About the Author
Jessica Seinfeld is the president and founder of Baby Buggy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing clothing and equipment to New York's families in need. To date, Baby Buggy has donated nearly two million essential items to New York families through domestic violence and homeless shelters, parent programs and court child centers. Working with more than 80 social service partners, Jessica has made Baby Buggy an integral part of the children's services network in New York City.
She is the wife of Jerry Seinfeld, with whom she has three children. This is her first book.
Message from the Author
I want to thank everyone who has written to me through this web site and by other means in the two weeks since Deceptively Delicious hit bookstores. I have received so many comments, questions and testimonials, it is literally impossible for me to keep up.
I am overjoyed at hearing the stories of people who have successfully employed some of the recipes at their own table. Of course, not every recipe works for every family, so I also appreciate hearing of your unsuccessful adventures too - I have had many of those myself.
I am also aware that some parents disagree with the concept of hiding vegetables in meals for their kids. Certainly, every parent needs to make the best decisions and adopt the right approach for her or his own family. For myself, I would have much preferred that my two picky eaters had accepted vegetables in their natural form from day-one, but after years of alternatively battling and conceding to them, I knew I had to come up with another approach. I chose a safe and tasty alternative to whole vegetables that made sense for them - and it worked for my entire family as well. But best of all, the hidden veggie approach has helped them acquire a taste for the real thing. As she has gotten older, my oldest (turning seven next month!) not only knows what I put into the food, she is also now enjoying whole broccoli, carrots, beans and other good foods (we're still working on spinach).
Many people, however, have posted messages to say that the concept behind Deceptively Delicious - adding pureed vegetables to otherwise ordinary food - is not original. This is absolutely 100 percent true - mothers and grandmothers have been doing it for decades. No one - not me or any other mom - can claim credit for having invented the technique.
HOWEVER, the idea for my book was my own, and every recipe in the book came from my own experimentation, with my own family, in my own kitchen. And it all started with my own "eureka" moment.
I had been interested in the issue of children's eating habits since I had my first child in 2000. My oldest was a picky eater and my second-born adopted some of her reticence as well. As they became even more anti-vegetable, after my third child was born, I started looking for ways to defuse the situation.
Then one day as my refrigerator was filling up with purees for my six-month old, Shepherd, I discovered that these purees could be incorporated into dishes the older children would willingly (and even happily) eat. It was, of course, an age-old technique, but it changed my life, making our meals more peaceful and less stressful, and making my kids healthier.
Enthused by the result, I started feeding the same healthy dishes to my children's friends and their mothers who loved them. Some of them even asked me to send my preparations to their homes. Based on the response I was getting, I toyed for a while with the idea of creating a children's food company that would promote the techniques and ideas I had developed. After further thought and consultation with others, however, I concluded that a better way to spread the word was through a book addressed to families like ours that have the same meal-time issues.
But as a book novice, I had no idea how to present my idea to a publisher, so in April 2006, I was put in touch with a highly respected literary agent (and fellow mother). She helped me develop a formal proposal full of my recipes and helpful tips. We drew up a submission list, and in the second week in June we submitted the final proposal. I went to each interested publisher, met with them, talked about my concept, and in many cases cooked them my food right in their offices. We received some rejections and some expressions of interest. HarperCollins, one of the last publishers contacted (on June 9), was in the latter group.
Two weeks later, HarperCollins made me an offer to publish my book (at home we celebrated with a chocolate beet cake!). From that point, creating the book became my focus. I spent every free moment experimenting in my kitchen, writing up recipes, and revising the text of the book. Of course, I am not a professional chef - and many of my experiments on my family were disastrous - so I consulted with a wonderful chef, Jennifer Iserloh, to help me get correct measurements and food mixtures on all of my recipe ideas. Respected nutritionist (and friend) Joy Bauer agreed to do a nutritional analysis of all the purees and wrote a chapter of the book providing helpful information and tips on nutrition for children. And because I wanted my book to be both useful and beautiful, I hired an expert on book structure and design, Charlie Melcher, and got additional input from many family friends and their kids. The result is this book of which I am so proud.
As for originality, again, I have never claimed that the idea of hiding healthy food in more "kid-friendly" dishes is one that started with me - I certainly know that it was around when I was a child. But the ideas for my book, and for every recipe in it, were my own, and one need only look at my book and compare it to any other one on the market to see that it clearly reflects my own individual approach.
I never saw another book like mine, or even any similar recipes, until well after Deceptively Delicious was published. But I now know of at least three other books that have been written with the same general concept as mine in the last two years. I do not believe any of them borrowed from one another, but rather, as with my book, each author had a similar "eureka" experience to mine and wanted to tell the world.
Those books - The Art of Hiding Vegetables: Sneaky Ways to Feed Your Children Healthy Foods (2005); Sneaky Veggies: How to Get Vegetables Under the Radar & Into Your Family (2006); and The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals (2007) are all easy to find on Amazon.com. In addition, Cookie Magazine has a recurring feature called "Sneak It In" that's full of helpful hints for hiding vegetables and other nutritious items in kids' food.
I'm delighted to know that these other books and columns (and hopefully others!) exist. There is clearly an audience that is craving new ideas for providing good nutrition to children, and there is no end to the possibilities of food combinations one can make using purees. And let's face it - parents need all of the help they can get. I hope many more books along these lines are written and that more magazines and websites take up the cause as well.
Thank you again for coming to my website and for all of your helpful feedback on Deceptively Delicious. I love hearing about all of your experiences in your own kitchens and of your own experiments - good and bad. And, of course, I deeply appreciate your support and ideas.
Jessica
