A Scots mum has shared a genius food hack that will enable parents to sneak vegetables on to their children's plates.
It's no secret that a lot of kids are fussy eaters, but thanks to a new book by Paisley mum, Lorna Cooper, parents will be pulling their hair out not more.
The author of Feed Your Family For £20 For A Week, shares her amazing tip that is sure to stop parents dreading mealtimes.
Fed up with her astronomical weekly shopping bill, mum-of-three Lorna created a Facebook page to help others in the same boat, reduce the cost of their groceries.
Encouraging back-to-basics, cooking from scratch and using leftovers for new meals, Lorna's book and Facebook page have been a huge success.
But it's inside the 'basics' section of the recipe book Lorna offers frustrated parents a real lifeline.
It features a tomato based sauce which can be used for pastas, stews, casseroles and more and Lorna says is "basically loads of veg grated and cooked with stock, tinned tomatoes and tomato puree" before it's blended down to hide the healthy ingredients.
Lorna said: "Once it's ready, I blitz it down so it's basically a passata, but it's got loads and loads of hidden veg in it."
Lorna says she was inspired because her own brood basically "eat any recipe that calls for a tin of chopped tomatoes or passata".
So her homemade veg-infused tomato sauce "goes into everything now, chicken tikka masala, whatever - and the kids are there thinking, 'Oh, we've not got any veg on our plate'. Yes, you do!"
She says parents should try to take the stress out of meal times and get their youngsters involved.
She said:"I don't really see the point in fighting constantly with kids over what they do and don't eat.
"I tend to find that if they're involved in the planning and the preparation - even the cooking - they tend to try more things.
"[When ours] were younger, they'd get to pick a night each when they would decide what we were eating and helped to cook it, and they just seemed more engaged when they've had a say in it, than coming in and getting something put in front of them.
"And they tend to start thinking about other things as well, not just wanting the same thing all the time, asking, 'What else could we have?"'
Feed Your Family For £20 A Week by Lorna Cooper, photography by Andrew Hayes-Watkins, is published by Seven Dials, priced £16.99. Available now.
