Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts

Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals Review

The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals
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This book is truly amazing. I have two children who won't eat a mini-carrot between them, and they are now downing veggie after veggie without suspecting a thing!! Here is the funny thing- it works on my husband too! He claims he doesn't like sweet potatoes, but he has eaten them in so many things now- I just wait and tell him afterwards (haha, guess what you just ate?!). Do I feel guilty about sneaking veggies? Not at all! Whatever I can do to help my family be healthier, I would do in a heartbeat. I have a couple of hints- first of all, buy all of your veggies at once and spend about 3 hours one afternoon once per month making the five most common veggie purees. Pour them into individual serving size freezer bags and then put all of the little bags into a gallon bag (one per type of puree), label them, and you are good to go! This is much easier than trying to puree veggies for each meal, it would become so time-consuming that you would be tempted to change your mind at the last minute and make something easier (and less healthy). I grab a bag out of the freezer, quickly defrost and then stir it in with the kids mac n' cheese, chocolate pudding, and all sorts of other "treat food" that all of a sudden become vitamin-rich dishes. I also pre-make some of the breading and flour mix too, and keep them vacuum-packed...it really simplifies things at dinnertime. Likewise, I make the breakfast cookies in a triple recipe, and save them and freeze them for a quick, easy and healthy breakfast. The meat recipes in this book are also excellent- the sloppy joes, meatballs, and the meatloaf- as well as the baked ziti and the pizza- are especially fabulous. This is the first book that I have felt compelled to write a review about, but I felt I absolutely had to do it! We have been eating almost exclusively on recipes from this book for a month now and we all feel so much healthier. Kudos to Missy Chase Lapine! Thank you!

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Parents will do almost anything to get their kids to eat healthier, but unfortunately, they’ve found that begging, pleading, threatening, and bribing don’t work. With their patience wearing thin, parents will “give in” for the sake of family peace, and reach for “kiddie” favorites-often nutritionally inferior choices such as fried fish sticks, mac n’ cheese, Pop-sicles, and cookies. Missy Chase Lapine, former publisher of Eating Well magazine, faced the same challenges with her two young daughters, and she sought a solution. Now in The Sneaky Chef, Lapine presents over 75 recipes that ingeniously disguise the most important superfoods inside kids’ favorite meals. With the addition of a few simple make-ahead purees or clever replacements, (some may surprise you!) parents can pack more fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants in their kids’ foods. Examples of “Sneaky” recipes include: No Harm Chicken Parm Power Pizza Incognito Burritos Guerilla Grilled Cheese Brainy Brownies Health-by-Chocolate Cookies Quick fixes for Jell-O(R)

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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Cleaner Plate Club: Raising Healthy Eaters One Meal at a Time Review

The Cleaner Plate Club: Raising Healthy Eaters One Meal at a Time
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I have not written a review before but I just cleaned the dishes and I wanted to brag, because my kids ate my cooking. I am not a confident cook. I get overwhelmed by dinner time, I have such guilt that I am just scared to cook, even for my children. The Cleaner Plate Club is probably my 6th kid-oriented cook book. Anyway, I was drawn to it by the title, the colors, the easy to follow sections. Even so, I can let a book sit on my shelf for months before I try anything, but this time, I just hunkered down and made a meatloaf! I was surprised by what a difference their attitude made. I found it less scary to try the meatloaf because they have a way of letting you screw up and still feel like you are doing it right(?) seriously. I feel very grateful for this book. It is really disarming and fun. I think these women speak to me, not down to me, and my very chaotic life. The food is interesting, simple, so far very tasty and dare I say forgiving? I recommend this to anyone who is a working mom, like me, and looking for a more contemporary and real approach to cooking.

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Thursday, July 21, 2011

Dinner for Busy Moms: Easy Strategies for Getting Your Family to the Table (Simple Solutions for Families) Review

Dinner for Busy Moms: Easy Strategies for Getting Your Family to the Table (Simple Solutions for Families)
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Dinner for Busy Moms is the perfect companion guide for any busy mom or person for that matter..
Not only did I smile as I read it, I related to author and almost felt like
she knew my life and knew exactly what strategies I needed to get dinner on the table. Totally
user friendly.. mine has stayed in the kitchen on my cookbook shelf, and is the only cookbook I have
opened in the past week!!

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How do you improve your family's health and relationships, save money, and raise happier kids who get better grades and are less likely to do drugs? Family dinners! These easy strategies will get your family back to the table.

Jeanne Muchnick, mother of teenagers, is a lifestyle editor and writer.


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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater Review

Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater
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I finished this book today and gave it to my husband so he could read it while on a business trip. I am already regretting that decision because I won't have Hungry Monkey in my hands again for 6 whole days. As soon as I read the last page I wanted to start over again with some little sticky flags in my hand to mark recipes I wanted to try and passages where Amster-Burton says specifically that kaiten sushi is ideal baby food. But no, I was all, "This book is hilarious. It's about cooking and kids and Seattle. You're going to love it. Why don't you take it to LA with you?" And now I can't make dumplings or cornmeal pizza crust until Friday. If you know me at all, and you might not, you'll understand why these four reasons alone merited my five-star rating of Hungry Monkey:
-Amster-Burton writes about Seattle and makes me feel like an insider, even though I live in Bellevue;
-he references Bread and Jam For Frances multiple times, which is possibly the best book ever written;
-he got a 5 on my humor rating scale, meaning I was laughing out loud to myself AND making my husband listen as I read funny parts aloud;
-the way he talks about food and feeding his family is equal parts Anthony Bourdain and M.F.K. Fisher, which is no easy feat.
What I was drawn to most in this book is the author's respect for both his daughter and the food they make together. Their relationship as depicted in the book is really quite lovely and illustrates that one does not have to dumb down conversations, expectations, ideas or flavors just because one lives with someone who happens to be a toddler.
And, on a personal note, as I sat in a nearly empty restaurant today and waited for our order that I could SEE on the warming tray for over 15 minutes (including one child's order of mini hamburgers and grapes...yawn) while my own toddler got increasingly flappy and bouncy in her high chair, I thought about our last visit to our favorite sushi place where she happily ate her fill of tamago sushi and edamame as soon as we sat down. Then I thought about Hungry Monkey and realized that I'm glad to have its message, its spirit and its recipes to guide me through these next several years of eating, cooking and throwing food on the floor.

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