Parenting breeds sneakiness. As soon as those little darlings come into your life, you begin relying on all your wiles, all your most clever schemes, in order to trick them into doing what’s best for them, in the interest of allowing them to retain their dignity and independence.
Being a sneak in my family is mostly centered around food. My veggie-phobic kids have a discerning taste for all things processed, junky, and sugary. While my husband and I enjoy whole grains and organic fruits and veggies, our kids are just fine with macaroni and cheese from a box and meat, meat, meat. So early on, we realized that if we were going to get our picky kids to eat something good for them, they’d have to think they were eating something bad for them. And so began the endless search for recipes that allow healthy things to be slipped in alongside the junk.
My food processor is my main weapon in my arsenal for sneaky cooking. Take any fruit or vegetable, blend that puppy into submission, and suddenly, you’ve got something that even the pickiest eater can’t even recognize. I think my first attempt at tricking the children had to be meatloaf; admittedly, an obvious choice, with its ground beef mystery-meat reputation, made legendary by lunch ladies in cafeterias everywhere. My meatloaf usually contains whole grain bread crumbs, and finely chopped mushroom, carrot and sometimes even zucchini. And my kids eat it up, dipping it boldly in ketchup, happily chewing away, not noticing my sneaky grin.
Next came smoothies, another great way of sneaking fruits into the kids’ diet. My kids would never dream of eating a regular banana, but stick it in a blender with some milk, ice, honey and peanut butter and call it a “Power Shake,” and suddenly, they’re gulping it down with reckless abandon.
Moms like Jessica Seinfeld encourage us in our sneakiness with books like “Deceptively Delicious.” In her book, Seinfeld details her sneaky scheme of cooking for her picky eaters by integrating a variety of vegetable purees into her recipes. The fact that her book reached the top of best seller lists shows that she struck a chord: Moms everywhere struggle with their picky eaters.
Perhaps the most brilliant recipe I’ve come across is for Chocolate Beet Cake. Yes, you read that right. Beets, those huge, beautiful veggies with their deep red-purple color and their sweet flavor. I love them, and could eat them like candy. My kids? Highly suspicious. Maybe it was the year our garden produced a bumper crop of beets that made me think of doing an internet search for beet recipes. What could I possibly sneak them into? This rich, chocolatey cake recipe has become a staple in our household, and the kids have never once asked me why I always seem to bake it when they’re not around. All I know is that they love it. But if I want them to continue to love it, I have to hold myself back from offering them a second piece of cake. After all my hard work, I wouldn’t want them to become suspicious.
