My Homemade Roasted Vegetable Spread

I am super proud of my son Rhys. He's one year old and has always been particularly fussy with his food. These past couple of weeks I've really been focusing on his feeding, as there are so many things that he doesn't like but I would still like him to eat healthily. We have an active lifestyle and I like to encourage him to be a healthy, active child. 

If he could, he would eat pizza and chips every day. But I've been encouraging him to try new things and been switching the bad food for healthier versions. Instead of pizza, I make him pitta bread pizzas, by spreading tomato purée on to wholewheat pittas, and sprinkling on some torn spinach leaves and cheese. I then grill it for around five minutes, and cut them into fingers for him to feed himself. 

This week, I've also tried him with vegetables but by cooking them in different ways to see what he likes. We've boiled them, fried them, roasted them, and mashed them, to little avail. He would not eat them any way I served them, until I blended them in to a paste and spread them on to wholewheat toast for him, which he LOVED! 

So if you're struggling to get your little ones to eat healthily/eat vegetables, I very much recommend my roasted vegetable spread. It's very healthy, and once it is all blended/mashed they wouldn't be able to tell that it's entirely vegetable based! I wish I had taken a before photo but I didn't think to!

I sliced up 10 baby potatoes into halves, and 2 carrots into the same kind of size. I sliced up half a leek into 1cm slices, and 2 tomatoes into quarters. I placed all the prepared vegetables into a casserole dish and coated them in vegetable oil. I crumbled up a vegetable oxo cube to sprinkle over, and then mixed it all with a wooden spoon, before placing in the oven at 200degrees, for an hour and a twenty minutes. I then took the dish out, and let it cool slightly before placing the cooked vegetables in a blender. I added in about 20ml of water, before blending for around a minute so it's mostly smooth but with a little bit of texture still. 

Rhys will eat this on it's own, on toast, or with wholewheat rice. I also save a small portion of the vegetables for myself before blending as I enjoy it too as a dish of roasted vegetables. 

I hope you've enjoyed this post, and I will write again soon! Sam x