Saturday, April 18, 2009

Eat more veggies!













My sister gave me an really great cookbook for Christmas...I asked for it...ha ha ha! Its called DECEPTIVELY DELICIOUS, by Jessica Seinfield. Yes, she is Jerry Seinfield's wife! Its chock full of recipes that help you to get more nutritious food into the bellies of your kids..and husbands. My kids are pretty healthy eaters and I don't have a problem with them eating their fruits and veggies, however, it is hard to get them to eat the recommended amount of those each day. We take vitamins and I am going to start a whole food supplement, but this is another great way to get MORE of the good stuff into their bodies!

Basically, you steam veggies and make purees and then add them to whatever you're cooking.

For example, there is a recipe for mac and cheese that you can add either cauliflower puree or butternut squash puree to, and it is GREAT! There is a chocolate chip cookie recipe in which you put chick peas (I forgot to take a picture of those)...
So far, our favorite has been the chicken nuggets. To these, you can add broccoli or spinach, sweet potato or beet. The best part about these is that you roll them in whole-wheat breadcrumbs plus flaxseed meal! Flaxseed is full of omega -3s which are SO GOOD FOR YOU! You may get a lot of them if you and your family eat a lot of fish, but we don't tend to do that unless Brent is catching them our of the ocean!
Anyway, its been really fun to try these few recipes out on our family. The cookies were just OK- I love chick peas, but for some reason the cookies were very soggy- maybe I forgot an ingredient...not sure. There are SO MANY more recipes to try for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even dessert!
  • french toast with banana or pineapple or pumpkin or carrot
  • peanut butter and banana muffins with carrot or cauliflower
  • blueberry lemon muffins with yellow squash
  • spaghetti and meatballs with butternut squash and carrot
  • quesadillas with butternut squash
  • sloppy Joe's with sweet potato or red pepper
  • doughnuts with pumpkin
  • blueberry oatmeal bars with spinach

You get the idea. I will say that there is still the use of white flour and sugar, so you could substitute whole wheat flour and sweeten with honey or stevia. So, click here for the website:

http://www.deceptivelydelicious.com/site/

or here for recipes:


http://www.recipezaar.com/cookbook.php?bookid=163632
Happy Pureeing!


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2 comments:

  1. We've been doing this for the past several months (maybe it's been a year already!). I generally keep pumpkin, cauliflower, carrot, and sweet potato purees on hand in the freezer, in snack size ziplocs in 1/2 cup portions. This way I can just pull one out to add to a recipe.

    We always add a puree to our pancakes (NOT cauliflower--that one doesn't taste good in pancakes!), and I always add carrot to mac n cheese and cauliflower to our white shell pasta. I've also been adding flax seed to our pancakes and homemade bread, because we don't eat any fish.

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  2. Hey Sweets! Miss you and your BEAUTIFUL family everyday! Please come visit soon or we'll be at your door again!!!! We are putting in our patio (finally) over the 4th and then we will be entertaining to our hearts desire. Really want to got to the Milwaukee Zoo...maybe you could come too? Karyn and Tasha were up for it... Call me soon! Am so proud of the Christian and Mother you are. Love, Yvette

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