Walking around the streets near Columbia University in Manhattan on a beautiful spring day, I stopped abruptly when I saw the sign. It said "Tom’s Restaurant" on one side of the building and "Restaurant" on the other. I stared for a moment or two, then grabbed the arm of another chaperone and said, "Wait. We have to stop. Do you recognize that place?" As soon as she saw it, she knew.
She, too, was a loyal fan of the Seinfeld series. She knew it was the home of the "Big Salad," the place where George, Elaine and Jerry frequently met and discussed sometimes controversial (but mostly mundane) topics. Where George griped about everything under the sun and Jerry pondered imponderables.
Without hesitation, we went inside for lunch and noticed that the interior looked nothing like it did on the show - completely different floorplan, different art on the walls (this place was covered with signed caricatures and photos of the stars of the show), different condiment containers and different booths.
But the hostess? She could have come straight out of one of the sitcom’s episodes.
Here’s the scene. The restaurant is quite small, with three rows of booths, very narrow aisles between them and a counter. One booth could be described by restaurant people as a "six-top" which means it seats six adults, all the others seat four.
We arrived before the lunch rush, so most of the booths were empty. We were a group of eight, two chaperones and six kids. Or, if you look at it the way I looked at it, two groups of four people each. I had been traveling around Manhattan with the same three girls, so I was expecting to sit in a booth with the four of us (as we had done for every other meal).
The hostess had a different idea.
With a gorgeously strong, rapid fire Manhattan accent, she asserted, " ‘Ow menny ya got? Ya got eight? Right here! Come ohvah heaah. You can sit heaah. Eight. Right? Yeaah. It’s peh-fect. We’ll just pull up a chair, put it on the end. Theaah ya go. The rest of ya sit…ya know…theaah."
She gestured matter of factly toward the six top and looked into my eyes as if it were an order, not a suggestion. I hesitated…knowing, first of all that certain girls didn’t want to sit together and the way they were about to squeeze in would have resulted in elbowing, arguing and an all around unpleasant dining experience. Just try to shove tween girls together who don’t like each other very much, you’ll quickly discover just how nasty they can get. It’s a catty, sarcastic phase.
But the hostess could care less.
She scowled at me with growing impatience and a "WTF are ya doin’ ya frickin’ tourist? Sit ya a@# down already!" kind of look, still motioning for us to fill in the six-top booth.
Meanwhile, some of the girls had climbed out of the six-top, others had climbed in, and my three girls had opened menus, sat down and started getting comfortable in a four top in the next row. They then said, "We’re sitting here ," without even looking up from the menus.
Our lovely hostess, now completely annoyed with us, tried one last attempt, "Wha? Ya got eight, right? Right here. Whaat’s wrong with this? This is fa eight. Right heeaah. I got a chair. I’ll put the chair heeaah. You’ll be fine."
I explained that we were fine as we were. No thanks, we would just sit separately. It was better that way. For us. You know, the customers . We grumbled among ourselves as if we were taking cues from George Costanza himself. "Do you believe that woman? Expecting us to squeeze in there?! Ridiculous! What was she thinking? Well, I’m not doing it."
Lovely hostess rolled her eyes, threw up her arms, sighed and said, "Fine. Whatevah."
But it wasn’t fine.
She came back again and said, "Ya know…if we get busy…now you’re takin’ up two booths. You can all fit in that one booth. It’s fa eight. Y’can sit ova theeaah (motioning again in the direction of the six-top)."
"Uh, well, sorry, we’re already here. It’s early. We’ll probably be gone before you fill up. If we have to move later, we will. But we’d rather stay here. For now. Okay?" I offer in my most sincere, midwestern (please let this end soon) voice.
Just as the drinks arrived, another group of five (that happened to also be part of our main group) walked in the door. Five. All of the girls were tiny, young tweens, so they dove right into a four-top booth. But the hostess would not have it. She walked over to the half of our group sitting in the six-top and commanded them, "Yor gonna haffta move. We gotta bigga group heeaaah. Ya gotta move."
They packed up the drinks, menus and personal belongings and sat in the four-top booth behind us.
I had to laugh. Would there be any better way to enjoy the restaurant from Seinfeld? Thanks, lady. Now can I get that Big Salad?
Do you believe that there are people who bake and people who cook but very few who do both?
I love to bake. Brownies, cakes, any kind of dessert. Give me a recipe and I’ll follow it meticulously (and make something that comes pretty close to the desired result). I just follow the recipe.
But cooking? As in, look in the pantry and the fridge and make something for dinner, drawing only from your experience and creativity? I’m in awe of people who can do that. It’s so foreign to me, that it’s like another world. I’m amazed by people who can throw together food and spices and make something delicious, just because they know what should go with what. I wish I could do that.
In fact, when I stopped working to stay home with my kids full time, I looked at the dinner hour like it was that giant Basilisk in Harry Potter.
Dinner was something I had to tackle, to take on, to conquer. Years later, I would still shudder when the kids grew old enough to ask, “Mom, what’s for dinner?” Ugh.
I’ve taken several different approaches to the dinnertime challenge over the years. I went through a phase where I was inspired by some of my friends (who are all great cooks) and actually spent hours poring over cookbooks and surfing the web, selecting recipes and making grocery lists, spent another hour or two going around to various stores to get all the ingredients, then made a schedule for all of it (what to cook when, with what, and which item to prepare first). Monday through Friday, I’d spend a good chunk of time making different meals and, night after night, I’d face lukewarm (if that) reactions from my kids.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I was trying way too hard. I felt discouraged and rejected. I’d expended all that effort and nobody even enjoyed the food. I soon stopped the planned menus, but I pulled back a little too far and started to rely on take-out food, mac & cheese, and pizza.
Then a friend told me about these assemble-your-own-dinnersplacesthat are popping up all over the country. Have you been to one of these? The idea is that you choose 6 or 8 or a dozen entrees, select the date and time you want to come in to their store, pay for it all in advance, then go in on your chosen day, assemble the ingredients, take it all home in a cooler, store the entrees in your freezer and cook each of them whenever you choose.
I went to a few of these pseudo kitchens several times, but my family quickly tired of the food and insisted they would rather “just have something simple.”
Okay…simple is good. I turned to the internet to look for “simple” recipes, then decided I would stick to basic, basic food (like grilling up some chicken, making mashed potatoes and sauteeing some green beans). But…each week I would make one special dinner. One week my son would choose, the next would be my daughter’s turn.
I had the kids write lists of the kinds of things they really liked to eat. My son wrote that he would be happy if we could alternate days of burgers and pizza. Uh huh. Well, that would not work for the rest of us — most of whom don’t like eating meat and some of whom don’t like pizza. I explained how the list was not like an order form. I wasn’t going to make whatever they wrote on the lists. Rather, I would occasionally make their favorites. The rest of the time would be standard fare, like tacos, chicken, pasta, and quesadillas with soup.
When the time came to make the burgers, I hesitated. I don’t like eating burgers at all (haven’t had one in probably about 15 years) and, for some reason, I don’t even like to make them. When I have tried to make them, they’re just not that good. I’m so lousy at just throwing things together (which is why I relied on the recipes from cookbooks & websites and, when that failed, had to turn to take out and those pseudo kitchens). I was operating at the extremes. I went from knocking myself out with dinnertimes that were overly elaborate (or way too labor intensive) to ordering pizza.
So I turned to the web. It’s known as a place that’s great for recipes of all types, right? I wondered whether I could find simple, everyday recipes and somehow make dinner more enjoyable for all of us. I found many blogsthattalked about food, some that simplified cooking (a little too much, perhaps), many that captured images of food in gorgeous pictures, and many that offered fantastic, healthy recipes.
And I found a site called Hot Moms Cook — everyday moms (who happen to be gorgeous!) making everyday food and sharing some of their kid friendly recipes.
I spotted their recipe for Burger Bites. My kids have always like food that looks good and are especially fond of diminutive food, so these little burgers seemed promising.
Generally speaking, I’ve had pretty good success when I do interesting things with the presentation of the kids’ food — I’m talking about simple changes like blue food coloring in water — not elaborate things like making smiley faces into grilled breakfast meat like this one over at Pete’s place (how’d he do that?!) or making amazing pictures out of the foam in hot chocolate (as the baristas at coffeebars from Seattle, WA to Marblehead, MA are trained to do).
As an aside, for you coffee lovers out there, if you want to see a master in action, check this out:
Oh, how I wish I could do that…
But, back to the burgers. These little burgers looked cute and seemed fun to make.
The Hot Moms Cook recipe modifies a basic burger recipe. The teeny tiny buns are made from basic Pillsbury breadstick dough that you cut into little rectangles and, while they are baking, prep the meat to put it in the oven. Burgers? In an oven? Yes, but trust me, it works. You add a few things to the meat, then spread it out in a 9×13 pan. Bake it, add cheese at the end if the kids like it, then slice it up (quickly) and add the beefy rectangles to the bread rectangles and voila! a platter of burger bites. It might seem like more work than your average burger, but maybe you can get the kids to help. It’s worth it.
I’m telling you, the kids devoured these little gems and my son said, “Mom! This is the best thing you’ve ever made for us!” Even I ate them and they were delicious! Add some veggies with crinkly fries on the side or, for little kids, some of those smiley potatoes and you’re good to go.
If you haven’t visited Hot Moms Cook, go on over there for some new kid-friendly recipes. I’m feeling so grateful to have found them.
My time on the web helped me to see what “simple” means. Now I’m thinking that I’ll still use things like Epicurious, but only once in a while. Everyday dinners can be burger bites or chicken & mashed potatoes or spaghetti. I may never be a creative cook, but at least I can let go of the pressure and stress to make all those lists and spend all that time creating weekly balanced menus.
Great. Gives me more time to practice my latte art.
If you like Epicurious, you’re going to love an amazing new feature provided by their partner, Tastebook.
If you aren’t yet familiar with either one, here’s the deal. Epicurious is a comprehensive site for cooks, filled with recipes from Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines.
The site includes a terrific search tool that can be used many ways. For example, you could enter the title of a recipe that you saw in Bon Appetit. Or you could enter a few items you have on hand and it will spit out pages of recipes with those ingredients.
So, let’s say that one day you’re wondering what to make for dinner and you have plenty of, say, carrots, onions and chicken on hand. You’d enter those ingredients and find 440 recipes, like these:
Pot Roast with Caramelized Onions and Roasted Carrots
Curried Chicken Soup with Carrots
Poulet a la Farmiere (Gratineed Chicken in Cream Sauce)
Or, if you want to make a dessert and you have chocolate, sugar, eggs and cream. Enter those words and you’d get 757 recipes on 76 pages with things like this:
Chocolate Pots de Creme with White Chocolate Whipped Cream
(I’ve made that one — it’s fabulous and really easy!!)
But, maybe you don’t have white chocolate…so try a different, yet similar recipe like this one:
You can also search for recipes to find situation-specific recipes. For example, if you want to make baked french toast that you prepare the night before then put in the oven in the morning (say, for Christmas morning or New Year’s Day), you could make something like this:
I found that recipe by going to the advanced search tool, then selecting “Breakfast“ in the “meal/course” category, then clicking “submit” to get 813 results. Then I narrowed the search results by entering “cranberries” and “french toast” in the box on the left that says “search within results.”
Well, you get the idea…
If you want to rely on member reviews, you can prioritize your findings by fork rating (the rating system used by members), which I find to be helpful and fairly reliable. Member reviews give you a sense of how well the recipe really works and usually include helpful suggestions. You can also select specific reviews that you find particularly helpful and print them (along with the recipe) for your files.
Those are just a few of the features of Epicurious. If you’re more of a weekly meal planner, you can browse the gazillion recipes on the site, then save your favorites to your recipe box (which you get just by registering on the site). And, yes, they have a category under “Recipes & Menus” called “quick & easy.”
Here’s where it starts to get really good…
After you have recipes saved in your recipe box, you can then use this new service from their partner site called Tastebook and print up to 100 recipes in a beautiful, hardcover cookbook.
Yes, you’re going to pay for the cookbook, but you’ll get a personalized, custom made cookbook AND you can include some of your own favorite recipes. So, if you have a family recipe handed down from Aunt Sue, you can type it in, add a photo (hey, while you’re at it, include a picture of your kids eating Aunt Sue’s Ambrosia!), and voila! right next to La Bette Noire, you’ll see Aunt Sue’s Ambrosia!!
I am so excited about the possibilities of Tastebook. I could make a personalized cookbook to give to my best friend (who loves to cook and is quite proud of many of her recipes but also loves many of the Epicurious recipes). You could give it to your daughter as she goes off to college so that she’ll have the recipe for your amazing chili (and a picture of her eating it). These books would also be amazing gifts for newlyweds or new parents, filled with easy to make recipes or kid-friendly treats.
You select from 40 gorgeous covers and customize it with your choice of title. Here’s an example of one of the cover choices:
It says “Stealthy Healthy” right now, but you can customize that cover to make it say whatever you want. You can keep trying different covers until you find the one you like. Stealthy Healthy is one of the many cookbooks that Tastebook has created (that particular book includes 50 recipes). You can select any (or all!) of those 50 recipes to include in your customized cookbook. Other cookbooks you can select recipes from include some created by online bloggers (!), like 101 Cookbooks and Simply Recipes.
You don’t have to select all 100 right away, you can do some now and add more later. The book functions like a binder, so you can snap it open and remove or add pages. That feature is helpful for cooking, too.
It’s really amazing! If you like to cook (or know someone who does) you just have to check out the website to get a better sense of the possibilities.
Personally, I can’t wait to create my first custom cookbook!
On Oprah recently, I saw Ralph Lauren’s daughter, Dylan, talking about her love of sweets and her numerous candy shops called Dylan’s Candy Bar. Three levels of candy, candy from around the world, candy from your childhood, just look at it and you’ll be amazed!
If you want to give a unique valentine’s gift to someone who isn’t necessarily nutty about chocolate, I think these little items are great finds!
Here’s the swag bag she gave to the members of Oprah’s studio audience. It includes things like a “Lollipop Tackle Box, gummy bears, gumballs, Smarties, Tootsie Rolls, Laffy Taffy, Mary Janes and a limited edition Pez Princess set and can be yours (or your daughter’s (?)) for only $50:
Or, if you’d like to surprise your wife with a whimsical trinket, you can get a candy charm bracelet for that same price:
I was so amazed at all the adorable items on this website, I just had to include a few more for you.
That’s Dylan’s Candy Bar Makeup Bag Set (above) for all of you travelers that still like a little whimsy (I’m looking at you, Missives) and the little gummy bear bag (below) for less.
Forget those refrigerator cinnamon rolls stuffed into a cake pan…
This little gem is truly a great find.
It takes a little extra planning (before the kids can dive in and start devouring) but it’s well worth it. It’s called Monkey Bread and it’s a mix that’s easy and fun to make. We made the chocolate chip/banana version (by Lollipop Tree). I found it at our Whole Foods store.
Here’s how it works. You prep a 9″ cake pan with a smear of butter, then melt 4 T of butter. While it’s melting, you dump the mix (in a large silver packet) into a bowl and add water. Stir just until blended. Open the other silver packet (filled with raw sugar) and dump that into another bowl.
Let the kids help! Grab little clumps of the sticky dough and roll them around in the sugar. Place the sugared balls into the prepared cake pan. When it’s full, pour the melted butter all over the top, then put it in the oven to bake for about 35 minutes. When it’s ready, take it out and let it sit for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix some powdered sugar, more butter, vanilla and a little milk together until smooth (the precise measurements are provided on the box). Pour this glaze over the top of the monkey bread and you’re done!
The result is a delectable, relatively healthy breakfast treat that tastes so much better than all those other refrigerator-to-oven breakfast foods.
Image from Lollipop Tree’s site.
Please note, I get no compensation or anything from this review, I’m just passing on this info because I think it’s a great find!
My son rarely gets carried away with compliments for food or beverages (unless you count Junior Mints or really good chocolate like Moonstruck Chocolate as food). For the last several years, however, he can’t stop complimenting a certain hot beverage we’ve discovered.
Let me back up…I should start by explaining that we love hot chocolate and, while I admit to having enjoyed Swiss Miss (powder mixed with hot water) as a kid, we now tend to only have hot chocolate made with milk. It’s not because we’re snobs or have anything against Swiss Miss, it’s actually due to our kids’ deficiencies of calcium and our doctor’s urging us to find a way to get more milk in their diets. Our first few attempts were pretty much failures, because we just tried to use milk instead of water with standard powder brand. I decided to turn it into a quest…a challenge…a game to find the best hot chocolate (made with milk).
By best I don’t mean most exquisite a la Marie Belle or Moonstruck Organic Double Dark, I mean good enough for daily consumption and to have my kids asking for it day after day but not unreasonably expensive.
We went through Godiva, Trader Joe’s brand cocoa, Whole Foods brand cocoa, Ghirardelli cocoa (too chalky), Hershey, the Williams-Sonoma brand with shredded chocolate pieces that you melt on the stove (they really liked this one but I found it too time consuming and labor intensive for everyday use) and many more. Then, last winter, we received a catalog with a picture of a jar (the only brand that used a jar, not a tin or packet) of hot chocolate mix.
A friend of mine (who is a very good cook) recommended a company called Penzeys (based in Brookfield, Wisconsin) for its amazing spices. She insisted that the spices were so much more flavorful and pungent than any you could buy in a market and that I had to try them. She was absolutely right (especially about their many types of cinnamon). But I hadn’t heard about their hot chocolate until I received the Penzeys catalog.
As I looked at that jar on the cover, I had a feeling that this one might be different. It said, Penzeys Hot Chocolate Mix with a Hint of Mint. “Hmmm,” I thought. “We like chocolate covered mints, but what’s important for good hot chocolate is the chocolate flavor; it can’t have too much mint. Well, a hint of mint sounds ideal. I’ve got to try this.” I ordered one jar, as well as a jar of Penzeys plain hot chocolate mix.
When it arrived, the lid had been broken in transit and the mix was all over the box. I called and explained and expected no sympathy but was surprised by what I heard. The woman on the phone (with a lovely midwestern accent) was understanding and gracious and said they would send out another jar right away. I appreciated her kindness and proceeded to make a few cups of hot chocolate from the other jar. It was really good. The powder dissolved more fully than other brands with powder and it took much less time than the shaved chocolate (that you melt on the stove). We just heated the milk in the microwave then added a generous tablespoon of the Penzeys powder and stirred. Simple, fast and delicious. The kids gave it a definite thumbs up.
Less than a week later, the Hint of Mint replacement jar arrived. When I made the kids their cups of that hot chocolate, the rave reviews started rushing in. I kept ordering more throughout the cold winter months and we stayed with that brand the rest of the season.
Fast forward to this year. We’re back on our hot chocolate kick and went right to the Penzeys. This year, my son is so enthusiastic about this hot chocolate, he’ll stop in the middle of his lengthy, passionate description (complete with play-by-play) of last night’s football game, look at me and say, “Mom! This hot chocolate is the absolute best ever. There is no hot chocolate better than Penzey’s Hint of Mint.”
A week ago, I purchased Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook, “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Steps to Get Your Kids to Eat Good Food.” Hopeful and eager, I quickly got to work and pureed six types of vegetables and some fruit (using two pots of boiling water), produced over a dozen little baggies of purees, and prepared four different recipes.
After eating Turkey Chili (with carrot and red pepper puree), Tortilla Cigars (with yellow squash and carrot purees), Banana Bread (with cauliflower and banana purees) and Scrambled Eggs (with cauliflower puree), my family announced, “Sorry, but this stuff is honestly awful.” Rats! I was really looking forward to making Gingerbread Spice Cake (with broccoli and carrot puree).
Seriously (or truthfully), I wanted to like this food. Of course, I wanted my kids to like it, too. It seemed like such a great idea! Even Oprah’s wiz doc, Dr. Mehmet Oz, supported it and thought Ms. Seinfeld was on to something. And heck, we are loyal “Seinfeld” fans (of her husband’s old television series on DVD).
But, this whole “pureed vegetables snuck in kid-friendly food” thing? For our family, it’s a total bust. Sorry, Jessica (and Jerry).
Okay, I confess that I didn’t take that first suggested (perhaps most important) step – deceive the kids. In fact, I actually described the concept of vegetable purees being put into kid-friendly food and even disclosed at the outset which veggies I was putting into the food — even showed the kids the recipes (!). Then, when my son heard that I intended to actually make several of the recipes, he looked hurt (and a bit irritated) and asked, “Why would you do that to vegetables? Why would you do that to us?” He didn’t like the idea of moms deceiving their kids. Then when he tried a few of the dishes, he sounded like a food critic from the New York Times (or maybe just a son who felt angry at the notion of parents trying to pull a fast one on their kids). “Mom,” he said emphatically, “I’d much rather have real carrots in this Turkey Chili than this orange…goop you put in it.” Then he told me he would rather eat brussels sprouts than anything I made using the recipes from the cookbook.
Sigh.
Back to the drawing board.
Or maybe to the movies. Jerry’s “Bee Movie” comes out soon…
Okay, this might sound crazy (or like something that you’d expect on an old “Seinfeld” episode), but I was so excited to try the recipes in Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook, “Deceptively Delicious” that I stopped at the store after taking the kids to school and purchased a slew of vegetables. I didn’t have the book with me and I didn’t have a detailed list of ingredients for selected recipes. I thought I’d be okay, though, because fairly early in the cookbook (pp. 28-29) Seinfeld provides a chart of all the vegetables used in the book with instructions on how to steam and puree them (by the way, when you puree the squash or the red pepper, be sure to dry the processor or the purees will be a bit runny). I looked at those pages last night and watched her video on the Oprah website (if you go to that link, just click on “Go in the Seinfeld home” to see the video), so I thought I could remember (generally) which veggies to buy. Well, I knew I already had six zucchini and a bunch of carrots, but I bought more carrots as well as cauliflower, red pepper, spinach, yellow squash and avocados.
I came home and went into pureeing overdrive. I started boiling two pots of water (one slightly later than the other so I could stagger the steaming/pureeing actions), turned on my favorite music and got to work. Before long, I had little baggies of all the above mentioned veggies (with an overabundance of zucchini). Well, as I was deciding whether to put the bags in the freezer or the fridge, I (finally!) realized I needed to figure out which recipes I would make first. I flipped through the book looking for a recipe with “zucchini puree” in the list of ingredients. When I was on page 147 I started to worry just a little. Eventually I discovered that only one of the recipes calls for the zucchini puree — the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. I guess I’m going to be giving cookies to everyone I see (my kids aren’t fans of oatmeal). Well, that’s not such a bad thing…
A bit deflated at that point, I thought, “Okay, I’m eager to get veggies into my veggie-deficient kids, but I need some kind of tool to cross reference the purees with the recipes.” Well, I love making charts, so I quickly put together a handy dandy little tool. This way, if I happen to end up with a bushel of carrots, I’ll know my options. Here it is:
By the way, some of the recipes use two purees, so I suggest that you check the recipes before shopping — no matter how eager you are to make them!
Also, if you’re interested in finding out more about Jessica and her book, I recommend visiting her website or the Oprah website.
Images from Oprah’s website (and my word processing software).
Everyone knows that a big part of being a mom is feeding the kids. When you’re talking about little kids, it’s often a big challenge. It’s a struggle to do it well (i.e., make sure they eat enough veggies and fruit, not much junk, etc). How many kids do you know love vegetables and ask for them, especially at this (Halloween) time of year when all that’s on their minds is CANDY?
So, of course I was intrigued when I heard about a cookbook that claims to provide recipes for great tasting food filled with hidden veggies. The idea is that you puree all sorts of fruits and vegetables so that, when you add them to your recipes, you retain the nutrients but disguise their appearance. In other words, you make pancakes with sweet potato puree or scrambled eggs with pureed cauliflower (which is a great example of a vegetable that my kids won’t let come near their mouths!). Deceptive? Yes, if you don’t tell your kids what’s inside.
Who better to write this deceptive cookbook than a Seinfeld? When my family and I first read about this book we looked at each other and said, “That’s SO Seinfeld!” (Yes, I admit that I let my kids watch certain episodes of our DVD collection of “Seinfeld” and they’ve watched enough to know the humor). Remember the frozen yogurt episode? Elaine, Jerry & the guys discover unbelievably tasty frozen yogurt and can’t believe that it’s supposed to be better for you than ice cream. Then they notice it’s not as healthy as they were led to believe. Well, now Jerry has the real thing! The food in this cookbook is tasty and healthy!
Jerry’s wife, Jessica Seinfeld, calls the book, “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food” and makes no attempt to apologize for her sneaky methods. Her sketched likeness on the cover of the cookbook winks at you knowingly. I suppose if her kids didn’t know about the stealth veggie/fruit inclusion before the book was published, they most likely know now.
I bought the book but haven’t yet made any of the recipes. Maybe it’s because my kids are older than Mrs. Seinfeld’s, but I felt compelled to tell them all about the hidden-veggies-in-the-food concept. I’m not sure whether that will doom the recipes, but I’d rather have them play along with me and be pleasantly aware of the versatility of food.
