Sneaky

This is the first year that we have grown zucchini. Whoa! I never knew one plant could produce so much. I hate for it to go rotten even though it does add variety to my compost pile. So I have been a little sneaky lately. Pretty much everything I have cooked the last couple of weeks has had pureed zuchini in it somewhere. The sauce for Hawaiian Haystacks, the sauce on supper on a slice, sloppy joes, lasagna, spaghetti sauce, crepes, smoothies, pancakes, german pancakes, mashed potatoes, brownies, shepherd's pie, chicken and broccoli casserole, mac and cheese, salsa, and the list goes on. It's amazing where you can hide this stuff! I just start out with a little and see how much I can get in there without anyone noticing. It works pretty well and I am very pleased to know that my kids are eating it. I also do this with carrots, sweet potatoes and cauliflower. I got the idea from the book The Sneaky Chef but I've just adapted to my own usual recipes. The kids get a little suspicious when you start making a whole bunch of "new" recipes.
Another idea that I got from Mandy is to substitute mashed up black beans for hamburger in just about any recipe that calls for ground beef. There are a few reasons I started doing this
1. I have never really liked the texture of ground beef
2. Black beans are way healthy.
3. Beans are cheaper than meat
4. From a food storage standpoint beans are super easy to store
5. It is super fast and easy if you use beans from the can (I prefer to cook my own beans because it is cheaper and I can control the sodium but I do keep a few cans of beans in the pantry)
6. It is a great way to cut back on the meat in your diet.
Some of the successful recipes I have done this with are lasagna, sloppy joes, shepherd's pie, supper on a slice and I have a few more planned. I usually use about one cup cooked beans for 1lb of hamburger. The beans double their mass when cooked so 1/2 cup dry =1 cup cooked. Once they are cooked I just mash them up a little with a fork (more depending on how hard I'm trying to hide them) and put them where the hamburger would usually be. I have to admit we are bean lovers in our family but in most of the recipes you can't even taste the beans and they kind of end up looking like hamburger in the food. Another good thing is that the more you eat beans the better your body gets at digesting them.