TIP and IN THE NEWS - Sneaking pureed veggies into my kids' food

I saw Jerry Seinfeld’s wife Jessica on Oprah show talking about her book Deceptively Delicious. The premise of the book is that you can hide pureed veggies in your kid’s favorite meals. Then the kids get the veggies they need and you feel better about what your kids are eating.

I have to admit this got me thinking about my own kids and how much vegetables they eat or I should say how much vegetable they don’t eat. Aside from potatoes and corn, they really don’t eat too many vegetables. This has been weighing somewhat heavy on my mind. When I give them vegetables, they pick them off the plate. Contrary to many people’s opinion, you really can’t make kids eat anything nor would I want to.

So the concept of pureeing vegetables and putting them in the kids’ meal made perfect sense! It made sense. My kids eat garlic, onion and other vegetables but only if they are cooked into their food like tomato pasta sauce where they don’t really notice all the vegetables. They eat broccoli but only if I chop them up really fine and putting it in their fried rice. Pureeing vegetables and “hiding” it in their favorite foods was just taking that next step.

So, I tried it. But I did it the “lazy” way, simpler way. I was not going to puree tons of vegetables and have numerous baggies in my refrigerator. I knew most of it would go to waste. I didn’t follow the recipes in the book, I simply added the pureed vegetables into foods I normally cooked. I pureed 2-3 vegetables of the same color (carrots and sweet potatoes or cauliflower and potatoes, etc.), put puree in a Tupperware container, and use that puree throughout the week. I mixed some into the hamburgers. I mixed some into mac and cheese. I mixed some into pancake mix. I mixed it into meatloaf. I was not going to try to add the puree to everything I cook I just added it whenever the color and the taste of the puree would not stand out too much. And it does work! The kids (my 7 year old and my 2 year old) eat everything right up. I think the puree even made some dishes taste BETTER.

As an aside, I did not really like the idea of “sneaking the puree in” as if I was “tricking” the kids. I just added puree into what I was cooking out in the open, in plain view. They did not even pay attention; they just assumed that it was just another ingredient. They probably assumed that their favorite dishes were always cooked that way.

Also, I did not buy the Deceptively Delicious book, because I found out that there was already a book out there called The Sneaky Chef. This book too was able pureeing vegetables and putting them in everyday dishes. I decided to buy this book instead. The best tip the book had was – if you don’t feel like pureeing vegetables or if you don’t have the time, then just use baby food. There are many jars of pureed vegetable baby food.

UPDATE:  July 23, 2012

I still put in a jar of baby food puree of sweet potato into the brownie mix. The brownies come out great.  My kids are now 12 and 7 and they do not notice the difference.  In fact, my 12 year old helps me make the brownies and puts in the jar of veggie puree into the mixing bowl himself!  He calls it "Mom's secret ingredient!"