Deceptively Delicious Part 2 - The Program

I can officially say we have been on the Deceptively Delicious plan for nearly a week and it has been quite the journey so far. We have ventured into the realms of whole wheat, organic, lean, and vegetabley meals and it's been fun, but admittedly more work than I am used to when it comes to cooking. I keep expecting it to take me less time to cook each night, but our dinner time has slipped from about 5:30 to 6:30, just because the unfamiliar meals have taken longer to cook. I'm sure that next months meals will take less time to prepare just because I'll know what I'm doing better. Anyways, maybe I'm giving to much meat before milk.... Let me start at the beginning.

"The Program" This part of the Deceptively Delicious plan is all about the shopping, stocking your pantry with healthier staples (like brown rice, whole grain flours, pastas, bread crumbs etc.) and making the veggie purees. Just making my menu for the month and shopping list took much longer cause these are all new recipes and counting up how many vegetables I needed to buy to make the right amount of purees was a bit tricky since they don't give you a conversion chart in the cookbook. I'll include my own underneath the pureeing part for anyone who's at all interested...

Here's my menu (I'll put all the DD recipes in red):

1. Balsamic Chicken and Mushrooms (not DD, or a kid pleaser, but Adrian and I thought it was yummy), Buttered Noodles and steamed spinach
2. Tacos and Pumpkin Cookies (thanks for the recipe Mendy!)
3. Chicken Nuggets, Annie's brand Mac and Cheese, and salad
4. Stuffed Peppers (my own recipe but I added pureed carrots), sauteed zucchini and mushrooms, and hummus and pita chips (Adrian did admit there were maybe just a few too many vegetables in this meal:))
5. Chicken Tetrazzini, sauteed carrots, and Chickpea Chocolate Chip Cookies
6. Crockpot Roast, Mashed Potatoes, gravy and carrots
7. Pita Pizzas and salad
8. Rice Balls, broccoli and pumpkin bread
9. Chicken Salad Pita Sandwiches, veggie chips, carrots and Ranch Dip
10. Pene Bake (mine again and a freezer meal, but this one has shredded carrots in it) and broccoli
11. Lasagna (need to use the Stoffer's one we have in the freezer before it goes bad) and salad
12. Leftover lasagna and Brownies
13. Hamburgers II, veggie chips and apple slices
14. Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole (mine, but I'm going to add pureed cauliflower and use whole wheat egg noodles) and green beans
15. Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and chicken noodle soup
16. Pasta w/ Bolognese Sauce and peas
17. Parmesan Chicken (this is a Sneaky Chef recipe which is a book very similar to DD), whole wheat spaghetti and marinara sauce and broccoli
18. Sloppy Joes and whole wheat pasta salad
19. Creamy Potato Soup and pumpkin bread
20. Apricot Chicken, brown rice and peas
21. Sweet Potato Pancakes, Scrambled Eggs, and chicken sausage
22. Macaroni and Cheese and carrots
23. Spaghetti and Meatballs and asparagus

Side Note: The reason there are only 23 is that I don't cook on Saturdays.:) Saturday is always a FFY or "fend for yourself" day which usually equals Subways or frozen pizza. I think we all need an off day and when we're talking about cooking fairly involved meals every other night with this DD plan, I think it's important.

Making the Purees. This took a while. I got a new and quite wonderful rice and vegetable steamer from Costco - it's Aroma brand and I love it. I also got a great food processor from Jen (thanks!), so I was all ready last Saturday night to make all my purees for the month, but it ended up taking 2 evenings to make them all. Steaming and pureeing the spinach took the longest just because you pile so much into the steamer and then it wilts down to practically nothing for you to puree in the food processor. Getting 4 cups of it took FOREVER. Next month I think I'll try broccoli in more dishes cause I'm sure that won't take as long and in many of the recipes you can use either spinach or broccoli. When I was all done I did feel very "virtuous" though (as Jessica Seinfeld calls it) whilst looking over all my purees in their cute little baggies - I froze all of them in 1/2 cup portions in little snack size ziplocks. (See picture up top.) It's been really easy to just grab whatever one I need, run it under hot water, snip the corner with a pair of scissors, and throw the purees into the recipes. I ended up with 6 bags of pureed carrots, 6 bags cauliflower, 2 bags yellow squash, 8 bags sweet potatoes, 8 bags spinach, and 13 bags butternut squash. Whew... If it sounds like a lot of work, well it was, but normally DD suggests making your purees a week at a time. I'm just a nut and would rather do a months worth at once, I guess it's the "once a month cooking" in me still trying to express itself.:)

My Vegetable Puree Conversion Chart (this is what I've found out so far)

• Cauliflower, 1 head = 3 cups puree

• Yellow Squash, 1 medium yellow squash = 1/2 cup puree

• Butternut Squash, 2 lb. bag pre-cut butternut squash chunks = 3 cups puree

• Sweet Potatoes, 20 oz. bag pre-cut sweet potatoes = 2 cups puree

• Spinach, 40 oz. bag baby spinach ( 2 1/2 lbs) = 4 cups puree (and about 2 hours of your time:))

• Carrots, steamer basket full of baby carrots = 3 cups puree

This post is getting long and I'm sure those interested would really just like to know how the "deception" is going over on my 4 "tasters" so I'm going to continue in the next post, Deceptively Delicious Part 3, on how it's been.