Thank you Jessica!

Ok. I'm taking a quick break from a baking fest. I am trying out 2 of the recipes from Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious cookbook, featured on Oprah the other day.

The idea is to hide pureed vegetables in foods that your children wouldn't otherwise even look at, let alone try. Today, I am making oatmeal blueberry bars (with spinach hiding inside) and chicken nuggets (with sweet potato in the batter). I'll let you know how they go over with the kids and if they're worth the effort. I have found that when pureeing spinach in my normal cup with a hand held mixer thingy (the single, slim kind, you know what I'm talking about?) the spinach strings tend to wrap around the blender center. Hmmm. That will definitely be a negative to the experiment. And mixing the green spinach with the blueberries? Urggghhh. It looks SO gross. But I am forging on, and will try one... maybe. The key is that the kids WON'T know it's in there, so they'll give me an honest opinion. Crossing my fingers here.

And the nuggets. Well, the boys aren't as picky about what their nuggets look like anymore, so we'll see. Of course, it's a HELL of a lot more work to make them by scratch than to just pop open a bag, but I am desperate for more nutrition for them.

The dipping in the sweet potato goo was quite messy, but it seems to hold once I dipped them in the dry mixture...

Timer's going off. Don't go anywhere...
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Ok. I'm back. It's 4:40 pm and the kids are eating the sweet potato nuggets. OH MY GOD. They love them. Well, Justin does. Evan said they were "ok" but he's being difficult. Corinne will eat anything, and I tried them and they're really good! Justin said they taste like restaurant nuggets, which is the highest compliment he can give. I won't tell him that they have a veggie in them.

The blueberry bars are ok...I think I messed up when I used frozen blueberries instead of blueberry preserves so they aren't as sweet as they could be. I did add sugar to the blueberry mixture (with spinach puree. I know. Gross, but you can't taste it!) So, they were a bit bland. But I think I'll make them again, just following the recipe better.

I also made banana nut muffins yesterday. I know! Holy crap on the cooking! This is what happens when it cools off. I get all Betty Crockerish... Of course, the house is a mess because not only did I cook a lot (which I, ah, never do) but I also took Corinne to playgroup this morning. She had fun and only pulled somebody's hair once and even apologized afterwards, so all in all, good time for her.

Well, it's the homework crunch right now, and then Justin has soccer so I'm signing off.