The everything leek and potato soup

It is funny, this week marks my 1st anniversary of cooking for my son. I spent the first few months coming up with nutritious and tasty purees, then it became thicker foods that resembled actual food, then came the finger foods and things that had hidden vegetables it in. All was going really well, until Alexander got to the age of walking and talking. Then all hell broke loose. He is definitely trying to see what he can get away with and how much he can test the limits. But it is hard to be stern and hold fort when I get so little time with him, I just want to avoid the unnecessary added tantrums and hence these days I ALWAYS give in.

Last week, on a lazy, behind schedule day, I made the mistake of pulling out a tin of spaghetti hoops in desperation to get Alexander to eat some dinner. It was a roaring success. I mean, he ate all his and then poured mine into his bowl and devoured them too. Alas, he will now only eat spaghetti hoops! Sigh! after all those months of cooking and tailoring food to get the maximum vegetables and nutrition into him, he will now only eat tinned spaghetti hoops (I am actually hitting my head against a wall right now). I fretted about this for a few days but decided this week, that as long as he is eating something, I am happy. I do and will keep trying good healthy home-made dinners but it just ain’t happening right now. He eats proper food in creche and is amazingly healthy so I figure what harm can a few hoops do?

I made a soup up yesterday and even though Alexander will only eat one spoon before pushing it away, I still throughly enjoyed it. Not quite a leek and potato soup but it somewhat resembles it.

THE EVERYTHING LEEK AND POTATO SOUP

The reason this is called the everything leek and potato soup is that I literally threw a bit of everything into it, anything that I had in the fridge went in including sweetcorn which is one of my sons favourite foods at the moment or at least used to be.

This makes enough for 2 adults and 2 small tiny humans.

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 leek, sliced
• 3 small potatoes, peeled and chopped into small cubes
• 1 small tin (200 g) of chickpeas
• 2 handfuls of left over roast chicken ( or 1 large cooked chicken breast, shredded)
• 1.5 tbsp olive oil
• 75 g quinoa
• 1 pint of fresh salt free chicken stock
• sweetcorn (optional)

THE HOW

In a saucepan/casserole dish, heat the oil. Fry the onion for a minute in it. Then literally throw in the potatoes, leek and chickpeas and stir. Cook for a minute or two.

Add the stock and shredded chicken and simmer on a gentle heat for 20 minutes.

Take half of the soup out and blitz in a blender. Return this to the pan.

Add the quinoa and simmer for a further 15 minutes.

As I am cooking for a fussy toddler, I like it quite thick and also added sweetcorn at the last-minute. But you may want it a little more liquid, in which case add a little boiling water after the quinoa has cooked and stir.

There you have it, my everything leek and potato soup. Easy!