But I can make good cheese sauce!

Batch cooking cheese sauce!

Unfortunately, this week I have completed failed to stick to my new year resolution of planning meals that will encourage my little carnivore to eat more veg and save me time and money to boot.

The gory details are that there is NO plan and I am completely winging it - although, I have a sneaky suspicion that both fish fingers and sausages will make it onto the menu - with the excuse I have to sort out a party for 14 3 year olds and ice a Peppa Pig birthday cake before Sunday and I can't ice for toffee! Yikes!

But, as my previous #mealplanningmonday post was about another epic failure in the kitchen and I just can't stand another post about complete culinary disaster, I'm cheating and posting about something that I did just before Christmas, which I can - even if I say it myself - do very well! And that's whip up bulk load batches of very cheesey sauce completely crammed with lovely green veg that my veg refusenik actually wolfs down.

I've basically combined 2 separate Annabel Karmel recipes.  One which is a 3 cheese sauce with mascarpone, gruyere and parmesan, (any hard cheese combo is fine), and another which blends strong green veg into a white sauce.  I've found that if your child really doesn't like veg the white sauce isn't rich enough to hide the taste whilst broccoli, spinach, chard and dark cabbage will happily be eaten in the cheesey version.

I've now made so much of the stuff - it's my fail safe way of getting green veg into my 2 year old at least a few days a week - that I've mastered the art of making 3 pans full at the same time.  You do have to have absolutely everything measured out into 3 separate lots in advance but once that's done you can get 3 pans done in about 20 minutes with some vigorous stirring.  That lot will keep us going for a month to 6 weeks and will go in macaroni cheese, lasagne, fish with cheese sauce and just about anything else I can think of.

It does ideally need to be made with another responsible adult - or Charlie & Lola - on babysitting duty and I find it's best to make it in the morning which gives it time to cool before you blend the veg in as if it's sufficiently cool you can blend a whole pan at a time.  Typically, I blend broccoli in one pan's worth, spinach in another and chard in the third.  Then whack it in tubs, label and freeze it. Simple!

See, I can cook ... a little bit :-)

I'm linking this post up with the fabulous #mealplanningmonday parties at At Home with Mrs M, Meatless Mondays, Tidy Mom and I'm An Organizing Junkie.