Lie to your children. It's good for them.

I plagarized the title of my blog post which is funny in this case because it's one of the criticisms (among many) that was leveled at Jessica Seinfeld when she published her book Deceptively Delicious. And in general I would have to say that I agree the book is kind of dumb. First of all, it's not really teaching your kids to eat healthfully if you're putting spinach puree in brownies. You're still feeding your kid brownies, which you really shouldn't do very often if you want them to be healthy. Plus, putting 1/2 cup of spinach puree in an entire pan of brownies really isn't boosting the nutritional profile all that much. On the other hand, hey - if you were going to be serving a dessert anyway, at a birthday party or whatever, why NOT put some vegetables into your baked goods? I guess. But, making purees (and baking, for that matter) are not really things I have the time and/or energy for, so the cookbook never interested me much.

Until we started having our produce delivered, that is. And as anyone who has ever joined a winter csa knows, there is pretty much no limit to the amount of beets and kale those people will try and fob off on you. We have gotten to a point where we're trying to put away 2 lbs of beets a week - and hey, I like beets. But that is a LOT of beets. The kale I find much easier to dispatch, but I was getting to the point where I was actually consider trying to use the beets to dye fabric with.

I know. Pull myself back from the edge. But don't worry. Like I said yesterday, I can't find time to shower so I'm not dyeing anything with anything.

But I still have all these beets. And my friend had the cookbook, which is how I ended up making a quadruple batch of these pink pancakes and the kids LOVE them. I use hodgson's mills 100% whole wheat pancake mix and they come out really well. They also freeze really well, so I put 2-3 in a baggie and put them in the freezer and then just reheat them in the toaster for breakfast.

The best part is that I now have an excuse to avoid eating any more beets. They're for the kids!