Lies for your own good

I gotta give two thumbs up to the recipe book: Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld (as in Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld). I had heard a lot of people talking about this book, but I have the kid who won't touch a vegetable and wouldn't eat anything green (including green jello) until very recently, so I was skeptical and didn't want to buy it. I looked it up at our local library and they had a copy (yay!) there were, like, 3 people in line ahead of me to borrow, so I had to wait a LONG time to get it. Anyways, got it last monday and have been trying things out and I highly highly recommend it. The premise is to make vegetable purees (think stage 1 baby food) that you mix in with kid favorites. So far, I've made blueberry oatmeal bars that have pureed spinach mixed in with the blueberry filling and grilled cheese that had sweet potato puree mixed in with the cheese. Both went over with no comments whatsoever from Sierra. Some of the others I plan to try---mac and cheese with sweet potato or butternut squash puree mixed in; scrambled eggs with cauliflower mixed in; "fried" rice balls with pureed chicken, sweet potato and spinach mixed in; homemade chicken nuggets with pureed carrot. Everyone also tells me the chocolate chip cookies with garbanzo beans are wonderful, but I haven't tried that one yet.

I was really surprised about the blueberry oatmeal bars--okay, so yes, it's a dessert type thing, but if I'm gonna give the kid dessert anyway, I might as well throw in some spinach (which I would never in a million years get her to eat otherwise). It took me the longest to eat them--I couldn't get the sight and smell of spinach puree mixed with blueberry jam out of my mind. I finally did though and the spinach is completely undetectable (tip--you have to let them *completely* cool off or you can still taste/smell the spinach).