Deceptively Delicious

Well, I do not own the cookbook that teaches you how to add veggie purees to meals in order to sneak nutrients into your kids. I have, however been known to add black beans to my brownies. I also showed up at last year's service auction with some racecars made out of celery and carrots. It must have been for these reasons that my friend Christi recruited me to give a mini presentation at her recipe club on the topic of "Kid Foods." I appreciated the chance to spend a little more time in the kitchen with my future chefs and decided to focus mostly on healthy kid foods, since we could all stand to eat a few more fruits and veggies around here.

I did want to include the angle of sneaking veggies into food, so as part of my research I looked up a recipe for Macaroni and Cheese with pureed cauliflower instead of butter. My kindergartener wants mac and cheese EVERY day after school. So if I could make this little substitution wouldn't she be that much better off? So I thought. I made sure she was occupied in the other room as I prepared the dish, then called her in when it was ready. This was her exact reaction:

"This mac and cheese tastes different."

"Let me see the box."

"You should have added more butter."

(We add some spray butter and a little salt, since the night before, I got her to eat the cream of broccoli soup by adding salt.)

"It still tastes bad."

"Salt came to the rescue last night, but not this time."

and her final comment...

"IT TASTES LIKE OLD YUCKY MUSHED UP VEGGIES."

I never told her what the difference was. I ended up giving her left over pancakes instead and eating the mac and cheese myself.

*Note- I just used a simple recipe with boxed mac and cheese- it would probably turn out better with Mrs. Seinfield's actual recipe.

The crazy tortilla face and the cute fruit and veggie flower garden, however, were much more of a success.