Sneaky Chef Is Not So Sneaky

I mentioned a few posts back that I was trying out some new recipes from the book The Sneaky Chef. After all that time and energy it was only mildly successful. I first made granola bars, they don't sell rice krispies here but I found some puffed rice cereal at the organic store and that made them really chewy. The kids ate them but didn't love, love them, Ava said they were too chewy.  They totally broke apart into big pieces but I see on the website that if you halve the oil they will stick together better and can be cut into bars. Maybe I will try them again. A lot of work but at least I got some oats, ground flax seed (I used this instead of the wheat germ because I didn't end up finding wheat germ until a week or so later), and ground almonds into them. Then I made the magic meatballs with the green puree (spinach, peas, and broccoli). I am not sure how the woman who wrote the book actually thought you could hide the puree, because the meatballs were so green! Ava was grossed out at first but she loves meat (I used ground turkey) so she tried them and really liked them - they were pretty tasty, I might have to start making them for myself too. Jack looked at them and pretty much said to me, yeah right you crazy woman, you think I am going to eat that green sh*t?!. I froze them so at least Ava can have them for lunch/dinner another day. Then I made the Brainy Brownies using the purple puree (frozen blueberries and spinach). They don't sell chocolate chips here so I had some leftover Hershey kisses that I chopped up and used instead. I could not pull the wool over Ava's eyes with these because her bionic eyesight spotted the minuscule flecks of spinach inside - but shockingly, Jack loved them and gobbled them up! He absolutely loves chocolate (ever since his first time trying it on his 2nd birthday in Paris, he has become obsessed with it and now when he sees anything brown he automatically thinks it's chocolate). I liked them too, so I froze them as well (not sure you can freeze brownies or how they will taste when I defrost them). At least I know how to get some spinach into Jack's system, even if it means loading him up with some sugar and chocolate to do it. I am sure that probably cancels it out? The last thing I made were the Cinnamon Sugar Rattle Snacks, which were just chickpeas covered in cinnamon sugar and baked in the oven. As you can imagine, they were not a huge success.

Jack took one look at them and ran out of the kitchen. Ava was curious so she tried a couple and said she only liked the sugar coating, but not the insides. There is one more recipe that I bought the ingredients for to try last week, Cheesy Animal Crackers which uses a chickpea puree, whole wheat flour and wheat germ -but I was doing all of this cooking and baking (on top of the eating program) so I got burnt out and I needed to take a break. Maybe next week!