Wednesday, November 28, 2007

stealth veggies

This is a term we kick around a lot at EatingWell. Our readers are often looking for favorite family meals made healthier, so we developed a bunch of tasty, healthy recipes that have extra veggies hidden inside! It's great for lowering fat and sneaking veggies into kids' meals—sometimes you can't even tell the difference!

The idea of "stealth veggies" is a little funny. I mean, the whole idea of learning to eating healthier is learning to appreciate and crave those ingredients that are good for you—and learning to mistrust those ingredients or foods that are detrimental. It's definitely a learning process. If kids think they're just eating mac & cheese, rather than mac & cheese with spinach, then left to their own devices, they'll probably just eat plain old mac & cheese. Cause they just don't know any better.

Still there's something so satisfying about eating a meal that tastes naughty—but really isn't! And though I don't have any kids, I'm often trying to get Colin to eat healthier foods. Recently, I made Southwestern Cheese Paninis (glorified grilled cheeses) for him and some of his chicken-wings-eating friends and none of them could believe they were actually healthful and made up of mostly veggies. They loved them! Healthful or not, it's one of my favorite quick dinner recipes. I always double the amount of carrots and zucchini, because I love them. And the trick is finding a good bread that stands up to the moisture. (I like honey oat.)

So, if you like to play this game of hide the spinach under the cheese, here are some other "stealth veggies" recipes to try:

Penelope

1 comment:

Emma and Kevin Kouri said...

Hamburger Buddy rules! You don't even need the meat, because the veggie puree makes an awesome thick sauce. I threw in a head of cauliflower and some celery too, and doubled all the veggie amounts.
We also used the colorful whole wheat pasta, so it was very pretty.

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