I absolutely love food - it is usually my favourite part of any holiday and is the reason why I fully admit I will never be a size 8! With this in mind I have been inspired to set up this new food blog. Cooking has always been something I have enjoyed but in the past it has consisted of the odd dinner party or a fancy buffet for someone's birthday. However last year I had Maya so now I am entirely responsible for feeding her and making sure that she has a better diet than we have - and in the process hopefully we will all eat better. I was so excited about the weaning process and Maya sitting with us all at the table for her Christmas dinner, but unfortunately this coincided with a bout of bronchiolitus which put pay to any solids for a couple of week. I got very disheartened by this and went out and stocked the cupboards with various pouchs of ready prepared purees. In the new year we started again, and Maya absolutely loved her food. The advice of offering babies just a teaspoon of puree once a day for a couple of weeks didn't wash with her, and pretty soon she was on three meals a day. Because Maya had embraced her solids with such enthusiasm (only crying if it wasn't going in quick enough!) I decided to embrace being a better housewife - well the cooking side anyway, and also to ditch the packets as maternity pay doesn't sit well with them!
The first afternoon I set aside for cooking up lots of baby food, I think I went a bit mental. I wheeled Maya into the kitchen in her buggy so she could watch me before dropping off to sleep, and I whipped up three separate dishes - braised beef with sweet potato, chicken in tomato sauce and chicken with apple and sweet potato. Four hours later the kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off in it and I had already broken the new blender James had picked up on his way home. I resorted to my old hand-held blender and eventually pureed everything and managed to fill 31 small plastic pots with healthy meaty dinners. I felt really pleased with myself, but also slightly nervous as mnay friends have said that their babies loved prepared baby food but hated anything they prepared themselves.
It turns out that Maya is a bit like her daddy and will eat anything! She absolutely loved the homemade purees, and despite the odd face being pulled at the beginning of every meal (the sort of face you might pull if you were being force-fed dog poo), she squealed with delight with each mouthful, and then often got cross at the end when it had all gone!
I really hope she has started as she means to go on, and when she turned two she doesn't suddenly turn into a fussy little bugger who flatly refuses to eat something she happily wolfed down the day before. So I am hoping that this blog will develop over the next few years and that as a family we will learn to cook better and more nutritious food, eat less rubbish (and in turn bring down our shopping bill) and enjoy lovely food. We will also eat at the table together and try out more new recipes, not just fajitas once a week, pasta bake another, etc (as now!).
We will still be allowed trips to eat out and the occasional treats - recipes will be included.
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