The story you told about your family was funny to me, because that’s how everyone tried to get me to eat vegetables when I was a kid – cheese, creamy sauces, sugar, etc, and I HATED all of it. I still remember my grandmother’s shock when I blanched at her maple-syrup-roasted carrots. My parents finally figured out that I would eat all sorts of vegetables if they were plain and raw. The other flavors and texture combinations overwhelmed me. I think learning to love vegetables is a matter of your personal tastes and of learning to cook them WELL – whether plain or fancied up with sauces, no matter what ingredients you prepare them with. (Now I adore veggies – whether it’s simple blanched broccoli or an asparagus and celery root gratin – and I think learning to cook well was the major factor.)

Sure, if you’re going to eat pancakes anyway, slipping a little sweet potato into the pancake batter is fine, why not? I put cubes of roasted butternut squash in my homemade mac and cheese, because I love the flavor, and I like that it gives me some extra nutrition as a bonus. But I think the two books encourage a mindset of going out of your way to bake brownies and cookies, feeding them to your kids (or eating them yourself), and thinking that you’ve gotten all sorts of nutrients in and that the brownies and cookies have become healthy foods. They haven’t, and a few teaspoons of spinach puree in a brownie (which is what it comes out to, if you do the math) isn’t adding nutrition to anyone’s diet, nor is it teaching anyone to enjoy vegetables. I especially don’t see these books as being very useful for an adult who’s trying to learn to incorporate adequate servings of vegetables into their diet to improve their health – you simply can’t do it that way.

Interesting discussion about the latest spate of “getting-kids-to-eat-veg” books. Today I just got mail from the great local publisher, Sasquatch Press. I was immediately drawn to a book illustrated by my favorite illustrator, so naturally, the book itself must be good, right? May be worth a look-see:
http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Whole-Family-Cooking-Foods/dp/157061525X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246405625&sr=1-1

I grew up in a family that drenched veggies in butter, cream sauce, cheese sauce, etc. The upside of this is that due to all that tasty nasty sauce, I ate lots of veggies, and never really had the aversion to them that a lot of kids from “healthier” families had. For years, I only ate broccoli with cheez whiz. But as I grew up, I would occasionally try it without, and now I generally eat it bare, or sauteed in olive oil and garlic. Tastes do change, but once a child gets dead-set against a food, it takes some work to reintroduce it.

So, if a kid is going to eat pancakes anyway, why not toss in some sweet potatoes? That little ingredient may just well wind up being a gateway drug to the wonderful world of veg.

It sounds like you’ve been doing really well. I’m glad that you’ve been able to find out just how much dairy causes problems for you. In the future, you needn’t suffer intestinal pyrotechnics just for cake! Dairy-free cakes can (and should) be just as delicious as dairy-filled ones. I often make vegan cakes even though I eat dairy now. Cheese is the thing that’s really irreplaceable. ;) For me, I’ve found that when I food makes me feel really horrible and I’m avoiding it, the less and less I actually WANT to eat it, because I feel so much better and I don’t want to feel crappy.

I’m SO HAPPY for you about the anxiety stuff. How really, really awesome that is.

Congrats on the anxiety reduction! I’m sorry we weren’t able to make it on Sunday, but Alexander was soooo sick this weekend. :( We would not have done well with a long car ride and he would have been very cranky and sad and sick all day. MORE picnics must happen.

I’m so sorry that dairy and sugar are still the evil monsters bent on destroying our sweet Hollie from the inside out. :(

There is another one, with the same basic premise, but the one i own is th above. I’ve tried one or two recipes and they seem to be pretty good. But what might be really interesting to you is the pure number of things that she manages to put pureed vegetables in. Without following the recipes, i’ve taken a hint from that approach and now make pancakes with some sort of pureed something in them, and mac and cheese is really easy to add some pureed something to, as are an awful lot of baked goods.