Share your child-friendly recipe and #win

Getting children to eat fruit and vegetables can be quite a task. I remember those heady days of weaning when my little Boo would eat anything.

-Fast forward to now and, while she still loves all kinds of fruit, vegetables can be a bit of a nightmare to get in her.

The ubiquitous peas and sweetcorn are obviously ok and on the menu. Cauliflower is, at a push (I’d get a grateful wriggle if I ate cauliflower when I was pregnant so I think she still likes it) and the odd piece of carrot but that is it.

I still put other types of veg on her plate, I will not give in but, some clever downright devious behaviour is sometimes all that will suffice.

I am a firm believer that Boo should eat what we do and that we all have a balanced and nutritious diet made with fresh ingredients that I have prepared myself.

Not only does preparing yourself mean you can control the salt and sugar content (we all know we eat too much of this) but you can sneak extra vegetables into meals in disguise. I quite regularly chop vegetables up very small and add them to all sorts of dishes from shepherd’s pie to mashed potato.

Boon, the bright and funky kids tableware range from Tomy, has teamed up with Hello Fresh, provider of home delivered fresh food boxes, offering all the ingredients you need to prepare delicious meals. No need to think about what to cook, it’s all done for you.

Parents are being asked to share their own favourite toddler meal recipes and a selection of the best entries will be put into a handy leaflet as inspiration for all parents and you get the chance to win £100.

Delivered veg boxes are a great way of trying out new vegetables and we have been a fan for a while. They last longer than supermarket vegetables and enable you to try veg you wouldn’t normally-like purple cauliflower. I am not joking.

Hello Fresh go a step further and enable families to cook whole meals from scratch with their helpful recipe cards and, due to careful measuring, no leftovers.

To make food appealing, tableware for toddlers needs to be practical but also attractive to mum and child. Boon uses bright colours and includes clever, innovative solutions to make meal times more enjoyable so any healthy food would look even more appealing it was served on an attractive plate or bowl.

We are all short of time. Life gets in the way but ironically it is eating healthily that will help prolonging the lives of us all.

Here are some top tips for eating healthily:

• Plan meals for the week in advance.
• Use seasonal, easy to get hold of ingredients.
• Buy British meat and produce to support out farmers (come on-I am a farmer’s wife).

• I also like to cut foods that Boo doesn’t like into cute shapes that will appear to her. While it takes that but longer, rabbit or carrot shaped carrots really do appeal to children more than just ordinary round disks.
• Having a box of fresh produce delivered each week, helps considerably.
• Try preparing larger batches of foods like soups and stews and freeze them.
• Keep it simple.

If you are seasoned at weaning and your kids can’t get enough of your curried carrot coulis, why not enter your favourite veg-packed, child pleasing recipe into the Boon competiton?

Winners will receive a free Hello Fresh Family box and £40 worth of Boon feeding products.

Also, everyone who enters will get 20 per cent off a purchase of any Tomy item which is valid for six months-perfect if you have a birthday coming up or want to start your Christmas shopping early.

To enter, log on to http://www.tomy.co.uk/eng/category/booncompetition for full terms and conditions. Hurry though, you only have until August 8^th to enter.

*This is not a sponsored post I just really believe we should feed our children healthy food-even when they turn their noses up at it and I am going to enter the competition myself.