Baby food fun!

Baby Weaning: fun recipes to try

So the past few weeks we've been weaning the little one. We had some food pouches and finger food donated to us by a neighbour whose daughter has moved onto to bigger food, which has proved very useful when travelling especially. Moreover, the jars have come in very handy - a simple wash and sterilisation and they're perfect for my own creations. It's so much cheaper to re-use glass pots and small jam jars rather than buying those 'baby-specific' pots and tubs that shops flog.

I've been having a lot of fun making baby food recipes up. To be honest I started to read some stuff on baby weaning but, like the only baby book I got, I read about half then realised I've been able to keep baby alive without the book so there's not much point reading it. Just a few simple guidelines on what is appropriate food at various months is really all that's needed. 

Basically, it's common sense. Keep food simple, clean, well-blended and then move onto more complex flavours, proteins and textures later on in the weaning journey. 

We started with very basic food:

Blended avocado

Blended carrots (with a little water)

Steamed courgettes (blended)

Pureed prunes

Pureed apples

Mashed bananas

Butternut squash

Sweet potato.

Moving onto:

Spinach and apple

Avocado and apple

Apples and pears

Apples and strawberries

Banana and blueberry

Sweet potato and red pepper

Carrots and courgettes.

More complex:

Broccoli, carrots and potato

Mango, strawberry and a (healthy) rusk

Mango and plain natural yoghurt

Pears and cinnamon

Butternut squash, sweetcorn, carrot and turmeric

Pea, cabbage and mint

Sweetcorn, orange pepper and sweet potato.

Stage 2 (c. 8 months or, if you're like mine, you may well be feeding more complex proteins etc early)

Pureed lentils and red pepper

Grilled chicken and blended vegetables (no salt added)

Red pepper, tomatoes, white cod and parsley

Beef, carrot and parsnips.

Finger food/messy snacks

Soft steamed carrot

Roughly mashed banana

This is it so far - apart as I mentioned before for the various jars of 4m+ that our neighbour gave to us. 

Kiddilicious do some very good biscotti and flavoured wafers, which have no additives or preservatives in. Farley's rusks are also great - if you are very careful to make this an occasional treat as these do have sugar. 

Have fun! 

Things go wrong... before they go right

In the halcyon days of summer '15, namely the couple of summery days that actually graced the UK this August, I decided to make some healthy salady accompaniments to dinner.

Having had at work a mango salad one day to go with (if you can believe this), a roast squash samosa and way too much rice, I thought I would replicate the salad with some light, poached salmon and vegetables for dinner at home.

I knew I had a mango in the fridge getting a little sorry for itself, I had plenty of spring onions and a brown onion leftover and I had some tomatoes and peppers that I needed to use up. Never throw anything away!

So all I had to buy was a cucumber.

I dutifully washed and diced all the vegetables and started to compose the salad.

Alas it was not to be. The mango was far too soft and it made the whole salad look as if it had been left out all day in the sunshine to melt.

This was the result - still colourful but pretty sorry for itself.

All by myseeelllllf, 

With just 20 mins until the hubby was due home I wanted to perfect it, but how? Sure it tasted okay, but it looked weird and it had a floppy texture.

And then I remembered that a friend of mine in Canada had made a salsa salad with peaches in it. Peaches - I had none of these.

However, I did have a couple of nectarines in the fridge.

So I put the offending salad into a little tub for me to take to work for lunch the next day, and began again with the leftovers - or leftovers of the leftovers that I had been using initially, and swapping the nectarines for the Mango.

The result: much more solid, much firmer.

Ingredients
One FIRM Mango (or 2 Nectarines)
1 brown or red onion, diced
1/2 cucumber, chopped finely
1 yellow pepper, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
Lemon juice (freshly squeezed or from a bottle)
One small chopped red chili pepper
1/2 teaspoon of dried parsley

How to: 
Wash everything carefully
Chop it all up, mix it up, chill and serve
Time: about 10 minutes to prepare

It really is a great way to combine a range of fruit and veg leftovers, perhaps bits that might be too small to use as side-dishes in their own right, so it cuts down on food waste.

As it is a slightly more 'exotic' kind of salad, it looks very swish when presented on the table along with whatever else you are serving, as well as being a healthy alternative to many accompaniments.

The Nectarines Saved the Day. Pic: SimoneySunday

It goes very well with fish, chilli, couscous or fishcakes and is very simple to make.