Table of Contents
I dedicate this book to my enthusiastic readers and their families.
Foreword
by Tyler Florence
T welve years ago, when my first son, Miles, was born, it was not only one of the happiest days of my life but it was a day that changed the way I looked at cooking and food forever. Id spent the better part of my young adult life cooking and eating my way through culinary school and the kitchens of New York Citybut nothing prepared me for the challenges that would come when faced with the life-changing responsibility of feeding a child.
From my first days of fatherhood, I realized that the choices I made in how I fed Miles (and later, how I taught him to eat himself) were of the greatest importance and would surely play a big role in his becoming the happy, healthy young man he is today. It was then that I began work on a baby food line called Sprout, which is my way of helping parents not only nourish their babies but also educate their childrens palates to appreciate natural, healthy foods that taste great too. A childs eating habits and preferences are established at a very early age and it is a parents responsibility to ensure that what they learn about food in the very beginning will lead them to an adulthood of healthy eating. In the years since Miles was born, Ive had a lot of time to work on my recipes and to try them out on my two newest little eaters, Hayden and Dorothy. The smiles on their faces as they try a delicious roasted pear puree is as rewarding as it gets.
When I first met Missy Chase Lapine, a.k.a. The Sneaky Chef, I was truly inspired by the work she has put into keeping kids and families healthy together. Shes right. Its definitely not easy pushing the good stuff on kids, and it can take a little craftiness to make it happen. Her tried-and-true techniques are just what you need to make sure that your family is eating down the right path. But, no matter how sneaky you might get, if a dish doesnt pass the taste test, its all for naught. The Sneaky Chef to the Rescue is filled with recipes that are fun, inventive, and most importantly, they are absolutely delicious. Give these recipes a try and I promise you, your family will thank you for it.
Tyler Florence
Chef, Author & Founder of Sprout Foods
CHAPTER ONE
In Response to You
W hen I wrote my first book, The Sneaky Chef , I was inspired by my own experiences as a mom as well as those of my friends and neighbors. Mealtimes at my house were stressful showdowns between my kids and me over the food on their plate, and for a while, I felt cursed. Then I spoke to other moms and found that many of them had the same picky-eater problem. Each family was different, of course, because each kids persnicketyness was unique. Some children didnt like the food to touch (re: contaminate) other food on the plate. Some only ate foods of certain colors (one child I knew wouldnt eat anything that wasnt white). Others wouldnt even eat a cookie if it was broken, chipped, or otherwise damaged. Food that was first tasted by their younger sister? Forget about it. And topping the list of no-way, no-how foods: anything that was considered good for you.
Among my friends and neighbors, it was generally accepted that having picky eaters was just one more challenge of parenting, akin to putting them to bed at night without incurring complaints, and getting them dressed for school with matching socks and all the right books in their backpack. We shrugged our shoulders and shared amusing stories about how our kids would inspect every inch of the plate to make sure there was nothing funny or weird about the meal. (In fact, one woman told me her son was so good at ferreting out an alien taste that she had named him her food detective.)
What we didnt share with each other was how deeply it bothered us that our kids werent getting the nutrients they needed. Their health was in our hands, and we were letting them down because we didnt know how to counter their irrational and unreasonable food aversions. Rather than trying to fight a losing battle against a kid making an Ick! face, we caved. People who didnt have kids just didnt understand. They would say things like, Why dont you just make them eat it? Youre the adult. And we would think, You just cannot imagine how hard it is to make a child eat when he doesnt want to.
I had some notion that parents beyond my community must have picky eaters, but until I wrote my first book I had no idea how far-reaching the problem really was. As The Sneaky Chef hit the bookstores, I made appearances across the country and on national shows like the Today Show , Fox & Friends , iVillage , and more. Thats when I realized I had struck one gigantic nerve. I was flooded with feedback: hundreds and hundreds of emails blinked in my inbox, bloggers took up the cause, and my friends and neighbors flagged me down to discuss the nights menu.
This book, in part, is an answer to all those parents who reached out to me. It not only expands your Sneaky Chef recipe repertoire but addresses tricky issues like cooking for kids with food allergies, helping kids who need to watch their weight do so without giving them a complex, and making special occasions happy and healthy.
Indeed, many of the letters from (mostly) mothers boiled down to the fact that parents saw only two options before them: berate their children into eating healthy or let them follow their own preferences and consume foods that were entirely wrong for their growing bodies. Some choice! As with my friends and me, these people hadnt been able to express how much they had been losing sleep over the issue until they discovered the solution The Sneaky Chef offered. I have struggled with this for years, one woman wrote, until I read your book. Thank you so much for showing me recipes that finally provide nutrition for my kids! They now eat veggies in nearly every meal without even knowing it. I finally have some peace of mind.
If I could meet Missy I would give her the hugest hug. Because without this book I would definitely not have the kids I have today.
Tina E., Australia (mum of six)
And whether we recognized it or not, the unhealthy diet we were letting our kids get away with was beginning to make us question ourselves as mothers. I received many emails that echoed this one: I struggled for years to get my child to eat green vegetables. I couldnt stand the idea of letting her grow up without having a single salad. Feeding is an essential part of mothering, and finallyI feel like a good one.
Still, some have wondered if pulling a fast one on your kids is in the Good Parent Rule Book. Personally, I consider sneaking healthy ingredients into meals not only to be the ultimate magic trick when all other methods have failed, but one that should be performed with other approaches to enhance their effectiveness. What this means is that sneaking does not release us from the responsibility of serving fruits and vegetables or educating our kids about the value of a healthy diet. I suggest talking to kids about healthy food all the time; I just dont see any point in fighting about it. If the dinner table is a war zone, then the combatants wont listenor learnfrom each other. Once Mom and Dad know that the meal has spinach in it, they can wait and talk about the importance of leafy greens another time when the kids arent fidgeting in their seatsor worse, digging in for an epic battle of wills.
A Little Bit of Heaven Blog
The only way to make sneaking a way of lifeand many readers told me that they now live from this bookis if you can find a way to do it at almost every meal.