BLW - What we've learnt so far - March

So we are loving using baby led weaning to feed Quinn solids.  I now have an innumerable amount of photos of him eating, and am just barely managing not to post all of them on Facebook for fear of boring people to death!
But suffice to say, it's working well for us.

Quinn is now 7 months and 1 week old, so has been on solids for about 6 weeks now.  We're just starting to introduce a second and third meal each day.  I wanted to keep a log of things we have learnt in our BLW journey so far for us to look back on and in case anyone is interested in trying it with their babes.

Things we have learnt so far

• No food is ever as exciting as cats!  Seriously, all eating stops as soon as the cats appear and it's not even worth trying to get him back!  So now we wait till the cats have disappeared or gone to sleep.
• Quinn can use a spoon now!  He's getting better at getting it into his mouth (sometimes via his chin or nose) and has started handing it back to me!
• Mushrooms have skins!  Who knew?!  Colour me surprised.  Quinn devours mushrooms (we've tried button and portobello) with gusto, but is defeated by the skin.  Next time I'll be peeling them first.
• We need a dog.  Seriously.  Cats are useless at cleaning up dropped vegetables!

• Jarred food is SO easy, and sometimes tempts me away from BLW.  But sometimes it's just too hard to create 2-3 meals a day for him (and sadly many of ours are not nutritious enough for him) and I'm refusing to feel bad about it.  I'm trying to stick to fruit or custard-y meals since most of his other meals are veges.

So that's the update for now, but of course, any post is useless without pics!

Sorry guys, it's a Nana meal!

Or so I was told!

Undeterred I carried on with my dinner plans, corned beef cooked in the slow cooker, mashed potatoes, peas and my latest obsession Yorkshire Puddings!  Corned beef was a bit of a staple for us growing up, back when good ol' Kiwi cuisine consisted of meat and 3 veg, before the wonders of curries and sushi wowed us with their exciting flavours!  Hubby, however, did not grow up on corned beef and is, to be incredibly understated, a picky eater.  This was actually the second time I cooked this meal, I was thrilled after the first night to find that hubby really enjoyed it and that we had leftovers for lunch the next day!  What more can you ask for!

So without further ado, photos!

You'll notice there's no mustard sauce in this picture - I made it the first night and we had so much left over it was terribly wasteful!  I had to make two batches, I followed a recipe which called for a cup of the cooking liquid - DO NOT DO THIS!  It was like cooking with water from the Dead Sea!  Awful.  In the end I settled for a white sauce with mustard added, it was OK, nothing to write home about really.

And since I'm also trying to feed a baby I made some extra Yorkshire Puddings for him to have for lunch the next day.

I hate recipes that lie!

Especially those who lie with pictures of delicious treats!

I shouldn't complain, really, because this recipe for Afghans has led to a delicious batch of biscuits (cookies for those not down-under!).  But really, the picture they use if quite deceptive, and made me wonder if I was doing something wrong.

Here is the picture from the recipe

And here are my afghans

Like I said, not bad, but looking at the first picture you would have no idea there were any cornflakes in them at all.



But all in all, a success.  I think if I made the recipe again I would use coco-pops, and only one cup of cereal so the biscuit holds together better.  But perhaps a crumbly biscuit just calls for more chocolate icing to hold it together.  This is my favourite thing about baking, taking raw, mostly inedible ingredients and creating something completely different.


In terms of my list for this year, I had a great day shopping at Kmart today, and bought a metal muffin tin!  So I will cross that off my wishlist, and the plan is to make Yorkshire pudding along with corned beef for dinner tomorrow night!  Wish me luck!

I suck at cooking

Let's be honest, cooking well is a skill.  And not one I have.  Spices scare me (or rather, the possibility of getting the combinations wrong scares me), recipes with more than 6 ingredient I find daunting and, to be brutally honest, I'm pretty lazy!  All of these reasons combined start to explain why I'm such an average cook.

I should qualify at this point, I'm not a horrible cook.  I don't burn water, I can cook a white sauce from scratch and no-one has ever died from eating my cooking (let's hope I can still say that at the end of this year).

But I've decided that 2011 will be the year I learn to cook. I have made a list of dishes I want to try (you can see if by clicking on the The Dishes link at the top of the page to keep up with what I plan to, and have already cooked.  I'll be updating the list as I go. 

I'll also be posting about my son Quinn, who is learning to eat solids.  Quinn is 6 months old (and gorgeous, amazing, funny, the list goes on . . .) but I want him to love eating healthy food.  So part of the reason I want to make healthy good for is for him.  We're introducing him to food via Baby-led Weaning, which means he doesn't get spoon-fed purees, he gets to experiment with feeding himself from the start.  If you're interested, I've posted some info on BLW on the BLW link above.

So, thanks for reading!  Feel free to comment, teach, suggest . . . I'm open!  Hopefully we'll enjoy this journey together!