Do you have any interesting recipes that sneak vegetables into the meal?

I don’t know if you’ve seen these books, but here they are:

http://www.amazon.com/Sneaky-Chef-Strategies-Healthy-Favorite/dp/0762430753/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267472849&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Deceptively-Delicious-Simple-Secrets-Eating/dp/B001WAKOXA/ref=pd_sim_b_3

http://www.amazon.com/Sneaky-Veggies-Vegetables-Under-Family/dp/1402728638/ref=pd_sim_b_5

You can always sneak chopped up veggies in stir fry’s as well as homemade soups. My kids never knew what hit them!

Pureed cauliflower hidden in mashed potatoes.
Roasted baby turnips with roasted small red potatoes.
Julliennned greens in any soup. Make sure the strips are really narrow.

Alton Brown made an episode on good eats called “undercover veggies” where he shows recipes involving parsnips. Links are in his name

Pasta sauce. Blend cooked tomatoes, carrots, onions, celery and red bell peppers, add to browned mince, along with a few other things and you’ve got your 5 serves of veg right there.

LOL! My daughter boils cauliflower and mashes them up. The kids think it’s mashed potatoes and eat it!

I make carrot muffins and tell my five year old they are “orange sprinkle muffins.” If he knew they were carrots, he wouldn’t even try them. Call them sprinkles, and he can’t get enough.

You can add finely-chopped veggies to meatloaf or meatballs, too. I sometimes add some leftover mashed sweet potato to pancake batter, along with cinnamon and nutmeg. Canned pumpkin works well too for pancakes. These links have more good ideas:
Health Recipes
Food Network

Edited to add: For baked goods like muffins, I usually substitute half the oil or butter with applesauce (also works with pancakes!), and replace some of the white flour with whole wheat. Stirring in a couple of tablespoons of wheat germ adds nutrition and my kids never seem to notice it. I like to read through reviews of recipes on www.allrecipes.com because other people will share how they’ve adjusted ingredients to make things healthier.

I am with TooBlue. I put vegetables (finely minced zucchini and carrots) into the tomato sauce for pasta.

I had a really picky eater in my daughter. One day we had a roast to which I’d added minced up onions. She was peering through her food, and came up with a tiny, TINY piece of onion! “What’s this?!!” she demanded.
“It’s a molecule,” I said.
“What’s a molecule?” she asked.
Before I could answer my then four-year-old son said, “It’s a teeny, tiny, little piece of frog!”
I missa mah bebies.

casseroles…a winner…particularly slow cooked… root veggies are great like this… butternut-squash and sausage casserole for example…

Deceptively Delicious has a very good recipe for taco meat made with ground turkey butternut squash. I thought it was yummy and I don’t even like squash!

Root veggies make a great addition to mashed potatoes. The first time we did it was with carrots, which were awesome, but the best is caramelizing some parsnips and mashing them in. Tasty, tasty.

Another way to get a picky non-vegetable inclined person to eat veggies (though it doesn’t hide them in the least) is kale chips. I love kale chips. You take kale, rub it with olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper, then put it in the oven at a very low temperature. It’s like healthy potato chips. They don’t taste strong at all—mostly just crunchy and salty.

There is an old saying, “everything is tastier with bacon”. I use bacon to flavor a lot of veggies—particularly Brussels sprouts.

Zucchini bread is absolutely delightful.

If the kids like pasta, I always think that spaghetti squash is really fun. I fix it just like pasta—sauce, cheese, etc. It doesn’t really taste the same, but it’s super fun.

Meatloaf. You can put a metric ton of carrots and onions into meatloaf.

One of my friends has a recipe for roasting cauliflower and chick peas where the spice mix ends up making it taste a lot like Doritos. I will try to find it.

Great ideas everyone. Thank you so much!

@Val123 Your daughter sounds just like my daughter. She notices every little piece of bell pepper I put in the taco meat I make and she refuses to eat it. Shall I tell her they are bits of frog? ;)

Some cheese melted on a vege makes it more appealing to some, worth a try. My niece and nephew were ok with carrot sticks when they were kids too, especially with some ranch dressing to dip them in. So maybe the cheese and the ranch dressing have to be done in small doses though…

I hate to be a Debbie Downer but a nutritionist made a good point in one of the classes I volunteer in, recently. She pointed out that hiding vegetables from kids works well when they live at home, but then they grow up to believe that they hate all of the vegetables they have actually been eating. I’d say there needs to be a point when the kids are told about the veggies (perhaps when they are teenagers) or you could try either of these methods:

1) Your kids won’t starve themselves. My daughter used to make a big deal about eating food with any tiny hint of spice. One time, when she was eight, we put red pepper flakes on the pizza before she had grabbed her slices. She made a big deal as usual and said she wasn’t going to eat. We, matter-of-factly, told her we were sorry she wasn’t going to have dinner that night, but, at least there would be more for us. :) She ate the pizza with the red pepper and never complained about it again. She also likes spicy food, now.

2) My little brother was always thrilled by the attention he received for trying new things and our daughter is the same way. Kids love to be told that they are brave or even “weird” (in a cool way) for trying something that others won’t try. We always made sure to praise or make some kind of deal out of kids trying foods that are different. Sometimes, we’ve even bet the kids that they aren’t brave enough to try a new food. Works every time. :)

Am I remembering right that I have read you writing about having land? Does your family grow your own veggie garden? We have a little tiny garden window and if the kids grow it they love to eat it. Same goes with cooking, if they cook it they always eat a little bit. (I realize it is winter and I am being off topic. I am feeling carried away by land envy, sigh.)

Jerry Seinfeld’s wife has a cookbook out with all kinds of recipes. She apparently steams and then purees the veggies and puts them in everything. Hehehehe, the little darlings never know it!

@liminal We do have a large backyard and a large garden. My husband also works on a ranch, maybe that is what you are thinking of? My daughter loves picking the fresh strawberries that we grow, but she doesn’t care for the tomatoes. She thought they were too bitter. Winter is almost over and I’m starting to plan for this spring. Don’t worry, you’re not off topic! I agree that it does help when I let her help with dinner.

@jealoustome I have to disagree a little with this nutritionist. I was a very picky eater as a child. It wasn’t until my early 20s that I started to try new foods, and like foods that I didn’t when I was younger. Tastes change as we grow older. My oldest son will try anything, unfortunately my other two children have the tastes that I did growing up. I trust that their tastes will change as they grow older, just as mine did. I’m not trying to deceive them by hiding vegetables in meals, just trying to find a way that they might enjoy them better. I’ve done it with a few recipes and I’m just looking for some new recipes from the collective. Thanks for your suggestions. :)

@jonsblond You need to tell her they are magic molecules of frog!
That girl….when she was about a year old, still in a high chair, I was once feeding her some chicken pop pie. I put a spoonful in her mouth. She worked it a bit, and when I pulled the spoon back out all the gravy, chicken and potatoes were gone, but the peas and carrots were still on the spoon, and licked shiny clean! I couldn’t believe that! :)

@jonsblond In that case, my husband still has a huge aversion to carrots and squash. I put the carrots through the juicer and add the juice to recipes like beef stew so I can still get the roundness of flavor without making him gag. I highly recommend the juicer for secret additions. ;)

@jealoustome That is a great idea. My husband added V8 to the last batch of chili that he made and it was really tasty. I definitely need to buy a juicer!

These are all great answers, and I’m glad you asked the question. While I’ve never needed to “hide” the veggies, (since my kids will eat anything!), I found from reading these ideas, that I have been doing most of these things for years anyway! I think one of the best, and easiest ways to ‘get away with it’, especially when it comes to those fresh, healthy, and irreplaceable greens, would be to hide them in a fruit smoothie! That way, you get all the delicious vitamins without the tell-tale flavors or textures.

@Juvie : A peach and kale smoothie? It sounds like something even I wouldn’t drink.

Strawberry and collard green smoothie?

Blueberry and spinach?

@gailcalled frow up?

Retrieving 10 foot pole as we speak.

@gailcalled No don’t. That pole won’t help my gag reflex a’tall