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

Comment: I bought this book and deceptively delicious. So far this book is proving to be much better! Have tried the mashed potatoes, meatloaf and cocoa chocolate chip pancakes. All turned out really good! You cannot even taste all the healthy ingredients in the recipes!

Comment: This book does not give any calorie/nutrition information. All the recipes require purees that are a lot of work. The purees themselves are not all that nutritious as they require boiling which gets rid of most of the nutrients. Adding 2T of puree to an entire recipe is hardly worth it.

Comment: I received this book as a gift. I've read through the whole thing, but have only tried one puree/recipe so far (the baked ziti, very tasty). This book is just what it claims to be--a method for tricking super picky eaters into ingesting some nutrients. My 17-month-old is a relatively adventurous eater (knock on wood), so I don't need to hide fruits and veggies. But I figure one can never eat too many vegetables, so I anticipate using some of these recipes as a complement to, rather than replacement for, fruits/veggies in their more traditional forms.

I think the obvious solution to storing the purees is to freeze them in ice cube trays. A cube is roughly 1 oz, so two cubes equal 1/4 cup. Why on earth would you want a freezer full of tiny tupperwares toppling over whenver you opened the door? Ice cube trays are a pretty standard method for freezing homemade baby food and breastmilk. Not sure why the author doesn't suggest it here.

Also not sure one needs to buy a new appliance, as she urges. I made the orange puree just fine with my handheld blender.

My quibble is that the recipes don't seem very well tested. For example, the baked ziti recipe instructs you to "toss" a full pound of cooked pasta with sauce in a shallow baking pan. Sounded like a recipe for disaster to me, so I mixed it in the deep pasta saucepan, then transferred it to the baking pan. I also followed the amounts exactly as specified in the recipe and ended up with far more ziti than would fit in one pan. Not a problem, I just made a second pan, but these little errors could really fluster a less experienced cook (like my husband). It makes me wonder how much I'll need to tweak and annotate the other recipes.

Overall, adding fruit/veggie purees to common recipes is not rocket science. If you're a relatively savvy chef and parent of a picky eater, you could probably get by without this book. I certainly wouldn't buy it new. But there are a few recipes I'm looking foward to trying.

Comment: Kindle version is frustrating, because most recipes reference other recipes by PAGE NUMBER. Too bad the Kindle doesn't have page numbers and that they did not add hot links to the other recipes (this would have be a PERFECT use of a digital format). It is a true nightmare navigating this book as the Kindle version. We have enjoyed the recipes we managed to trudge through and make. I would get the paper version if I had it to do again.

Comment: I am very pleased with the Sneaky Chef. My 2 year old grandaughter will not eat vegetables very well. The recipes are great in that you actually sneak in healthy vegetables and fruits. I will use it even more as she gets older because many of the recipes are for older children. You have to do a little work at first, but when you get your "core" puree's and juices made it is very easy to keep the meals prepared.