This is a good opportunity to mention some difficulties we experience as parents of a toddler, who says “no” a lot, especially at meal times. I read an excellent article recently on Italian methods of teaching kids to eat exactly what the adults do. No such thing in Italian restaurants as “children’s menu”, they say. Kids are supposed to eat what ever there is on the table and should they chose not to, they skip a meal and several hours later there are no complaints. It does appeal to me, as I remember being forced to eat when I was a kid. It took me years to get over the dread of cold, yukky soft boiled eggs that were staring at me, as I could not leave a table before I ate them. So we agreed long time ago, there will be no forced feeding, but also, no shit will be taken from  a 2,5 year old picking what she will and won’t eat.

This beautiful soup was made for lunch, while the said toddler was napping. A banana shallot fried, a couple of rashers of bacon finely chopped and fried too. The whole butternut squash peeled, chopped, added, alongside a single potato. Chicken stock onto that. It all boiled for about 30 mins under cover, then blitzed into a lovely, orange smoothness. A splash of cream. Finished off with crispy bacon bits and sunflower seeds and…a drizzle of maple syrup. Beautiful, autumnal soup.

Needless to say, Izzie decided she won’t be having it and threw  a teary fit at the table.  We returned to this subject 2 hours later, after a bit of shopping therapy. Soup was reheated and eaten within 10 minutes with no single complaint. Thumbs up.