So you know, there's this guy and his name is Jerry Seinfeld and he's like a bazillionaire and drives lots of Porsches. You may have seen one of his six thousand commercials on NBC during the Thursday night shows? (Gah. Thats a rant for another day.) He has a wife named Jessica. She created a cookbook. Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food.
When Parent Bloggers Network offered up the chance to review this cookbook I was all over it like frosting on a cupcake because I have a son who only eats the same six things every day. One of those dishes is split pea soup so I'm satisfied that his diet is somewhat balanced, but clearly we need to expand. I thought this book might be just what I needed. Secrets! I need to know these secrets!
Turns out its not so many secret-s, plural, it's more like one secret: Roast, peel if required, puree the hell out of something healthy, bag it in your freezer and then and sneak it into the food.
Huh?
I can see this approach if you are dealing with an infant, yes, it makes sense, but for a six year old? Can you really equate blitzing and hiding food as something that is deemed habit changing for your kids? I want to prepare real food in a way that is appealing to my little one, thereby acclimating him to the taste or texture of a vegetable in hopes that we will build healthy eating habits for a lifetime. No, it usually doesn't work, but at least I've tried. By the time he's ten I hope he'll be somewhat familiar with a carrot. Picky kids reject things dozens (and more dozens) of times before they give in and admit they might like it. I can't imagine the fight I would have on my hands if I first started introducing real vegetables at age 10.
Then there's the practicality. I have exactly 30 minutes from the time I walk in the door to prepare dinner or everyone spontaneously combusts into a wild explosion of super crabbiness. Every minute I spend cleaning my kitchen at night is one less minute I have to talk to my kid or my husband or go to the bathroom. While I admit I could roast and peel and bundle and puree and wash a bunch of stuff on a Saturday, I still have to consider the following cost benefit analysis:
Spend thirty minutes preparing, twenty minutes washing dishes and labeling, five minutes rotating the stock of stuff I didn't use that's gone bad. Five minutes scraping off the remnants of what he didn't eat. Ten minutes analyzing how much vitamin A was in the one cup of squash that I snuck in the macaroni and how much of that he actually ingested in the six bites he ate before he decided that he hates macaroni (by the way, I already knew that trick) : Total 70 minutes.
Vs.
Ten seconds grabbing a box of Vruit and sticking a straw in it; Ensuring a full serving of fruit and vegetables for the day.
Um, right. Not doing it.
Then I just couldn't help it, this is just my style preference but I was totally turned off by the kitschy 50's-esque June Cleaver design. Last time I checked, being a woman of the '50s serving up martinis to your husband and vacuuming was not my ideal.
Jessica Seinfeld has very good intentions. There is, of course, nothing wrong with sneaking in a spoonful of chickpeas here or spinach leaves there. If your family already has decent eating habits and you'd like to slip them a little extra Vitamin E, if you already love to cook and spend enough time doing so that it's no big deal to throw a sweet potato in the oven and mash it up, this cookbook could be for you.
It just wasn't for me.
When Parent Bloggers Network offered up the chance to review this cookbook I was all over it like frosting on a cupcake because I have a son who only eats the same six things every day. One of those dishes is split pea soup so I'm satisfied that his diet is somewhat balanced, but clearly we need to expand. I thought this book might be just what I needed. Secrets! I need to know these secrets!
Turns out its not so many secret-s, plural, it's more like one secret: Roast, peel if required, puree the hell out of something healthy, bag it in your freezer and then and sneak it into the food.
Huh?
I can see this approach if you are dealing with an infant, yes, it makes sense, but for a six year old? Can you really equate blitzing and hiding food as something that is deemed habit changing for your kids? I want to prepare real food in a way that is appealing to my little one, thereby acclimating him to the taste or texture of a vegetable in hopes that we will build healthy eating habits for a lifetime. No, it usually doesn't work, but at least I've tried. By the time he's ten I hope he'll be somewhat familiar with a carrot. Picky kids reject things dozens (and more dozens) of times before they give in and admit they might like it. I can't imagine the fight I would have on my hands if I first started introducing real vegetables at age 10.
Then there's the practicality. I have exactly 30 minutes from the time I walk in the door to prepare dinner or everyone spontaneously combusts into a wild explosion of super crabbiness. Every minute I spend cleaning my kitchen at night is one less minute I have to talk to my kid or my husband or go to the bathroom. While I admit I could roast and peel and bundle and puree and wash a bunch of stuff on a Saturday, I still have to consider the following cost benefit analysis:
Spend thirty minutes preparing, twenty minutes washing dishes and labeling, five minutes rotating the stock of stuff I didn't use that's gone bad. Five minutes scraping off the remnants of what he didn't eat. Ten minutes analyzing how much vitamin A was in the one cup of squash that I snuck in the macaroni and how much of that he actually ingested in the six bites he ate before he decided that he hates macaroni (by the way, I already knew that trick) : Total 70 minutes.
Vs.
Ten seconds grabbing a box of Vruit and sticking a straw in it; Ensuring a full serving of fruit and vegetables for the day.
Um, right. Not doing it.
Then I just couldn't help it, this is just my style preference but I was totally turned off by the kitschy 50's-esque June Cleaver design. Last time I checked, being a woman of the '50s serving up martinis to your husband and vacuuming was not my ideal.
Jessica Seinfeld has very good intentions. There is, of course, nothing wrong with sneaking in a spoonful of chickpeas here or spinach leaves there. If your family already has decent eating habits and you'd like to slip them a little extra Vitamin E, if you already love to cook and spend enough time doing so that it's no big deal to throw a sweet potato in the oven and mash it up, this cookbook could be for you.
It just wasn't for me.
7 comments:
I bet she has a cook and a cleaning lady that are there daily.
I got a food processor for a wedding gift 5 years ago and it's still in the box! Who has time to roast & sneak?
I'm reviewing this Wednesday. I did make the chocolate cupcakes with avocado, but there was no roasting or steaming involved.
I hear you on this one.
I haven't read the book yet, but I'm actually kind of excited about it. I agree that kids need to learn to eat veggies so that they become used to them, but while they are going through the phase of hating them and refusing to eat them, why not sneak them in? Obviously, if you don't have the time, it wouldn't work, but to me, the argument that hiding the veggies isn't good for the kids because they will never learn to like vegetables is a silly argument. Of course you still push veggies on your kids...you just have a back up in case they don't eat them.
I figure if she has an apple every day, she'll grow into the spinach.
Did you see the bit in today's Times that kind of alleged plagiarism?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/nyregion/19seinfeld.html
Have I ever told you that we do a lot of nutrition education at my work?
SO... I had heard (since I did not see her appearance on Oprah) that she suggested always continuing to offer fruits and veggies and that these recipes were not a replacement for expanding their taste buds... just trickery during that picky time when they only want to eat mac and cheese.
So, in that sense I agree with her methods... because it usually takes 10 offerings or so of a type of food for a child to accept it and possibly like it.
And regarding the plagiarism thing, when I first heard about this book I kind of chuckled a bit, because pureeing food and sneaking it in is nothing new at all ... that what nutritionists have been saying FOREVER to do with picky eaters...
I do want to check it out though... but I definitely hear what you are saying about it all being puree and dump and not actual "tricks."
I was going to ask if you actually made any of the recipes. I agree it does seem like a lot of work, but you had to know going in that there would be some preparation involved, right? I'd like to know how the stuff actually tastes.
I hate the dinner crunch time/witching hour, too. However, I've found that by 6 years old, most kids can readily and easily help with dinner preparation. There's some excellent bonding time right there, and some help for me.
I like the recipes in Sneaky Chef better, btw. Still some pureeing, but I have this handy-dandy mini pureeing thingy and my kids love to watch the food get smooshed. And, they like to wash up...kids, soap, water...never fails.
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