It wasn’t until after The Great Brownie Experiment that I realized that the cartoon on the cover of “Deceptively Delicious,” depicts Jessica Seinfeld’s plate of brownies beside a cutting board with spinach and carrots. Indeed, these are the two “secret ingredients” in the truly scrumptious brownies. (It felt just a tad bit naughty to dump spinach on top of the gourmet chocolate I had just melted.)

Of course the brownies are long gone; eaten quickly with enthusiastic vigor.

We’ve sampled rice balls made from sweet potato and broccoli. The kids have devoured banana muffins that include peanut butter and cauliflower. I finally got a chance to eat butternut squash pasta that wasn’t prepared in a restaurant (and it looks like the artificial kid-enticing yellow variety it is meant to mimic.) The turkey-carrot meatloaf was a surprising hit: the meat-adverse Cat actually asked for leftovers the next day! I should note that in our case, the meatloaf contained no tomatoes. Instead, I used the Feingold Diet’s “Un-Tomato Sauce” and “Un-Tomato Ketchup” which use a combination of beets and carrots to create a “tomato” look and pseudo-taste. Even with this substitution, the recipe worked.

The basic program for “Deceptively Delicious” is to add vegetable purees to otherwise straightforward recipes. No fancy techniques necessary. Although the purees can be made the same day as the meal in question, the best strategy is to create a bunch of purees ahead of time: some remain in the refrigerator, while others are frozen for later use.

It took me about two hours to create a collection of purees: cauliflower, broccoli, sweet potato, butternut squash, carrot, and spinach. My poor blender is angry at me, but this cements my decision to get either a new food processor or a replacement bowl (or ten) for my existing processor. Because my blender was less than perfect, I had to add a bit more water than Seinfeld suggested. Still, the purees came out nicely.

I tasted several of them and was shocked that they were delicious as-is. I didn’t understand how to really prepare vegetables – clearly - before this book! The Cat is ecstatic that I now know how to prepare a butternut squash puree since the frozen-in-a-box version is currently sold-out at Whole Foods (and very expensive.)

As I made some of the recipes, I wondered just how much of an impact a vegetable puree would have on a recipe. Most purees are added in only half-cup increments. So for twelve PB-cauliflower-banana muffins, each muffin has 2 teaspoons of cauliflower. That isn’t exactly a serving of vegetables, right?

Well, not exactly. But the purees are concentrated. The aforementioned delectable brownies had an entire bag of baby spinach in them: that stuff wilts down pretty small! Vegetables have a bunch of water in them, so even as I added back some during the pureeing process, I still ended up with rich, condensed vegetables. So a half cup of a puree represents a much larger portion of raw or traditionally prepared vegetables.

Plus, some vegetable is better than none.

Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to organize myself the way Seinfeld has: she apparently purees once per week as she plans out seven days worth of meals. Everyone eats at precise times, and she even serves different courses at each dinner. However, I admit that planning the purees ahead has enabled me to make some fairly fast and tasty meals from scratch.

* See my Flickr set that includes photos of some of the meals

* Purchase Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food from Amazon.com