With all of the great veggies we’ve been getting lately, I have become more interested in veggie-centered cooking and baking. I heard a lot of buzz about Deceptively Delicious a while back, but I didn’t get around to checking it out until now. Fortunately, I got it from the library and didn’t pay money for it!
The gist of DD is that kids don’t eat enough veggies, and if you puree things like squash, sweet potatoes, and cauliflower, you can “hide” them in foods to give your family more nutritional bang for your buck. To be honest, I have more of a problem getting Derek to eat enough veggies than Tommy. Derek thinks a couple teaspoons of veggies drenched in butter or cheese is sufficient; I grew up with whole heads of broccoli and cauliflower set out raw (“and no one leaves the table ’til this bowl is empty!”). So I guess I’m coming at this veggie issue from a different perspective than a lot of moms. Derek’s occasional complaints aside, it’s simply not an option in our house not to eat your veggies.
Even so, I was excited to get some new ideas from this cookbook and to find ways to trick myself into eating farm share things that Derek and I really just don’t like on their own….which so far has been beets. However, Seinfeld doesn’t really do much with hard-to-like vegetables. The only beet puree recipes in the book were for pancakes (tried, gross, won’t try again) and chocolate cake (tried, might try again with more chocolate to overwhelm the dirt flavor, but would never make unless we had beets foisted on us). Most of her purees are things we love plain–like avocado, sweet potatoes, and bananas (why “hide” the flavor of any of these?). Apparently hard-to-like veggies are also hard-to-hide in meals. This book would have been more helpful if she’d included more unusual veggies. And most of her recipes are for things I don’t really make that often…chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, coffee cake. Sure, if I have some squash puree, I guess I can add it to cheese-based dishes, and I’m fine with adding carrots and applesauce to muffins. But I guess I’m just not at the stage where I’m willing to be kid-centric in my cooking…and these recipes are very kid-centric. Going through the entire cookbook, I didn’t find a single new and exciting recipe that I wanted to copy down and try. Maybe in a couple years I’ll feel differently, but as long as Tommy will eat curry or couscous or kale quiche with us, I don’t feel the need to add fish sticks with sweet potato coating to my repertoire. Beyond the fairly obvious idea that purees can be added to a lot of dishes, this cookbook didn’t inspire me. I’m taking it back to the library this weekend, and I’m not adding it to my amazon wishlist.
I AM still on the lookout for interesting veggie-based recipes, though, and I’m grateful for those that my gentle readers have shared already! Though I think sometimes it is just impossible to trick yourself into eating something you just don’t like (venison in any form, served any way, does NOT taste like beef, no matter what my hunter family members say), I am trying to keep an open mind as we continue to try new things this year.
