Meet Lucy Milne

"I am very passionate about healthy eating and cooking but I didn’t give healthy eating a lot of thought until I became a mum. When my boys started to wean, I became more careful about the kinds of food I was giving them, so I tried making my own homemade ketchup, baked beans, sugar free tomato sauce and even homemade chicken goujons and fish fingers. It’s amazing how much excess salt and sugar are in basic ingredients like ketchup and baked beans. I didn’t want my kids to have too much sugar in their diet so I decided to try and make these things myself. The experience encouraged me to make virtually everything from scratch and now I know exactly what I’m putting into my kids’ meals."

"I think a lot of mums don’t think that they have the time to cook healthily but you just have to make a decision to prioritise it. Anyone can learn how to make homemade fish fingers if they set aside the time."

"I never bought them ‘kids food’ growing up. They ate what we ate and, because of that, they are not fussy eaters. If you raise your kids to eat only certain kinds of meals, they will only eat those things and will be less willing to try new things. I try to feed my kids new meals every so often, by introducing them to new tastes and textures. I’m hoping that inspiring them to eat well at a young age will instil in them a habit of healthy eating."

"My greatest food success with the kids is giving them a salmon fillet with pesto, sundried tomatoes and mozzarella for dinner. They also like chicken korma curry as well as various different kinds of fruit and veg."

"One of my best tips for getting her kids to eat healthily is by making meal time a fun experience for them. I like to call my meals ‘dinosaur food’ or ‘tiger food’ which encourages the kids to eat without any fuss. If my kids don’t want to eat something, I won’t force them. Instead I encourage them to try new things. For example, if they don’t want to eat something like broccoli, I’ll group it with another ingredient they enjoy like carrots. They are more likely to eat it if it’s grouped alongside another kind of food."

"I like to make is anything with a tomato base such as chilli con carne spaghetti Bolognese and curries. I like to use a slow cooker to prepare a lot of these recipes as it’s an easy way to cook a big family dinner without spending hours in the kitchen. I will also batch freeze a lot of my meals that she can use at a later time during the week."