We have a MOPS meeting tomorrow and along with the normal dishes we are preparing for the buffet for all the mommies we are making some recipes out of the Deceptively Delicious Cookbook.  I haven’t cooked out of this before but I understand the idea is to “hide” good for you fruit and vegetables in various dishes that finicky eaters generally like anyway and fooling them! Ha!!!  I may have to try this on my son, if it’s pizza, he’ll eat it every time!  I have to say his food repertoire is growing but still quite limited like he won’t eat sauce on his spaghetti and he won’t eat anything but plain wheat bread……nothing yummy like the fancy breads…..won’t go near it!

When I was a kid I would have loved to eat spaghetti plain but my mom was a big proponent of try it you WILL like it if not now then eventually.  As a child of this philosophy it does work…..I hated a lot of things growing up (yes, I did the ol’ put it in my mouth and head for the bathroom trick on many occasions and our dog Gabby ate well too!).  I used to hate just coming in the house and smelling Meatloaf……yuck! …..but I  learned to love it and most everything when I got older.

My kids are 3, 14, and 20 and I guess one thing I have learned along the way as far as feeding them goes……mom was right, with my older two I was younger and thought they wouldn’t eat what we ate if it was spicy etc so I usually made them something different.  And to give myself a bit of a break, my oldest daughter just wasn’t a big eater as a small child and my son, he ate very well until he was about 2 then he became kind of a grazer, and looking back I think he drank way too much milk and juice and just wasn’t hungry.  With my youngest she just has always eaten what we eat and it is great!  Maybe it took me a while to figure it out or maybe I can blame the microwave for my bad mothering because without it I probably wouldn’t of prepared different stuff for my older two, not that I did that all the time but enough of the time that my mom would comment about it! sigh…

I am also such a different person…..I am a vegetarian and we are raising our youngest that way, she cracks me up when we talk about food!  Her older brother and sister eat meat so I cook it for them when we are all together and she always asks if it is vegetarian and she knows she is a vegetarian which is good.  She doesn’t get a lot of sweets and just loves fruit and veggies which is good because we would have a difficult time with the vegetarian diet if that wasn’t the case!

I do think my older children have and will survive my bad mothering as far as feeding them goes anyway ! My oldest loves just about everything and is willing to try new things and my son, well as I said, he is growing up and his likes and dislikes are changing.  He is very particular about certain things but I am hopeful he will grow out of it.

I have met in my life several people who just like a few things and it’s really quite limiting cooking for them, I had a friend in high school that lived on hotdogs and tomato soup, thankfully that is not the case in my family and I am thankful once again for God’s grace while we learn along the way!

So, I will let you know how the Blueberry Oatmeal Bars I am making for tomorrow turn out, they have spinach puree in them……hmmmmmmm I love spinach so maybe these will be good……….

Here is the recipe for any of you that would like to try them:

Blueberry Oatmeal Bars from Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld

Pre-heat oven to 375° Coat a 8 x 8 baking pan with cooking spray. In a large bowl, combine the oats, flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, salt and vanilla. Stir to mix well.

Add the margarine and cut it quickly into the dry ingredients with two knives (or a pastry blender) until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Do not overmix – bits of margarine will still be visible.

Set aside about half the oat mixture; press the rest firmly into the pan. Bake until lightly browned, about 13 to 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the preserves with the spinach puree in a small bowl.

Spread the blueberry mixture over the partially baked oat layer. Sprinkle with reserved oat mixture. Bake until the topping is slightly browned, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool before cutting into bars.

Prep time: 10 minutes

Total time: 50 minutes

Makes 12 bars

Let me know what your family thinks!

Grace

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