Lately I've have my attention on whether we are really doing all we can to make sure our kids are eating well. Any friends who know us would probably LOL to hear me say that, because our kids have eaten the nastier fast foods (McD's, BK, etc.) probably twice or three times in their whole lives. (Seriously.)
But that is not really the measurement of whether kids are eating well, in my view--a lack of fast food. It would be a bit like saying "hey you guys don't pump poisons your kids daily, you're GREAT parents!" (Sorry, if you do, I'm not judging you here. Every family has it's own challenges and values.)
So when I look at how they have been eating, it occurred to me that, due our hectic lifestyle, they don't really get enough of a vegetable variety and we tend to get into a set pattern of the same foods over and over each week. We don't want to find out down the road that this could have lead to allergies or some other health hurdle that could have been avoided completely if we'd just done the right thing from the git-go.
Thanks to Jessica Seinefield's book, Deceptively Delicious, we have a simple way to turn this around.
Tonight the kids had their second meal from this book. They loved it despite the fact that it was chock full of carrots and yellow squash. As far as they knew though, it was "Tortilla Cigars" (for their shape, mostly).
It had other things in it too, like cream cheese and cheddar, which helped to disguise the veggies.
Anyone who has had kids or taken care of them would agree that dishing up a meal steeped in veggies has about the same chances of being eaten as mudpies. Maybe even less.
But our kids devoured them and asked me to make more!
This is the magic of the Jessica Seinfeld's book (and yes, I know about the "controversy" surrounding it, which is of no interest to me). She has figured out how to take veggie and fruit purees and work them into things like Mac and Cheese or pancakes and several other kid-friendly "vehicles". In other words, the kid looks at the meal and thinks, "I recognize that and I'll eat it!", never realizing it is loaded with nutritious fruits and vegetables. To quote the Guinness commercials: "Brilliant!"
So as I sit here typing, I'm waiting for the beets too cool after softening up at 400 degrrees Fahrenheit for the last hour. Tomorrow I will blend them up in to a puree and we'll have "Pink Pancakes". The kids are gonna love 'em!
