Let's Hear It For Sneaky Mommas!

After seeing my recent pea-filled St. Patty's Sandwich, Vegan Lunch Box reader Roxy shared this tip: "I like to blend peas into guacamole--it adds more nutrition to the already nutritious dip and you really can't tell the peas are in there. I use about 1/4 cup of peas to every large avocado. Yum!" Thanks, Roxy, I love it! In fact, it inspired me to make a post especially for sharing these kinds of ideas.

Sometimes it seems like the only way you can get children to eat vegetables is to slip a bit in quietly here and there. Kids might also be resistant to eating beans, or nuts, or ground flaxseed, or their daily vitamin. What is a parent to do?

As those of you who have read my book will know, I love getting sneaky! And when it comes to getting healthy foods into reluctant kids, I think a Vita-Mix is a Sneaky Momma's Best Friend. I use mine almost every day to blend vegetables into creamy soups, cooked kale into pizza sauce, even spinach into breakfast smoothies!

Of course, I don't actually lie about what is in my blended concoctions, but even when I tell my son that his favorite black bean soup is filled with onions, zucchini, and peppers, he tends to shrug and keep on eating. I guess it's "out of sight, out of mind", and what he can't see can't gross him out.

What other tips do you have for us desperate Sneaky Mommas (and Poppas)? Please share! And don't worry -- your secrets are safe with us.

Shmoo Review: Benji Bean Sprout Doesn't Eat Meat!

Reviewed by special guest blogger Shmoo.

"Benji Bean Sprout Doesn't Eat Meat!is a kind of neat book. It's about a kid who eats vegetarian and other kids think he's weird because he doesn't eat meat. He eats vegetarian meat. The kids who make fun of him are mean but then they try his food and then they don't think he's so weird anymore. He goes to an animal sanctuary. I want to go to an animal sanctuary some day. I want to see a tiger.

"Vegetarian kids will like this book, or meat eating kids so they can learn about what happens in factory farms and what happens to the animals. Maybe they would lose their appetite for meat, or maybe they would be nicer to vegetarians.

"I have different lunches like this kid. Sometimes other kids wonder what I have for lunches. What was funny was one time this other kid said he liked the smell of my lunch. I like my lunches, too!"

St. Patty's Lunch Box

St. Patrick's Day (coming up on March 17th) is quite the event in the McCann household, with lots of wearin' and eatin' o' the green. Well, we eat green every day, but on St. Pat's lots of things start turning green! Case in point: these St. Patty's Peanut Butter sandwiches from Disease-Proof Your Child. Cooked peas are blended with peanut butter to make a stunning green spread. I added some agave syrup to make it a bit sweeter for shmoo.

Other green goodies include grapes, romaine lettuce with pumpkin seeds and a little shamrock squirt bottle filled with raspberry-balsamic vinegar.

And what would St. Patrick's Day be without potatoes? Here are two Potato Beetles from Vegan Lunch Box, packed with a container of ketchup. Chive antennae and nori smiles make these two very happy beetles.

Verdict: The potatoes were a huge hit, with demands for many more "potato 'polies" (he says he thinks they look like "rolypoly" bugs now) for snacks later. He left most of the salad but finished everything else. 4 leaf clovers. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Pupusas

A Vegan Lunch Box reader named Melissa emailed me a few months ago suggesting that this recipe for pupusas would make a tasty vegan lunch. Pupusas are traditional El Salvadorian corn masa "cakes" filled with meat, cheese, or beans that are patted flat and fried. They are often sold by street vendors in El Salvador and Honduras.

My lumpy little pupusas are filled with refried black beans and cilantro. I must admit I have not yet achieved Masa Mastery; my dough kept tearing and sticking, leaving bits of refried bean poking out as I tried to round the dough balls and pat them flat. Eventually I came out with a few decent-looking pupusas, but even the really ugly ones still tasted good. I packed them with a small container of salsa.

Melissa serves her pupusas with a simple pickled radish slaw, so I followed her lead. This slaw is filled with green and purple cabbage, radishes, vinegar, and cilantro (I'm on a real slaw kick lately, now that I know I like it).

I also made my recipe for Calabacita con Elote (Mexican zucchini and corn) from Vegan Lunch Box. As I revisit some of my recipes with the nutritional knowledge I now have, I'm finding ways to make them healthier. In this case, I steam-fried the veggies with a bit of water instead of oil, then stirred in the marjoram with a tablespoon of Late Harvest Riesling Vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar, sugar and salt. We actually preferred the lighter taste of the white grape vinegar over the original recipe.

To finish the meal on a sweet note I tucked in an organic baby banana and a tangelo. (After taking the picture, shmoo requested that I score the tangelo for easier peeling and wrap it in plastic.)

Verdict: Sadly, this wasn't one of shmoo's favorites, although I thought it made a nice-looking, healthy, well-balanced lunch. He liked the fruit and pupusas and ate them all, but just picked some of the radishes and corn out of the veggie dishes. 3 stars.

Thanks so much, Melissa, for introducing us to pupusas!

Wateroos & Water Bottles

After my recent post on Hint, several readers emailed me with further suggestions for healthy, kid-friendly beverages. One reader recently sent me a link to Wateroos, plain and naturally flavored water in juice boxes.

They sound very similar to Hint, but in a smaller package that would fit in with the Juice Box Crowd at preschool and the playground. Again, I hate to see the wasteful packaging; at least with Hint we are refilling the plastic bottles several times (and still get a tiny "hint" of flavor) before we recycle them. Juice boxes are not even recyclable in some areas.

But still, it's a product I wanted to share for those of you in the midst of the Sweetened Beverage Battle. If it helps your child feel good about drinking water while those around them are sucking down Kool-Aid Jammers, I'm all for it.

I think perhaps the best choice is a cute refillable water bottle, like these SIGG Kids Bottles and Klean Kanteens. We like our Klean Kanteens, but I've heard that the SIGG bottles chip and dent easily. Anyone want to share their experience with SIGGs?

Also, I've been looking for for a long time is a juice box-shaped refillable water bottle. Anyone?

Corrections

Well, it happens to all of us, doesn't it? We all make mistakes, and somehow this one got past me and all the eyes helping me look over Vegan Lunch Box before it was printed.

Last week, with the help of a sharp-eyed cook, we discovered a mistake in one of the recipes: on page 208, in the recipe for Red Rice, you should add 1 ¼ cups water, not ¼ cup. I apologize for any dry, crunchy rice that may have resulted from this inadvertent goof-up!

To celebrate this error coming to light, I have created a brand new Corrections Page on the website (Don't you wish every cookbook had one? I do!) If any more mistakes come to light I'll be listing them there, so check back every once in a while.

Mediterranean Eggplant and Beans

Many people have emailed me asking how they should handle social events now that they are vegan. What do you do when your business meeting lunch is going to be catered? When Aunt Fran invites you to dinner? When your Bible study group is meeting over donuts and pastries?

Bring food. Always bring food. If they tell you you don't need to, bring food anyway. Unless you are absolutely positive about where you're going and what you will have there eat, bring food. Make a dish to share if it is appropriate; if not, bring a fun, well-balanced meal just for yourself.

Because if you don't bring food (as I learned once again last week), you may end up with nothing to eat while all around you are enjoying a feast. This sends the wrong message about veganism to yourself and to everyone else. You may end up feeling hungry and sorry for yourself; your choice may start to feel lonely or isolating. Even worse, other people may look at you and decide that vegans are sad-looking people who eat nothing but carrot sticks.

But bring along a vibrant, fabulous lunch or dish to share and you show yourself and them how fabulous vegan dining can be!

Heeding my own advice, here's a little lunch I packed myself for a recent gathering. In the larger container is a green salad topped with kiwi fruit, almond slices, and strawberry balsamic vinegar (from Trader Joe's).

The smaller container holds a trio of delightful dishes. First I prepared Green Beans & Carrots in a Tarragon Viniagrette from Vegan Lunch Box. By the way, if you're a health-conscious veghead like me, it's easy to cut back on the fat in this recipe; I used just a small drizzle of olive oil as opposed to 2 tablespoons. I also left out the salt and no one was the wiser; Shmoo helped finish the rest of these off with gusto.

Across the happy pink divider is another salad: Cabbage, Apple, and Raisin Slaw from The Vegetarian Family Cookbook by Nava Atlas. I always hated slaw until I tried this one filled with tart apples and sweet raisins; I could eat the entire batch! But I resisted the urge and instead brought the rest to share.

Next to the salads is a ramekin of Mediterranean Eggplant and Beans from Eat To Live. Creamy eggplant and chickpeas taste luscious together with onions and red bell pepper (gee, it's fun to feature foods shmoo would never touch!) I packed this dish in a microwave-safe container in case I wanted to warm it up.

Verdict: It feels nice to be well-fed and taken care of, even when you're the one taking care of yourself! 5 stars.

Road Trip Snack

Our family hit the road last week for a special half-day trip to nearby Spokane (ooh, the big city!) At the last minute I decided our car trip snack was so colorful I just had to take a picture and post.

Our fruit salad for three is filled with banana, kiwi fruit, apple, orange, pineapple, and raspberries. The smaller container carries a travellin' supply of Apricot Date Fudge, one of our favorite recipes from Simple Foods for the Pack. This book contains a fabulous collection of "fudges" that remind me of Date Nut Pop'Ems -- kid-friendly treats made from mashed dried fruits and nuts. I like to keep some on hand for healthy shmoo snacks. These are made from dried apricots, dates, walnuts, coconut, and (here's the key) a squeeze of lime. The dividing paper is keeping my husband's coconut-free fudge separate (he's allergic).

Verdict: We had a great trip! Sadly, I enjoyed our little car snack much more than I did our restaurant meal. I think I'm too spoiled by my own home cooking; vegan choices are really nonexistent sometimes. I ended up eating an iceberg lettuce salad and a plain baked potato. Next time I'm packing the whole meal, darn it!

Full Meal Muffin with Sheese

Last year I started experimenting with an idea I had for a "Full Meal Muffin" -- a main course muffin that contained all the good stuff (a fruit, a vegetable, whole grains, omega-3's, iron, calcium, and protein) and none of the bad (sugar, oil, salt). I experimented several times but never felt happy with the recipe; I found that even one scoop of protein powder made my muffins gooier and denser than I liked.

I decided to toss the whole idea, but several of you emailed me after the book came out wondering what happened to the muffin. I was surprised so many of you remembered! So, back by popular demand, here it is: a new, improved Full Meal Muffin, sans protein powder but still filled with zucchini, banana, apple juice, omega-3-rich walnuts and iron- and calcium-rich blackstrap molasses.

When Vegan Essentials sent out an email recently stating they had just received a shipment of Sheese all the way from Scotland, I knew I had to give it a try. This vegan cheese from across the Atlantic has been getting rave reviews, and I couldn't wait to try my son out on a healthier alternative to trans-fatty Tofutti. I packed a wedge of "smoked cheddar" Sheese with some unsalted rice crackers.

To finish off the meal we have Brussels sprouts, baby carrots (in a tiny orange-lidded container from BentoTV), and a small Pink Lady apple.

Verdict: My goodness, you would think this kid had a Brussels sprouts deficiency, the way he jumped on those sprouts and gobbled them down! The muffin, crackers, apple, and carrots were next. But the Sheese? "Eeew," he said, taking one microscopic nibble and putting it down.

What, is he crazy? Everyone I've given wedges of this Sheese to has been amazed at how good it tastes; it is far and away the best vegan cheese I have ever tried. Of course, I haven't tried Follow Your Heart yet, but this stuff blows Tofutti out of the water. Maybe it's the smoke flavor he didn't like? 4 stars.

Shmoo Review: Winning the Food Fight

Of all the books I've had fun reviewing lately, this one most challenged and defied my expectations. Looking at the cover of Winning the Food Fightby Natalie Rigal, I expected the usual: fun food presentation ideas ("turn an apple into an adorable choo-choo train!"), kid-friendly recipes ("Rockin' Rollin' Rainbow Wraps!"), and some kind of nutritional pyramid.

Instead, what I found was a scientific look into what researchers call the "psychology of taste". How do children's taste preferences develop, and why? What is the effect of gender or age on food preference? What causes children to gravitate towards certain foods and shy away from others, particularly vegetables? Rigal, a researcher and senior lecturer on developmental child psychology at the University of Paris at Nanterre, does a great job of collecting and exploring the vast array of scientific literature on the subject while interposing accounts of her own experiences with her children at the table.

If studies like "Neophobic Behaviors and Appearance Percentages Among Children Two to Ten" are your idea of fun, this is the book for you. (In case you're wondering, 56% sorted out mixed foods, 45% examined their food and 31% grimaced, but only 8% turned their head away.)

The study I found most charming highlighted for me the vast ocean of difference between the food culture of France and the one here in the U.S. In a study done in France on children aged 2 to 3 years during lunch at a day care, cauliflower "was chosen in 51% of the cases when prepared au gratin, in 49% when served with a béchamel sauce". Tomatoes were chosen in 52% of the cases when stuffed, but only 27% when served "à la Provençale". Wow. Where I live, 2 to 3 year olds in day care generally get a choice between the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets or the fluorescent orange mac-and-cheese.

This is not the book to turn to on a busy weeknight when you're wondering what you can fix that the kids will eat; you'll find no recipes or fast-food hints here. But of all the books I've looked at recently, this one has provided me with the most fascinating food for thought.