Not So Deceptive, But Definitely Delicious

I am sure most of you have heard about the new Jessica Seinfeld cookbook, Deceptively Delicious. I bought it the other day because it sounded unique. Basically she steams and purees varous vegetables and sneaks them into recipes as one way to get her kids to eat more healthily. Some are kind of weird (Think spinach in brownies and garbanzo beans in chocolate chip cookies). I tried one of the more normal recipes today. I roasted and pureed a few sweet potatoes- not too hard and pretty quick. The chicken nugget recipe was basic except you added the puree to the egg mixture (to dip the chicken in) and added flax seed meal (yes, Kroger sells it here) to the bread crumbs. Griffin came in the kitchen a few times to ask me some questions about the food processer and the sweet potatoes. The verdict? We had dinner about an hour later, and Griffin LOVED the chicken nuggets. He said he liked them better than dino nuggets. As for the vegetable "deception", he said, "Mmm, these chicken tenders are very yummy. They taste like sweet potatoes". I didn't think he was watching that carefully but I guess I was wrong:) Anyway I ate the chicken nuggets too and thought they were pretty good, although, the breading is a little more flimsy than normal chicken nuggets.

Griffin has been pretty sweet lately and is really trying to help out at home (folding laundry, cook, making his bed). He has also been trying to practice a "real" conversation. We were in the kitchen tonight, and out of the blue, he started asking me about my day. He really was using some of the exact same questions I use to grill him. It went something like this:

G: Did you have a good time at Mom's Group today?

M: Yes, I did.

G: Did you have nice hands and feet? And were you kind to your mommy friends?

M: Yes, I was.

G: Did you play nicely with your toys at Mom's Group? What kind of toys do you play with?

M: I don't know- we don't really have toys. We just talk and eat.

G: Oh, yeah.

Anyway it was kind of funny to hear my words coming back at me. I guess you can tell what things we work on at school- especially keeping his hands and feet to himself. Today he got pulled aside in the preschool pick-up room because he was hitting kids with his back pack. I guess we need to keep on working.