I received as a gift a few years ago, Deceptively Delicious. The book takes vegetable and fruit purees and adds them to typical family recipes. I haven't made made most of these yet as they do seem like a bit more work than I would like. But they are a way to add some extra vegetables to our family diet. So maybe that would be a good place to start.
We are a family of five, our three children are 10, 8, and 1. Our older kids eat their vegetables most of the time. My main goals in this experiment are to try new recipes and add some extra vegetables in that we might not normally eat. I am well aware of the fact that most of these recipes only have a small amount of veggies added to them and that the nutritional content might not be great since the veggies are cooked not once but twice in many of these but I'm going to give it a shot. At the very least it's something new to try at the dinner table.
When I first received this cookbook, I dove right in and made the ranch dressing and the greek dip. My daughter loves the ranch dressing, it was a hit. The greek dip however was not as big a hit. However the next time I tried the greek dip I accidentally mixed up the ranch and greek recipes and created a new dip We just call it John's garlic dip since I make it for my son, but the whole family loves it (even the baby). It's reminiscent of hummus, but it's made with artichokes and great northern beans. I never got around to trying any other recipes until recently.
Last week, I made the sweet potato fries (which was really more of a tip than a recipe). I used to make these when the kids were younger but had forgotten all about them. They were so good, especially dipped in real maple syrup. Similar to the ones we get at restaurants but better for you since they aren't deep fried. They dissappeared in a flash, next time I need to make more. One sweet potato was not enough!
Sunday, I made the Banana Pudding Pie. My son loved this and had 2 pieces. I thought it was incredibly sweet, too much for my taste and a bit too artificially banana tasting. My daughter tasted it but didn't like it and the baby refused it. Unfortunately, they only liked it the first night. The true test of how good something is, is long the leftovers hang around. Not one person has touched it since that first night, so I don't think I will make it again.
For our dinner that night, I also made the chicken nuggets with the sweet potato puree. These were awesome! You could not taste the sweet potato at all but it made the nuggets tender and juicy. The panko breadcrumbs and flaxseed meal made for a crunchy breading. They were a bit time consuming to make but very delicious. We will definitely make these again.
Next time however I will have to spend a couple more minutes while cutting the chicken to try and get thinner chunks but not too small. about an inch square but half an inch thick would have been perfect. It's a bit tricky getting the sweet potato puree to stick to the chicken but I think that's why she has you sprinkle salt on the chicken first. I might add an extra egg or a little water next time to thin out the sweet potato puree first. Even with the egg that the recipe calls for mixed in, it was a very thick mixture.
A few days ago, my son was sick in bed so I thought it might be a good time to try the Hot Cocoa recipe as sort of a treat. I had my doubts that you could put sweet potato into hot cocoa but thought I'd try it.
The recipe combines chocolate syrup, milk and sweet potato puree. It claims that the result is a rich creamy delicious treat. That claim couldn't be farther from the truth. The cocoa had a gritty texture from the sweet potato puree. The cocoa didn't taste very good and the texture was gross. I didn't even serve this to my kids. I dumped it straight down the drain. YUCK!
The last recipe I tried this week was the Marshmallow Crispy Treats. It's hard to ruin a ricecrispy treat right? Well, the recipe calls for brown rice cereal. The only brown rice cereal I could find is Arrowhead Mills puffed rice. While these taste like regular rice crispy treats, the texture is wrong, they are way too chewy. Next time I will try these with regular crisp rice cereal and see how they turn out.
I don't know that I will try all the recipes in this book, so far only a few have come out worthy of making again. I think for instance that adding vegetables to the desserts simply doesn't work. The main course ideas might be worthy of trying though.
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