BookOpinion

BOOKOPINION REVIEW: If you are tired of begging, pleading and nagging your children to eat your veggies, “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food” by Jessica Seinfeld offers a collection of recipes that might end your daily food fracas. Jessica Seinfeld, wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld and a mother of three, basically took baby food one step farther. She cleverly hids veggie, fruit and bean puree in a variety of breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert fare.

Basically, Seinfeld spends one evening per week preparing enough purees to last her for a week’s worth of meals. Then she just pops them out of baggies or containers and mixes them with food to create kid-friendly items such as macaroni and cheese, mini pizzas, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken nuggets and so on. For example, she hides carrot puree in the mix when she makes hamburgers and blends butternut squash into a cheese sauce to create macaroni and cheese.

Because my children actually eat and enjoy their veggies, my primary purpose for buying the cookbook was to sample the desserts. I figure they usually get dessert anyway, it might as well be healthier. So far I have tried the Blueberry Oatmeal Bars, which not only contain healthy blueberries but spinach as well. They taste like regular cereal bars and you would never know the spinach was there. I also tried the marshmallow crispy treats, which used brown rice cereal in place of the traditional Rice Krispies. She also mixes in flaxseed meal. This new version tasted more like popcorn balls or sweet rice cakes than the traditional treat, but you could not taste flaxseed at all, and my kids loved them. That was good enough for me.

So far, we are enjoying the cookbook. The recipes I have tried were easy and yummy. I really want to try her homemade chocolate pudding. She mixes in avocado of all things. The fried rice balls (with hidden sweet potato and spinach) look promising, as well. Overall, “Deceptively Delicious” is a well-designed, fun cookbook with a bunch of good ideas.

–Jane Leisteiner