The Accidental Pastor's Wife

I really, really like this cookbook. It might not be the "in" thing in healthy family eating right now, when the trend is to do more sneaking and pureeing than actually cooking veggies and serving obviously healthy meals. I've had this cookbook about three years and find myself STILL making the Blueberry Banana Pancakes and Have-it-your-way tacos. Their chicken nuggets are probably the best I've ever had, too. The authors' emphasis is to take foods that kids already enjoy, like tacos and chicken nuggets, and include more veggies and whole grains and less salt, calories, and MSG. I find them to be VERY balanced.

I've tried a few of the Deceptively Delicious recipes by Jessica Seinfeld and I've looked over The Sneaky Chef's website. While the Meal Makeover Moms do a bit of sneaking, as in the Squishy Squash Lasagna, most of their recipes focus on encouraging kids to eat healthier so that they WANT to. I'm very fortunate to have good eaters, but it took months of serving green salads at dinner before they actually ate them without complaining or without much prompting on my part. We also had lots of dialogue about why we should eat healthfully. It worked!

So get this cookbook!