If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that while I oppose hiding vegetables for being deceiving, I am NOT opposed to mixing vegetables in dishes to increase its nutrient quotient.  I got really interested yesterday when Lori  made a comment she substituted white beans for shortening.  I can’t wait to try it.

On with dinner: I love potato cheese soup, but I knew we could do it with a lot less cheese, and a lot more vegetables. 

• I first boiled potatoes with carrots and celery in my pot till tender.
• Then I scooped out a blender full of potatoes, carrots, celery and a bit of water. I pureed these in the blender while I prepared my sauce.
• I made a white sauce using butter, flour, low fat milk, bullion paste, and only 1 cup of cheese.  I used to use at least 4 cups of cheese.  Then I added my pureed vegetables to the cheesy white sauce. 
• Returned the potatoes to the pot mixed together with the sauce and added salt and pepper. 
• FULL VERSION OF RECIPE HERE!

I love that the kids couldn’t pick out the carrots or celery.  And I love the creaminess it added to the soup.

On to the giveaway:  I have a copy of Jessica Seinfelds Cookbook up for grabs, along with an adorable little girls apron my wonderful sister-in-law has sewn for you great readers.  Leave a comment about things you mix into food to make it healthier. Whether its beans, ground flax, oats, fruit, vegetables, whatever!!! And if you aren’t doing it, leave a comment that you have no idea how to mix stuff in, which is why you really need to win this contest.  I will take comments until Sunday night and announce a winner Monday morning.

Related posts:

Hiding Grains

Hiding vegetables

Today is the last day in a series of increasing fruits and vegetables in your family’s diet.  If you have tried all 6 ideas and are still being met with resistance, you must do what mothers have been doing for ages…”sneak it in.”  As I have said in the past, I am not a fan of the sneaking vegetables, only if it means your kids will never learn to eat vegetables.  I am a fan of increasing the nutritional value of meals by adding fruits and veggies as appropriate for the recipe.  However, as Brittney commented on my sisters blog, she doesn’t have time to puree batches of vegetables each week.  Amen, Brittney, here I will suggest some alternatives.

• Substitute;  Try 100% frozen juice concentrate instead of stir-fry sauce.  How about spaghetti squash instead of pasta noodles.  Substitute applesauce for oil in baked goods. Try carrot juice instead of orange juice if you’re making a smoothie.
• Buy it already pureed; Do you have any jars of baby food?  Baby food is a jar of vegetables already pureed for you. No mess, no freezing it, no work! Crack open a jar of squash and pour it in your muffins.  Open a jar of green beans and pour it in your spaghetti sauce.  How much easier could it get.  Even better, pumpkin puree you can buy all year long.
• Multi/Vitamins; Lastly, your kids are stubborn, your busy, your budget is tight, and cooking healthy food is very low on your list of priorities.  The answer, a good multi-vitamin.  It can’t get easier than that. 

I used to buy the gummy bear vitamins at Costco for my kids.  If you’ve had them you would know, they are quite tasty. The kids think they are candy. Even I got a craving once and sought out the bottle of gummy bears vitamins.  One day after buying a brand new bottle (huge one from Costco), I walked in on the flip-flopper (hiding in the bathroom), and she had just finished off the entire bottle.  I told you they taste good.  I frantically called poison control and told them my daughter just ate 500 gummy bear vitamins.  Well, the operator sort of chuckled and told me he gets calls just like mine every day! He told me she’ll be fine, maybe just have a little nausea.  Needless to say, I now buy vitamins that they don’t love, but that they don’t hate either.

Tip of the day:  Add zucchini or other vegetables to hamburger meat.

I get a lot of questions about hiding vegetables in kid’s food.  My opinion on this trend as stated in a previous post is that as long as you are also serving vegetables with the meal, it’s OK to “increase the nutritional value” of a dish by adding vegetables to it. In fact, I would encourage it.  Dr. Oz on Oprah commented that kids don’t care for the bitter taste of vegetables because they have so many more taste buds than adults.  The key is to get them familiar and acquainted with vegetables so they will grow to like them.

So, I decided to take some shredded zucchini I had in the freezer from our garden this summer.  I defrosted it, drained some of the excess water, and added it to some ground beef.  It’s ideal to buy the leanest ground beef your budget can handle.  I added a little flax meal and some seasoning and made hamburger patties.

Was it a success?  Well, they ate it if that’s your definition of success.  But after draining the water, there was a little under 1 cup of zucchini.  When I make zucchini bread I use two cups, and they usually have several slices of zucchini bread.  I put mushrooms, tomatoes, and lettuce on mine, while they prefer theirs on the side.  I did point out to them that I was eating my vegetables on my hamburger instead of on the side, but tried not to make a big deal out of it. While Cereal boy and the flip flopper ate most of their burger without incident, ketchup boy’s ended up looking like this (last picture, no bun, just cut up meat with ketchup) and it still took him 3 hours to finish it.  And the only reason he finished it was because he wanted a piece of licorice leftover from his grandma for Christmas.

P.S. Let’s not forget that potatoes are vegetables too! Mashed, baked, sliced and cooked. Potatoes are a good source of Vitamin C and potassium.

Normally I am opposed to hiding vegetables.  I have always felt like kids should know and choose to eat vegetables so when they leave the nest, they will continue to eat them.  Well, I wanted to try some recipes from Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food or the Sneaky Chef because I can also put veggies “on the side” and they’ll get double the benefits.  I first tried this with pureed broccoli, coated chicken peices with it, than dipped it in breadcrumbs.  My kids were really nervous by the fact their chicken nuggets were green.   They each reluctantly ate one.  I thought they were quite tasty.  They probably would have fought me less on that one if I had used pureed cauliflower.  On a more inconspicuous side, I tried pureed butternut squash in pumpkin bread.  WOW, that was a big hit for everyone.  It was seriously scrumptious!!