When you all get your copies of the “Bariatric Foodie Holiday Survival Guide” you’ll read all about a concept I call “covert cooking. (Side note: For folks who snagged one of the now sold-out Survival Kits, your copy of the book is coming with your kit! Otherwise, I know the rest of you are planning on ordering it from Amazon, right???)
Long story short, covert cooking is taking a dish your family loves and making it healthier but doing so in a way where it looks, smells, tastes and feels like the original. And then not telling your family (at least not when they are eating it) that it’s healthier. I go into the topic in more length in the book (as well as why you have to be REALLY careful how you change holiday recipes!) But the bottom line is this: to successfully covert cooke, you have to make smart (and believable) swaps.
This pie is an example of covert cooking, although an accidental one. What I mean by accidental is that I didn’t go into this with the intention of withholding any information from my children. They know me. They know a pie is never just a pie.
The accidental part came in because they got to the pie before we had any conversation about it. They tasted it and decided maybe, for once, I just let a pie be a pie and made pumpkin pie (my kids have such discerning pallets that they can quickly and easily tell a pumpkin pie from a sweet potato pie from sight alone).
Little did they know, the pie was not made out of pumpkins but out of these:
Check out my Basset Hound, Benji, trying to photo bomb!!!
“What the HELL is that, Nik?”
I’m glad you asked. I have a friend. Her name is Margaret and she runs a blog called "Feed My Sleeve." Margaret is everything I want to be someday because she produces a lot of the food she and her hubby eat on her very own property! This year she had a bumper crop of round zucchini and earlier this summer she gave me some. One cool day I decided to roast them and noticed the insides of the larger ones were similar to butternut squash in color, texture and flavor. So when she gave me another boatload of them recently I decided to see if I could pass the flesh from the zucchini off as pie.
The above picture is the result.
For those of you who don’t happen to have access to a round zucchini, the same could be done with the yield of butternut or acorn squash. Just make sure it’s orange! Here’s the rest of the recipe, including an option to make a protein pie (although this one is not).
Nik’s Sweet Veggie Pie
Ingredients:
- 15 oz. of some sort of orange veggie (Veggies in the gourd family work best: butternut squash, acorn squash, etc.), cooked soft and pureed
- 1 c. no-calorie sweetener of your choice (I used Splenda)
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- A “splick” (about 1/16 tsp.) salt
- 1 heaping tsp. pumpkin pie spice
- 1 egg
- OPTIONAL: 2 scoops (doesn’t matter the size) vanilla or unflavored protein powder
- 12 oz. fat-free evaporated milk
- 9-inch pie crust of your choice (Or you can go crustless. Since I made this mostly for the kids, I just got a storebought crust. If you choose a no-crust option be sure to spray your pie plate down well with nonstick cooking spray!)
Directions:
Pre-heat your oven to 350. Make sure to pre-heat it for a while so that it is HOT when you are ready to put your pie in.
If you’re using a prepared pie crust, place it in your pie plate and pre-bake the pie crust for about 7 minutes. Remove to cool and set aside.
In a mixing bowl, combine pureed veggie, vanilla, salt and pie spice (and if you are using protein, add it at this stage) and mix well. (Tip: I usually use a hand mixer on low speed.)
Add egg and mix again until fully incorporated. Finally, add condensed milk and mix thoroughly. Mixture will look soupy.
Pour mixture into pie shell and place pie plate on a baking sheet and into the center rack of your oven.
Bake for 55-60 minutes or until fully set. Transfer to a cooling rack and allow it to cool one hour before cutting.
The verdict? The kids liked it! I still haven’t told them it's squash. My youngest would not mind. My oldest would feel a DEEP sense of betrayal (she’s the proverbial “picky one”). I think I’ll keep it to myself. But this recipe is definitely a keeper for Thanksgiving. I’m going to make one (and probably use acorn squash unless Margaret’s zucchini plant yields anything else), put it on the table and walk away very fast!
The verdict? The kids liked it! I still haven’t told them it's squash. My youngest would not mind. My oldest would feel a DEEP sense of betrayal (she’s the proverbial “picky one”). I think I’ll keep it to myself. But this recipe is definitely a keeper for Thanksgiving. I’m going to make one (and probably use acorn squash unless Margaret’s zucchini plant yields anything else), put it on the table and walk away very fast!
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