Vic Borrill (Brighton & Hove Food Partnership)
Serves: 6
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 35 mins
Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
700g carrots, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
3cm of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
100g red lentils
700ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 tbsp chopped coriander
Veg Portions / Serving: 2
Cheap and easy soup to make, plus super healthy.
Method:
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Fry the garlic, onions, ginger and carrots for 5 minutes.
Add the red lentils and stir in.
Dissolve the stock cubes or bouillon powder in the water and pour into the pan. Bring to the boil.
Stir, turn heat low, and cover the pan. Simmer for about 25 minutes, or until all the vegetables are soft and the lentils are cooked
Remove the pan from the heat and blend the soup using a liquidiser or stick blender.
Taste and add seasoning if necessary. (For a more chunky texture, leave some of the soup un-processed.)
Add the chopped coriander and serve.
Engaging Kids
Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.
Kids in the kitchen
Help older kids chop the veg and stir the ingredients in the pan as they cook. Let younger ones very carefully help to blitz the soup, keeping a close eye that the hot mixture doesn’t spit (better yet, allow it to cool before blitzing). Have little ones roughly chop the coriander with scissors and scatter over the top of the soup.
Activities
While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.
Sensory
Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.
Serving
The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.
Vic Borrill (Brighton & Hove Food Partnership)
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