The interesting thing about this book is it encourages parents to puree vegetables and sneak them into foods your kids like eating. That's kind of the main idea of this cookbook.
Pros: You get your kids to eat more vegetables if they refuse to eat them. The recipes are quick and they tell you how long it's going to take to make each recipe. The ingredients are pretty basic and ones most people generally have around or could easily get.
Cons: I'm not super impressed with the recipes themselves. They are almost too simplistic to taste that good. Also, I was hoping for more recipes about how to get the vegetables to taste good. Hiding vegetables in food doesn't encourage life long vegetable eating habits. There's also no nutrition facts listed with the recipes. One minor complaint is that this book encourages the use of margarine from a tub. I refuse to cook with that stuff, but it's easy enough to just replace that with real butter when I make these recipes.
This is a good book if you don't know how to cook. Basically, it's for a very busy Mom who needs simple meal ideas that may or may not taste that great. There are some basic recipes for dinner and dessert ideas but nothing in this book is particularly outstanding. If you ever considered getting this book I would suggest just adding pureed vegetables to recipes your family already likes and it will probably work much better for your family.
I will give a few of these recipes a try and let you guys know how they turn out. Reviews on Amazon complained that the pureed vegetables altered the taste of the meals at times.
Last night I tried this recipe:
I changed a few ingredients but I used this basic recipe:
Macaroni and cheese 1
1 1/2 cups elbow macaroni
Nonstick cooking spray
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup butternut squash or cauliflower puree
1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese
4 oz (almost 1/4 cup) cream cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon pepper
Cook the noodles. Coat a saucepan with cooking spray and heat over medium. Add the oil, then flour and cook, stirring constantly until a paste is made, 1-2 minutes. Add the milk and cook until mixture is thickened, 3-4 minutes. Add the vegetable puree, cheddar and cream cheese and seasonings. Stir until mixture is smooth. Mix with cooked macaroni and serve.
What I changed: I didn't add paprika because my spice shelf is a mess and I couldn't find it. I didn't add pepper because my husband doesn't like pepper. I changed the puree to one pureed avocado because it's what I had. I'm also concerned my kids aren't getting the DHA omega-3 they need since I don't like fish and therefore we never eat it. So avocado was the veggie of choice.
The results: For a really quick homemade macaroni and cheese, it was actually pretty good. My husband did complain that every few bites was extra avocado tasting (he hates avocado so that wasn't such a good thing) but I didn't notice that. My kids ate it just fine. It didn't turn the macaroni green- there were only a few green specks so that wasn't so bad. I didn't use the low or non-fat version of the cheeses or milk and that did make the meal a little heavy. If I had the non fat version of each of those on hand I would have used them instead.
Overall, if I'm in a hurry, I would make this meal again. It was very quick to make since I didn't have to bake it and most of the ingredients I usually have on hand. And since I REFUSE to serve my kids macaroni and cheese from a box, this is a good quick alternative.
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