Adventures in Cooking for Kids Part 2

I recently talked about what techniques I've been adopting to get more fruits and veggies in my kids. This time, I want to talk about the reality of how that comes together.

I see other people post on Facebook about their meal prepping and how quickly it was done. I hear these chefs talk about how easy it is. Some days it is quick and easy. But not always.

Prep work is messy!

I decided to get my 2-year-old to help me, which was probably my first mistake. In the morning, I made a purple puree, a white puree, and a flour blend from The Sneaky Chef. I spent about 2 hours.

I started with the flour blend, which was just mixing up two kinds of flour and wheat germ. However, I thought I would shake it in the storage container. I then dropped it, the lid popped off, and I had about 3 cups of flour on the floor.

This resulted in a few four-letter words flying out. Luckily, my 2-year-old only added "crap" to his vocabulary.

After sweeping up flour, running the vacuum over the area, and mopping, I moved on to the purple puree, which was spinach and blueberries. My 2-year-old was decently entertained pushing the Pulse button on the food processor.

After that, it was the white puree, which required steamed cauliflower and raw, peeled zucchini. While I prepped the zucchini and cauliflower, my child unrolled all of my labels and wrapped himself up in them.

The pureeing didn't take long, but somehow both my attempts made much more than what the recipe said. I had to do them in batches because I only have a 4-cup food processor.

But I finally got all the prep work done and stored. Really, the whole process shouldn't have taken more than an hour.

Cooking

I had picked two recipes I wanted to make from the Sneak Chef cookbook, but I was too worn out to make them in the morning. After I picked up my 6-year-old from school, we made breakfast cookies using the flour blend I made that morning.

Other than fighting the kids to let me bake the cookies before they ate all the batter, that went well. I did burn the first batch, but we ate them anyway. My kids really like these cookies, which use a lot of cinnamon and less sugar. Plus they have wheat germ and ricotta cheese in the mix, giving them more protein.

After the cookies, I made a sweet potato and carrot soup because it's my 6-year-old's favorite. It's also super easy. I usually make this with whatever amount of carrots and sweet potatoes I happen to have. Just cook sweet potatoes and carrots in broth until soft, then puree and add milk until creamy. You can skip the milk. I flavor it with ginger, salt, pepper, and sometimes a little nutmeg.

This time, I added in some of the white puree from the morning, nutritional yeast, butter instead of milk, and threw in leftover lentils because I was too lazy to cook chicken to go with the soup. We also had to eat quickly to get to Girl Scouts on time.

Although it's often hectic and messy, the prep work is worth it, especially for the time it saves me later in the week. I tend to spend about one or two days a month doing a lot of cooking. We eat great for about two weeks, then it starts to fall off and we eat out or have frozen pizza. I then get motivated to cook again.

If you're interested, Amazon has used copies of The Sneaky Chef for $0.01.

What are your favorite meal prepping tips?