This recipe is very basic and therefore adaptable.  I am just giving you one example but there are many variants. It’s really more a principle that I am sharing here, which is, if you want to get vegetables into your children, have soup at lunch time.  My little boy has been harder than his sister to wean, and I cried a lot weaning her.  One of Jackson’s top three annoying-to-feed features is he doesn’t want to eat vegetables or fruit so I have to adapt.  I make fruit puree which he eats every breakfast with yogurt and five days out of the week we will have vegetable soup at lunch time.  This may change when we get into the hotter months.

I generally use three vegetables from the following; carrot, swede, leek, parsnip, sweet potato, pepper, tomato, squash, pumpkin.

This is the soup for the next few days (I make a batch and don’t worry if I serve it two days in a row – it’s only lunch).

(I will try to improve my food photography!)

Recipe:

Olive oil or butter

1-2 cloves of garlic (chopped)

3 carrots, 1 parsnip, 1/2 a swede (chopped)

450 ml of chicken or vegetable stock (don’t use the low salt stuff, your child eating vegetables is the priority here)

Heat the fat for 20 seconds in a pan. Add in the garlic and stir for two minutes. Add all the vegetables and stir for one minute. Add the stock and bring to the boil.  Once bubbling, turn down the heat so it simmers and leave for 45 minutes until the vegetables are nice and soft. Turn off heat and leave to stand for 10 minutes.  Get a stick blender and blend until smooth and thick (you will need to use your judgment on if you need to remove or add liquid before you blend).  Serve with granary bread or toast.

Notes.

I make two batches a week and I make it in the morning so I can have the first lunch from it on the same day it’s made.  Then I put it in a Tupperware in the fridge and heat up portions for lunches later in the week.

I make it in the morning, after breakfast because once it’s all in the pan simmering, I can go off and get the children ready, have a shower and tidy the kitchen in the time it’s cooking, then I just blend and leave it on the hob when we leave the house for the morning.

It’s great to take out, heated in a flask with a couple of slices of buttered bread.

If you use parsnip, add a teaspoon of sugar as it can be bitter.

On the days when we have had vegetable soup, if my one year old swerves the vegetables served in the evening meal I don’t sweat it because I know he’s had three already that day.   That said I always offer him at least 2-3 more vegetables within his evening meal, because one day he will choose to love them or, once he understands words, he will be forced to love them, whichever comes first.