on it, so I’ve been able to get them to eat some pretty good stuff.
The batter recipe is as follows: get three bowls. In the first put flour, in the second scramble one egg and about 1/8 cup of fat-free buttermilk (or skim milk is fine), and in the third mix equal parts of breadcrumbs, panko and grated parmesan with a little salt and pepper. You can mix in some herbs too if you have them. The rest is super easy – take whatever it is you are frying and dip it in each bowl, flour first, egg mixture second, and breadcrumbs third, then fry in a little olive oil. I’ve done zucchini, sweet potato sticks, yellow squash, and lots of different fish and they ate everything without complaint. The only one that gave me trouble was the sweet potato – it needs to go in the oven for a bit after frying in order to cook all the way through. For a “fancy” pasta dinner, you can also fry raviolis using this recipe – just dip uncooked refrigerated raviolis in it and fry away. They are delicious with a little bit of marinara or ranch dressing dip on the side!
