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Get your family involved: How to make healthy food’s fun and tips for your kids

I have used the following concepts with lots of my TV children and they have loved every minute of it. These fun food ideas have helped to move junk food chomping kids onto a healthier lifestyle:

• Get children involved in preparing meals – make this fun by encouraging them to arrange healthy pizza toppings in the shape of a face or a scary monster for example. They are sure to have their own ideas as well so let their imaginations go wild.
• Add different coloured fruits to a smoothie and guess what colour it will become once blended.
• Serve sweet potato wedges
• Thinly slice beets, parsnips and sweet potatoes, bake in the oven till crispy.
• Make chickpea burgers and serve with sugar free ketchup.
• Make vegetable kebabs with marinated vegetables such as mushrooms, courgettes, peppers and corn cobs.
• Let children create imaginative names for their own trail mixes.
• Let children eat their snacks in their own den or as a picnic outside.
• If they have friends round for dinner, get the children to make place cards with a joke on the back of each.
• Put lots of different foods on a table in separate containers and allow the kids to create their own food plates. So chopped carrots in one container, cucumbers in another, hummous in another and so on. Kids love this and get them to be artistic with the food plate too: funny faces, scary faces can be created with the foods.

Chickpea Burgers with colourful salad and avocado-watercress dressing

Makes 20 mini burgers

This will be a hit in your house. As well as a meal, any mini burgers left over can be used for your lunch box or a snack.

The healthy burger; kids go wild for this. Chickpeas have a naturally sweet flavour, are a good source of iron, good fats and nutritionally help out the tummy and heart. I have combined them with sunflower seeds for an energy pick me up.

1 (410g) can organic chickpeas, drained
1 carrot, peeled and finely grated (65g prepared weight)
1 small onion, peeled and roughly chopped
50g/1/3 cup sunflower seeds
3 tbsp tahini (sesame paste), drained of any excess oil before measuring
1 garlic clove, peeled and halved
1 handful fresh coriander leaves (20g/1 heaped cup)
1 tbsp organic wheat-free vegetable bouillon

1. Preheat the oven to 220C/Gas Mark 7. Line a large baking tray with baking parchment. Place all the ingredients in a food processor and blend for 10-15 seconds. Remove the lid and push the mixture down with a spatula. Blend once more until fairly smooth and thick.
2. Shape the mixture into 20 small balls and place on the prepared tray. If the mixture is too wet to roll easily into balls (which is sometimes caused by runny tahini), add another handful of sunflower seeds and blend once more.
3. Flatten the balls slightly with the back of a spoon and bake for 15-18 minutes until golden around the edges. Remove from oven and leave on the tray for 2-3 minutes to firm up a little. Lift carefully off the tray. Serve hot or cold with a colourful salad and lemon or lime wedges. Or make a quick raw salsa from chopped fresh tomatoes, coriander, red onion and avocado.

Make the mixture into larger burgers if you like - about 10 or 12. Cook for 15-20 minutes then cool slightly before lifting off the tray. Make the mixture go further by stirring in 100g/1/2 cup cooked long grain brown rice after blending the other ingredients.

These burgers are also fabulous served with this quick avocado and watercress sauce:

Simply blend the flesh from 1/2 a ripe avocado with a small handful of watercress, 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice and 6 tbsp cold water. (Use 1 tbsp chopped fresh mint instead of the watercress if you like.) Sprinkle one teaspoon raw shelled hemp seeds into dip. Fabulous.

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