Veggies on the sly.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Spaghetti sauce with pureed cauliflower, kids?

How about brownies with spinach for dessert?

If you think getting your children to eat their vegetables is hard, imagine trying to interest them in this stuff.

It's a snap, insists Missy Chase Lapine, who believes what kids don't know will help them become better eaters.

"Kids eat with their eyes, so visually it's very important to make the food look very kid-friendly and familiar," says the author of "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals."

Lapine says her book is not just about creating "visual decoys" with recipes such as Spaghetti and Meatballs with Eight Hidden Veggies and Two Whole Grains, but also about creating tastes and textures that work for kids.

It became a hot topic recently when Jerry Seinfeld's wife, Jessica, released a nearly identical book, called "Deceptively Delicious," that led some to accuse her of stealing the idea.

Lapine hasn't gone so far as to call Seinfeld a plagiarist. She has said the book made her feel "uncomfortable" and took issue with recent barbs thrown her way by Jerry Seinfeld on "The Late Show With David Letterman."

"It's never a good thing to be personally attacked by anyone," she said. "Frankly, it was the readers of (my) book who noticed the striking similarities."

Whatever the case, Lapine acknowledges that the idea of tricking kids into eating healthful foods is one of the oldest parenting tricks in the book.

"The concept is not new. What I've done is created a how-to manual," she explains.

Lapine's methodology relies heavily on a food processor. She starts most of her recipes by pureeing easily available foods such as broccoli, cauliflower, spinach and blueberries and then adding them to sauces and batters. One of the first lessons she learned when she started experimenting years ago was that the color of food matters.

"I tried to add a green puree to tomato sauce and I found out very quickly that green plus red equals brown," she recalled.

Lapine also tried working with beets.

"They make everything such a beautiful color," she said. "I mixed it up into ice cream, it smelled really bad and (my kids) wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole."

Lapine has since learned to mix different purees with like-colored (and like-flavored) foods. She hides a green puree (spinach, broccoli and peas) in meatballs and other proteins, and adds purple puree (spinach and blueberries) to brownies, pancakes and chocolate baked goods. For red sauces, she adds an orange (sweet potatoes or yams and carrots) or white (cauliflower and zucchini) puree.

A culinary professor at New York's New School and a former publisher of Eating Well magazine, Lapine spent five years refining her purees and testing her recipes. The idea was inspired by her youngest daughter, Samantha, a picky eater with food allergies and an overly active gag reflex.

Samantha, now 7, and her sister Emily, 9, served as test eaters. Lapine's first creation, a banana-based frozen yogurt with avocado and frozen berries she called Breakfast Ice Cream, is still a part of her home repertoire.

In general, Lapine says, hiding vegetables in foods makes entrees less caloric and less fatty. She points to a recent Pennsylvania State University study that found the practice was beneficial to children's overall health.

But not everyone is as enthusiastic about Lapine's methodology. Some argue that by disguising wholesome foods, children are missing valuable lessons about what makes for a healthful meal.

"I'm not sure that (the method) will lead to a lifelong love of vegetables," says Laurel Allender, a registered dietician at Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Allender says there's nothing wrong with being a Sneaky Chef as long as parents don't forget to teach their little eaters about fruits, vegetables and whole grains in unpureed form.

"I think you can involve kids in picking out food and going to the farmer's market," she says. "I think it's good to emphasize fresh and local fruits and vegetables and (the value) of eating in season."

Allender also advises parents don't give up after one failed attempt at introducing, say, Brussels sprouts, into their child's diet. She says most kids are simply slow to adopt something foreign.

"It just takes a while for their taste buds to accept a new food," she explains. "You might have to offer it 20 times. If they don't like it the first time, just keep trying it."

But why waste all that time force-feeding your child, Lapine's legions of fans would argue. They credit the Sneaky Chef system with, quite simply, changing their lives.

One reader on Lapine's blog called the book, "a picky-eater's-mother's answered prayer," another branded it "brilliant for children AND adults."

"Thank you for making it okay to be sneaky!" one fan wrote.

For anyone who thinks the Sneaky Chef's methods will prevent their kids from developing a taste for real vegetables, Lapine suggests serving steamed broccoli, spinach or some other healthful side dish, a practice she employs in her own home. That way, the pressure is off for kids to "eat their veggies." They're already getting them in their entree.

"A lot of parents are trying to get their kids to eat and forcing new foods on them at the same time," she says. "You can't teach under fire. Nobody can learn under fire."

At least one institution believes in Lapine's methods. The Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, a top-ranked center for pediatrics, recently adopted a menu based on the Sneaky Chef book. Lapine hopes to launch a new line of Sneaky Chef food products and she has expanded on the concept in her follow-up book, "Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on Your Man (In the Kitchen!): Hiding Healthy Foods in Hearty Meals Any Guy Will Love," due out in March of 2008.

The new book contains recipes for meatloaf, mashed potatoes and chocolate cake, all nutritionally enhanced with vegetables many men wouldn't think to eat on their own. Lapine says devising sneaky recipes for guys was much easier than it was for kids.

"I was able to be much more liberal with the flavors and spices and that helped me disguise things," she says. "Kids want it to be more bland because they only eat plain stuff, but guys like spicy foods. If you put enough peppers or garlic in (the pot), you could hide a Mack truck in there."

Sneaky Chef Purple Puree

This puree can be added to pancakes and chocolate baked goods such as the Sneaky Chef's famous Brainy Brownies.

3 cups raw baby spinach leaves (1 cup frozen chopped spinach, or frozen chopped collard greens)

11/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (no syrup or sugar added)

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 tablespoons water

If using raw spinach, thoroughly wash it, even if the package says "prewashed." Bring spinach or collards and water to boil in a medium pot. Turn heat to low and allow to simmer for 10 minutes. If using frozen blueberries, rinse them under cold water to thaw a little, and then drain.

Fill the bowl of your food processor with the blueberries and cooked spinach, (or collards) along with the lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of water. Puree on high until smooth. Stop occasionally to push top contents to bottom. If necessary, use a second tablespoon of water to make a fairly smooth puree.

This amount of spinach and blueberries makes about 1 cup of puree. Double the recipe if you want to store another cup. It will store in the refrigerator up to 2 days, or you can freeze 1/4 cup portions in sealed plastic bags or small plastic containers.