The wisdom of Google and a pink koala

Three days ago baby C had her first go of pumpkin. She was initially surprised then quite enthusiastic, especially when given the spoon and allowed to smear it on her face. E was excited beyond measure; for some reason giving the baby proper food has loomed large on the list of things she wants to do as a big sister. We dispensed the first serving mid-morning and then sat C in the highchair with us at dinner that night and I had one of those heart-melting moments looking at my little family all sitting at the table together. We repeated the exercise the next day, but replaced one lot of pumpkin with a serving of baby cereal.

The two nights following pumpkin and baby cereal were two of the worst nights C has ever had. Up every two and a half hours on the dot - you could have set a clock by her. Seemingly starving each time, wanting 40 minute feeds.

Now it might be a case of "getting what you Google" but when I asked he who knows everything "can starting solids make baby sleep worse" various websites assured me that it can if the baby is less than six months old or for some other reason has trouble digesting the new food. C was 22.5 weeks old as at the first serve of pumpkin. She is interested in our food, has good head control, can sit easily in a high chair (with a bit of padding) and has more than doubled her birth weight. I genuinely thought she was ready, although she was not quite six months. (And we started E much earlier and she was fine, and what kind of second-time parent would I be if I didn't endlessly compare my children?) Anyhow, yesterday I decided that it was worth reverting to milk only to see what happened, and last night was significantly better. Still multiple wakings, but much quicker feeds and a decent uninterrupted stretch.

But her day sleeps? Well, they are pretty dreadful. The only way she has ever gone to sleep during the day has been by being patted into oblivion on someone's shoulder. Then, if you are lucky and time it right ,you can sneak her into bed. Where she might stay, or she might not. Later the patting has been taking longer and longer, and she has been increasingly easy to disturb either on the shoulder or whilst being put down, or she just wakes a very short time later. Clearly she has no idea how to put herself back to sleep once she wakes up and ideally we need to find a way of putting her to sleep that involves her falling asleep in her cot rather than in someone's arms. And because C is the poor second child, even sticking to the minimum required for E's weekly routine, C gets dragged out and about a lot, which means she is often tireder than ideal by the time we are somewhere she can sleep. All of this I know, and none of this helps me figure out how to fix the situation.

After various further consultations with Mr Google yesterday I reluctantly chose one of the 600 self-settling techniques that he offered me and we attempted it this morning. It was the kind that advocates putting the baby into bed "sleepy but awake", leaving them to it and going in and out to whisper mindless platitudes and give quick pats if the baby yells, all of which is  eventually supposed to result in the baby giving up and going to sleep. We tried it, for about 35 minutes, whilst C got more and more upset, and ended in hysterical crying. Either she is too stubborn or I am too soft, but I then picked her up and patted her to sleep on my shoulder. I then tried to put her down and she woke up. So I picked her up and patted some more. And then put her down. She stayed down for about 10 minutes and is now up again and on my lap, having had a grand total of about 35 minutes sleep (plus 35 minutes of crying, plus 20 minutes of patting).

All of which is why I am now walking around with a pink koala shoved down my shirt, because a "comfort object that smells like Mum" is Mr Google's next suggestion. Stay tuned for the results... or for my next physio bill brought on by endless rounds of patting a 7.5kg baby on my shoulder.

Toddler creamy salmon pasta

Little E pleases me very much by being willing to eat fish. If we have fish and chips she won't touch the chips but will get through quite a bit of fish, either grilled or fried with the batter removed. 

I bought salmon for dinner for D and I, and had planned on giving E what is a staple for her: small pasta shells, a few cubes of cheese sauce from the freezer, frozen peas. Then I decided that it would go well with salmon, and chopped the skinny end off the piece (which would have been annoying anyway as it would have cooked much faster than the rest of the piece) fried it in a little bit of butter, flaked it and, voila! Creamy salmon pasta. Put together in less time than it took for Little E to watch her daily ration of Playschool. I contemplated taking a picture, then decided that the creamy mess in the red plastic Ikea bowl with the googly eyes didn't quite justify it. But E gobbled two bowls of it, then a bowl of strawberry yoghurt for dessert, and I felt like a virtuous Mumma.

Some variety for the sausage roll fiend

I've written before about Little E's penchant for sausage rolls. Oh ok, penchant is a bit classy, it's more like an addiction. (So far at least) she has never turned them down, and lately all kinds of things I never would have predicted have been shoved away, smushed, dropped on the floor, met with a raspberry, or her old favourite "no more!"

Anyway, a while ago, Lovely Friend E gave me her recipe for vegetarian sausage rolls. I suppose given they contain no meat they don't really need the "sausage" ... perhaps "vegetarian rolls" is a better description? I digress. It took me a while to get around to making them as we were working our way through the veal and pork stash in the freezer. These ones are predominantly mushroom, capsicum, onion, oats and cheese, flavoured with tomato sauce, sweet chilli sauce and soy sauce. Little E has finally started doing what I would describe as a proper "toddler nap" - two and sometimes more hours in the middle of the day. It is really wonderful and please please may it continue. It gives me a chance to eat, read, clean, cook, potter in the garden and even have a semi decent sleep if I need to. Today it gave me a chance to whip up a batch of these little goodies.

Little E is still asleep so I don't know if she will like them but I just had four with salad for my lunch and they are yummo! I was worried the sweet chilli sauce would be too spicy for a toddler but it doesn't taste hot/spicy at all.

Here is the recipe for anyone who is interested:

Vegetarian Rolls

Ingredients

1 cup of finely chopped onion (I used half a cup and added a couple of cloves of finely chopped/crushed garlic)
1 finely chopped red capsicum (medium size)
6 finely chopped button mushrooms
1/2 cup rolled oats (I used quick oats)
1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I doubled the oats and omitted these)
1 cup grated cheese (I used half cheddar and half parmesan)
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 or 4 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce (I used 2 tablespoons of this and 4 of tomato sauce)
3 or 4 tablespoons tomato sauce
3 eggs

3 sheets of square frozen puff pastry

A little extra beaten egg for brushing

Poppy/sesame seeds (optional)

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 200C and take the puff pastry out of the freezer.

2. Finely chop the onion, capsicum and mushrooms and crush the garlic (if using).

3. Mix the eggs, milk, soy sauce, tomato sauce and sweet chilli sauce together in a small bowl.

4. Stir together the chopped vegetables, oats and cheese. Then add the egg mixture and give it all a good stir. The mixture will look quite wet but don't worry because the oats will absorb most of the moisture as it cooks. If you think it looks really sloppy you can add a little extra breadcrumbs or oats.

5. Cut each square of puff pastry in half so it makes two rectangles. Using one rectangle at a time, put a line of filling down the middle. Then wrap each side over and gently press down to seal.

6. Brush each roll with beaten egg and sprinkle with poppy seeds or sesame seeds.

7. Carefully cut each roll into 8 small rolls. Arrange them on a greased baking tray. After 15-20 minutes hopefully you should wind up with something like this:

Enjoy!

 

Swings & roundabouts

Image from www.weheartit.com

I am completely resigned to the notion of "this too shall pass" when it comes to babies sleeping - or not, as the case may be. Until this morning I hadn't thought about applying it to the seemingly random and definitely annoying eating habits of the same sweet and fickle little creatures. I've been whinging away about Little E's mercurial temperament in relation to all things food over the past week or so (see here and here if you think that misery deserves company).

As of today she could be a different child. She ate porridge and fruit for breakfast, snacked throughout the morning on her usual rice cakes, cheese and fruit, but was distracted quite easily and happily on the occasions I thought she was bored rather than hungry. She managed a trip to the library without demanding food in the middle of it, then consented to sit in a high chair without screaming and struggling to get out at a cafe, where she shared my fruit juice and raisin toast. She did pour water in her lap and spent the rest of the morning looking as though I have very unimpressive nappying techniques but that is a separate issue! Back to the library for Rhyme Time where there was enough going on that food was the last thing on either of our minds. On the way home she accepted that we had run out of snacks and spent the drive completely absorbed in attempting to take her shoes and socks off. At home it was lunch time and she ate half a toasted wrap with cream cheese, avocado and turkey.

She is now napping and all I can say is that I would like to put an order in for a repeat of this morning rather than a repeat of last week.

Are you paying attention, oh mighty food gods?

Today I am grateful for ... pikelets

Pikelets of the gourmet variety from www.taste.com.au.
Mine don't look quite this impressive.

 ... seeing as Little E has decided they are a food group all on their own. 

Meal times have become a bit fraught lately. She won't sit in her chair - or if I insist, she attempts to climb out of it, heart-stopping Houdini style. She wants to snack constantly, tugging at the freezer door (the only one she can reach, and which has a baby lock on it) demanding "minga minga minga" as though she has not been fed for weeks. She will eat pikelets, or frozen vegetables, or rice cakes/crackers with hommus/cream cheese, or sliced cheese. That's about it. She's even off fruit, which if I'd heard a week or so ago I would have laughed at. The constant snacking is perpetuating the annoying cycle because I think part of the problem is that she eats so many snacks she's then not really hungry when it comes to meal time.

Yesterday for dinner I offered E:

* Boiled egg: doubly offensive because it had to come off a spoon, and being fed from a spoon is, like, worst ever nightmare territory - she would not open her mouth, shoved the spoon away, and when (even though I knew it was a bad idea) I tried to persist, she grabbed it and rubbed it in her hair;

* Mini raviolis (which a week ago she could not get enough of) - she ate two;

* Frozen vegetables - she ate a few bits of carrot and maybe three peas.

It is making me feel like some crazy bag lady who alternates between mumbling to herself and then bursting out into loud, unexplained rants.

I keep reminding myself that it's not the worst thing in the world; after all a homemade pikelet has nothing dreadful in it and incorporates a fair amount of egg and milk.

And I have a few strategies to attempt this weekend and next week:

1. Distraction. Instead of giving in to the demands for constant snacks, offering a book or something else fun. Hopefully she will then be hungrier at meal times.

2. Trying some savoury pikelet recipes; the old sneaky vegetable technique.

3. Maybe trying some other finger food that is similar to pikelets, little fritters or something. I just need to work up the enthusiasm to cook stuff even knowing that it will probably be rejected.

So there we are, gratitude for the old one cup of flour, one cup of milk, one egg (plus at our house at the moment, some mandatory mandarin rind).

This post is part of Maxabella's Grateful Saturday.

Ode to Frozen Vegetables

Praise you frozen vegetables

yellow orange green

frosty crunchy packets

in my freezer lurk unseen.

A minute in the microwave

round and round you go

exactly the attraction

I'll prob'ly never know

but Little E will gobble you

when all else is refused

her bowl will come back empty

nothing to re-use.

Oh lovely frozen vegetables

never hit-and-miss

nutritious frozen vegetables

you make me feel like this:

The sausage roll fiend

Recently we had afternoon tea with lovely friend Em and her Little H (two and a half) at Lawleys, a local bakery/cafe. We preceded it with a play in the park but then E started yelling for food (fair enough as I tend to give her dinner by 4:30 at the latest as that seems to be when she is hungry and if she doesn't have something approximating dinner at that time then she winds up eating fruit and cheese and rice cakes and then not wanting dinner when I offer it an hour later). Anyway, I should have known that the box of grapes was not going to cut it food-wise and wound up buying a sausage roll for E and I to "share." The quotation marks are because E loved it so much she ate about three quarters of it and when we got home her little tummy was all distended with the quantity of meat and flaky pastry she had managed to shovel into it. So I decided that I better learn how to make the things myself.

I wanted a recipe that didn't involve commercially produced sausages, just mince and this one from Kidspot looked promising. I used veal and pork mince because that was what I could find at the supermarket, added a big stick of celery as well as the carrot and onion, and left out the salt and pepper. I wouldn't attempt it without a food processor, but with one it was pretty easy, and they worked out really well. I did them in two batches and only thought about the fact that they would freeze better uncooked after I had put the first batch in the oven. I thought we'd have trouble getting through the 32 I cooked, but pigs that we all are they are disappearing pretty rapidly! They are a big hit with E and D and I had a sausage roll dinner the other night and enjoyed them too. Here's what is left:

My Grandma's Chicken Paprika

I thought I'd add a recipe to Kate's Menu Monday even though it's not Monday (and thank God it's Friday, while we're at it). Back in the days when I got paid to work, this was quick enough to whip up after work, and if you have people coming for dinner it dresses up well as dinner party food. D will eat this and he doesn't much like chicken. Little E (14 months) will eat it if I finely shred the meat. For me, it is mainly comfort food, because it is a dish that both Grandma and Mum cook, and which I never get sick of. So here it is:

1kg chicken (thighs or drumsticks, not breast as it is too dry)
1 brown onion
2 dessert spoons of good quality sweet Hungarian paprika**
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 green capsicum
1 red capsicum
A little cornflour
Parsley and yoghurt/sour cream for serving (optional)


1. If you are using thighs, chop them into bits of whatever size you fancy.
2. Dice the onion and fry it gently in olive oil on low heat until it is transluscent. Be careful not to let it burn. Do this in a thick bottomed saucepan that has a lid.
3. Add the paprika and stir for another 30 seconds or so. Be especially careful not to let it burn at this point as burnt paprika tastes really bad.
4. Add the chicken and brown it. You might need to this in several batches.
5. Add the tomato paste.
6. Put the lid on and let it cook. The chicken will release enough juice that it shouldn't need any additional liquid but if it looks like it's burning/sticking then you can add a little water.
7. If you are using drumsticks it takes longer to cook and I usually cook it until the meat is falling off the bone and then remove the bones because D is a fuss pot about meat with bones in it, but you could leave the bones in if you prefer. It takes maybe an hour to cook if you're using drumsticks, less for thighs.
8. Cut the capsicum into strips and add it about 5 minutes before it is finished.
9. Once it's cooked if it looks too watery, thicken with a cornflour paste.
10. Serve with chopped parsley and a dob of yoghurt/sour cream on top.


We mainly eat this with rice or thick egg noodles but you can also have it with boiled potatoes. It is good with green beans or carrots and peas on the side.

** Grandma and Mum both moan about the quality of paprika available in Australia and specifically in Perth. Their brand of choice when it is available is Hoyt's. Apparently you should keep it in the fridge to ensure it stays fresh.

Spooning it up

I have been a bit slack about teaching Little E to use utensils, mainly because of the mess involved. But she's nearly a year old, and while the warm weather lasts I decided I need to make the most of the opportunities it offers for spreading mess outside instead of all over the floor.

Yesterday at breakfast I stood behind her and helped her eat most of her bowl of porridge with the spoon in her hand. For the last few mouthfuls I took my hand away to see what would happen. I expected lots of mess and not much eating. She was actually better at it than I expected! She can certainly grasp the spoon, and knows how to maneouvre it to her mouth, but needs to work on the scooping food onto it part. She had her lunch at playgroup so I didn't let her do any of it herself. Dinner was an absolute debacle; she fussed, wiggled, wouldn't eat with a spoon, with fingers, or from a spoon controlled by me. In the end she ate a bit of potato, mushed some more into her hair; chewed, spat out and mushed almost all of the chicken balls and repeated the process with banana.

I tried to repeat the process at breakfast this morning but I think I was a bit enthusiastic about how soon I gave E her breakfast after her milk. She fussed and resisted, and I gave up on her using the spoon, and shovelled about half the bowl into her myself. Then she spewed it all up. All over herself, the chair, the floor, and my foot. Aside from being a bit surprised she seemed ok afterwards, is perfectly fine now as far as I can tell ,and I'm putting it down to too full a tummy when she started eating.

Lunch today was vegetable and lentil soup and was a mixed bag of success. She managed some of the bowl with me helping, some of the bowl with me feeding her, a few mouthfuls on her own with a spoon and a lot of sticking her hands in the bowl. We repeated the process with yoghurt for dessert and I was very glad we were outside on the grass!

Perhaps the lesson learnt is that self feeding is best reserved for breakfast, when she is fresh for the day, and lunch, when she has just got up from her nap.

We will persist.

Today I am grateful for ... fresh, safe food

Little E is a fruit fiend. She would happily live on fruit alone if we let her. Today she ate: a frozen pear/raspberry square in her porridge; bananas, strawberries and kiwi berries for morning tea; more strawberries with her lunch; more banana with dinner. And that was a fairly moderate day! 

Yesterday I surprised her with a bowl of the first strawberries she had seen in a few weeks as the season seems to be ending here and she was just delighted. She peered into the bowl on her tray, realised it was strawberries, and looked up at me with a huge smile. She then carefully picked each one out and it was obviuos she was savouring them. Fortunately she also gobbles vegetables, including the green variety.

Anyway. I have been horrified by the news that Japanese fruit and vegetables, as well as tap water, might not be safe to give children. I am very careful about what Little E eats - up until the last week or so she really hasn't had anything with sugar (other than what's in her beloved fruit) and only very minimal salt. I figure I won't be able to control her diet forever, and at any rate I just want to ensure that what goes into her little tummy is as good for her as it can possibly be. The idea that the food and particularly the water that is available  to  give children might give them horrible illnesses is just awful. We're not talking about our completely first world problem of some things just being not as healthy as others, but the food that's on the shelves in the shops, and what comes out of the taps, being actually life threatening. What would you do? If you're Japanese you presumably don't have the option of just getting on a plane and going somewhere else. How do you feed your children, knowing that what's available might be down right dangerous? I suppose Japan is lucky in that it is a rich enough nation that it can import food if it comes to that.

So today I'm thankful that (so far!) I have a baby who is happy to eat what is fresh and healthy, and that I have easy access to food that not only meets those criteria, but is simply safe to give her. I have to say that it's not something I ever thought I'd need to feel grateful for.

To see who is grateful for what, this week visit And Then There Were Four (Maxabella is on holidays).

Baby food

A record of the things Little E has eaten so far and the more adventurous recipes we have tried that she has enjoyed:

Fruit
Apple
Pear *
Banana
Avocado
Mango *
Peach
Strawberry
Rock melon *
Watermelon
Honey dew melon


Vegetables
Pumpkin *
Carrot *
Potato
Sweet potato
Peas
Celery
Tomato
Spinach
Spring onion
Cucumber
Capsicum

Protein
Fish
Chicken *
Beef
Lamb
Egg


Other
Rice cereal
Millet & oats cereal
Yoghurt (cow and sheep) (plain and vanilla)
Cheese
Goat's curd
Bread


* = favourite


Baby chicken soup *


1/2 a chicken breast with skin on, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1 celery stick, sliced
1 medium potato, peeled and chopped
1 spring onion, sliced

Put all the ingredients in a small saucepan and cover with water. Simmer until the vegetables are soft (about 20 minutes) then blend.


Baby beef casserole
~150gm beef
1/4 cup of white rice
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1 stick of celery, sliced
4 grape tomatoes, halved
2 spring onions, sliced

Put all the ingredients in a small saucepan and cover with water. Simmer until the vegetables are soft (about 20 minutes) then blend.

Baby chicken cacciatore *
1/2 a chicken breast with skin on, chopped
A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 of a small red capsicum
1 stick of celery, sliced
1 spring onion, sliced
1 tablespoon of parsley, finely chopped

Put all the ingredients in a small saucepan and cover with water. Simmer until the vegetables are soft (about 15 minutes) then blend.

Fish with cheesy tomato sauce (she had this without the fish for lunch and with fish for dinner)
50 grams of white fish
2 small carrots, peeled and sliced
1 large tomato, skinned and chopped
4 cubes of frozen cauliflower puree
50 grams of cheese
3-4 basil leaves, chopped finely

Put the carrots in a small saucepan, cover with water and cook for about 10 minutes. Then add the frozen cauliflower cubes and cook about another 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, in another pan, saute the tomato in butter until it is soft.
Add the basil and cheese to the tomato sauce and stir until the cheese melts.

In a separate pan, fry the fish in butter and then flake it into small pieces.
Drain the carrots and combine the carrots, tomato sauce and fish; puree.

Lessons learnt the hard and the (unfunny) runny way

1. Do not get adventurous about your child's ability to eat solids and feed her (albeit very expensive, organic) brown rice three days in a row.

2. In an attempt to compensate, do not then feed her large amounts of (albeit very expensive, organic) prunes.

Just don't. That's all I'm saying.