40 of 42 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, Dec 21 2007
This review is from: Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food (Hardcover-spiral)
My children have been born and raised on fresh gargen veggies. Their appetizer and main course is heavily on the veggie side so I was very interested in this book. But I was very disappointed in the end.
As other cooks below have pointed out, Jessica should have taken more time to ensure that the ingredients and amounts all worked out and were pretty much foolproof before endorsing them.(I wonder if she really used some or just added them from other recipe books on the market!) For years my mother did exactly what Jessica has tried..only my mother perfected the process. (We all think SHE should write a book!) I initially bought the book to add to the couple of recipies I did have from my mother, unaware that she had many more tucked away, until....
....I tried several, including the chicken nuggets and spaghetti. Nasty. Mom came to visit and I showed her the book. Without having to try the recipies she pointed out the flaws in many...including the ones that failed for me. We rewrote the recipies with different healthy ingredients, balanced them and they were successful. So, Jessica's book is full of pen marks. I should change the title because it's not her stuff anymore...it's "Deceptively Grandma's"!!!!
I also agree with another poster's comment. This book is strangely VERY similar to one that sold earlier in the year..and like others my friends have that are a few years older. There are many combinations that work with purees...why did Jessica's book have to be so much a clone of the other one? Interestingly enough the failed recipies seem like the only ones that were not taken from another source. Did Jessica scour the net and other sources for foods made from purees and throw them in a book? Very few are original. I could not find the chicken nuggets anywhere else so that one may have been hers. But again..it was an abismal failure.
So in summary, the book contains recipies that one can find in other books..and several that fail miserably. The only saving grace was my mom's changes. Otherwise the book would not have been worth buying.
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33 of 39 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
I wouldn't buy this again..., Oct 26 2007
This review is from: Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food (Hardcover-spiral)
I have no problem with sneaking a little extra veg. into my kids diets, so I ordered this book and was so excited to try out the receipe's. It is a beautiful book and I like the look of it, however the following are the ACTUAL result I received:
1. Beet pancakes- while the pancakes did turn out pink, they did not cook the whole way through, they were completely raw inside,(I have made many a pancake in my time and have never had this problem)
2. Beet chocolate cake - it was OKAY.. too much work for an OKAY cake.
3. Chicken Nugets- ABSOLUTE DISSASTER!! WAY too much flax meal in the bread crumbs, the broccoli could be seen through the bread crumbs, takes aweful, all burned (I kept having to add more oil to get through the batch) and the end result was greasy, bland and gross.
4. Mozzarella sticks, WHAT A MESS! the cauliflower was very over powering and they tasted aweful. I ended up freezing them over night so they would cook without becoming a melted mess.
5.Spagetti and meatballs - The meatballs were actually really good, I will make them again, the sauce was WAY too watery, I don't know if that's how they eat it in Manhattan, but it was like soup.
So 1 out of 5 worked. I'm not sure that the reciepe's were writen properly because they balance of ingrediant's seems off.
It's too bad they weren't better, I still really like Jessica, but unfortunately her reciepe's aren't very good.
I wouldn't recomend this book to others.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Great if you have alot of time, Feb 20 2012
I found this book to be very helpful with idea's on how to sneak healthy fruits and vegetables in every day items. The problem I find is I don't have the extra time to make all the purees, also recipes I have tried have not turned out as well as the book says. Anyways great if you have the time to prepare and make all these ideas, and take the chance that after all that hard work they still won't eat it.
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