Deceptively Delicious: Book Review

I feel like I’m a little late to the party to just be posting about Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook Deceptively Delicious now, after she’s been on Oprah and all over the blogosphere and even my mother-in-law sent me the Amazon link to the book and asked if I wanted her to buy it for me. (Very nice offer, but thanks to the Parent Bloggers Network, I got to brag that I already had a review copy.)

Although I wish I could get Julian to eat more green vegetables, I don’t think we have such a veggie issue in my house as the one that Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld describes. Apparently even Jerry isn’t so keen on eating his greens. Anywhose, her simple solution is, in my eyes, a brilliant idea: Toss a little pureed veggies in anything you make in order to boost the nutritional content. Your children (and husband) will be none the wiser, and you will relieve yourself of the obligation to prepare veggie side dishes and constantly badger everyone to eat them.

I’m totally down with this plan and don’t have a problem with the “deceptive” part. And I like Jessica’s “system” whereby you do your purees on Sunday night, store them in ziplocs, and then reach for them whenever you prepare a meal– even breakfast. Since we are just a few months away from starting up all that puree business for the baby, I am sure I will find myself scooping a large spoonful of carrot puree into Julian’s mac and cheese. In fact, I had homemade carrot soup in the fridge when I read through the book, so I deceived Julian that very night with some secret sauce in his pasta. I heard no complaints. Then I hid some sweet potato in Saturday morning pancakes, as called for in her cleverly named Pancakes (with Sweet Potato) recipe. I did hear a complaint from my husband. “Too much sweet potato,” he said.

“What am I doing?” I began to wonder. We eat sweet potato as a side dish all the time– with no fussing. Why am I hiding it? Julian will eat edamame, carrot sticks, avocado chunks, and a few crisp green beans at a time. Sometimes he’ll eat cherry tomatos, and he’ll eat pretty much any fruit. It’s unlikely, therefore, that I’ll be wholeheartedly jumping in to the DD system.

My father-in-law wondered, “Haven’t moms been doing this since the beginning of time?” since his wife, Julian’s grandma is constantly adding wheat germ, flax seed, and chickpeas to whatever she cooks. Hmmm, he might be right, but the thing is that my generation of moms has not been momming since the beginning of time, so we have no idea. We need to learn how to cook from Oprah’s guests. Enter Jessica Seinfeld.

The design of the book is very cute, and of course, since the Seinfeld’s have a little boy named Julian, who — from the illustrations — looks pretty much like my Julian, I was instantly charmed. Mostly however, I find the concept of the book inspirational, so even if I never get around to using her recipes step-by-step, she’s already taught me a few tricks. Anytime there’s a puree laying around, into the dinner it will go. Thank you, Jessica.

Links:
> Marketing Mommy actually tested the recipes
> The What’s Cooking blog ponders if this idea is actually too deceptive
> Buy Deceptively Delicious on Amazon.com