Parents tired of all that puréeing have another choice

Remember the cookbooks that advised parents of veggie-shy children to purée them and slip them into all sorts of dishes?

Maybe you bought one. Maybe you tried it. And maybe, after some weeks of cooking and puréeing broccoli, cauliflower and squash and mixing it into brownies and spaghetti sauce, you simply ran out of steam — er, time — and let puréeing go by the wayside.

Now a Chicago-area startup company has come up with an alternative, one that has received the backing of Omaha pediatrician Dr. Laura Jana, co-author of the book “Food Fights: Winning the Nutritional Challenges of Parenthood Armed with Insight, Humor and a Bottle of Ketchup.”

Hooray Purée, all-vegetable purées sold in half-cup packets, now is available in the frozen foods sections of 11 Costco stores in the Midwest, including Omaha's.

The store was scheduled to demonstrate the product Thursday and today.

Jana, whose picture appears on Hooray Purée boxes, will be on hand today to sign copies of “Food Fights” and her other book, “Heading Home With Your Newborn: From Birth to Reality.” Both books, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, are available at Costco.

Jana said she agreed to serve as a medical consultant for the product because it has the potential to help parents get more vegetables into kids' diets. Many people don't have the time to grow and process their own produce, she said.

“You take the best of intentions and make it easier for people to do it,” said Jana.

That's exactly what Vince Mancuso, co-founder of RéeRée Foods, had in mind. His son, then 3, wasn't eating his vegetables. He bought a couple of cookbooks and started puréeing at home, but eventually gave it up.

“We have no illusions of saving the world with this thing,” said Mancuso, a Creighton University graduate with 18 years of experience in the food industry. “We're just trying to give parents a convenient way of increasing the veggie intake for their kids.”

Neither advocates sneaking vegetables into foods, the premise behind several popular cookbooks, including “Deceptively Delicious: Getting Your Kids to Eat Good Food,” by Jessica Seinfeld. Instead of “hiding” the vegetables forever, they encourage parents to eventually tell kids what's in their food — that the meatloaf, for instance, includes carrot purée.

Nor do they recommend that the purées be the only vegetables on a child's plate.

The aim, said Jana, is to expose kids to new tastes with the hope that they'll accept a greater variety later on. Some children get so few vegetables that any addition is an improvement.

“If you stick some (carrot purée) in the meatloaf, it may not be the same as eating 10 baby carrots,” said Jana, who has invested financially in the company. “But they were never going to eat 10 baby carrots.”

Each box of Hooray Purée, which retails for $8.59, comes with 10 packets of purée, two each of carrot, spinach, broccoli, butternut squash and cauliflower. Sample recipes are available on the box and at http://www.hooraypuree.com/.

Jana, who will contribute to a blog on the site, said she has added carrot to a boxed spice cake mix and cauliflower to tuna salad, replacing some of the mayonnaise and sour cream. She plans to try the product at her preschool and child care center, Primrose School of Legacy, to test its potential for institutional food service.

“It's definitely moving in the right direction,” she said.

Contact the writer:

444-1223, julie.anderson@owh.com

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