Tricked-Out Treats

As Halloween approaches, many people enjoy dressing up and attending costume parties. Just as we enjoy changing our appearance and hiding our true selves behind a clever disguise, we can bring the same excitement to our traditional recipes. 

Adding additional nutrition to almost any dish is an opportunity for ingenuity and imagination. With a bit of subterfuge, planning, and creativity you can blend new flavors into the foods your family likes, to offer a tasty impersonation of the original.

When facing a host of picky palates, mealtime can quickly become a suspenseful and scary event for the cook! It is challenging to balance providing nutritious foods while accommodating texture preferences and taste aversions. However, one trick to handling this issue is to add healthy ingredients in disguise. 

Most can agree that we need to continue to offer and encourage fruits and vegetables in their whole, visible state, but adding healthy ingredients to a recipe is, more or less, like adding seasonings. The goal is to create a nutritious and tasty dish everyone will like.

When planning your disguise, whether it be your Halloween costume or hidden vegetable recipes, pay attention to the subtle clues that could give away the presence of healthy ingredients. Coordinating colors is essential to keeping your secret. 

By using riced cauliflower as a low-carb, high-fiber alternative to breadcrumbs, meat and vegetables can masquerade as an ordinary meatball or meatloaf. Consider mixing riced cauliflower in with regular rice or mashed potatoes. Tomato-based sauces best camouflage yellow, orange, and red vegetables that are rich in vitamins and antioxidants. 

Spinach, a great source of iron and other essential nutrients, can be incorporated into fruity smoothies with the help of a good blender. One easy trick for concealing the spinach from the eyes of a picky eater is to mix in fruits like blueberries.

Simple and subtle changes can often improve your Halloween costume. Additions like ball caps and sunglasses often make a big difference. Similarly, blending vegetables into soups and sauces can enhance flavors and make dishes more nutritious. Start with small amounts of the hidden ingredients and gradually increase the quantity as your child gets used to the new flavors, ensuring a smooth transition to healthier eating habits.

Carrots, onion, celery, zucchini, and potatoes are easily kept under wraps in soup stock. These ingredients not only add flavor but also pack a nutritional punch. Start by sautéing the finely chopped vegetables until they are fragrant, then add garlic and seasonings. After that, stir in your preferred broth, stock, or water, bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and let it simmer until the vegetables are tender enough to blend into a smooth broth. Add more liquid as needed to achieve your desired consistency. When your soup base is ready, enhance it further by ‘dressing it up’ with rotisserie chicken, your choice of pasta, and maybe a sprinkle of fresh parsley!

To make a nutrition-packed tomato-based sauce for pasta, pizza, meatloaf, sloppy joes, or chili, consider adding carrots and bell peppers for extra sweetness. Then, balance the sweetness with some earthy flavors by including celery and zucchini. 

Start by cooking chopped onions until they are transparent, then add the finely chopped vegetables and cook for another ten minutes. Next, pour in crushed tomatoes, vegetable stock, and your preferred seasonings. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and let it simmer until the vegetables are soft enough to puree into a smooth sauce. 

Baked goods are the sweetest way to sneak extra nutrition into your kids’ diet. Even the pickiest eaters enjoy carrot cake, sweet potato pie, zucchini bread, banana muffins, and pumpkin treats. In many baked goods, you can replace up to half the oil in a recipe with mashed or puréed avocado. Mash it by hand or use a food processor to achieve an oil-like consistency. 

Try these trendy Black Bean Brownies for a tricked-out treat high in protein and fiber. No one will guess that a deliciously fudgy delicacy is also super healthy.