Tag: Food

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL … VEGETABLES AND LENTIL CURRY WITH CHICKEN

DINNER RECIPE

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL …

VEGETABLES AND LENTIL CURRY WITH CHICKEN  I have made up this one, but surprisingly it has turn up to be very tasty😊

Ingredients :

– 1/2 red pepper

– 30g of red lentils

– 50g of peas

– 50g of aubergine

– 1 can of chopped tomatoes

– 1 small chicken breast

– 1 onion

– 1 garlic cove

– 2 tsp of mild curry spices

– 100ml of coconut cream

If your baby started eating more solid foods like Chloe then chop everything in to a very small cubes; If your baby still eats purees then cut everything in to chunks as it will be blended anyway.

Cooking method :

Fry onion and garlic until golden, then add curry spaces and lentils, and a minute later chopped tomatoes. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

In a meanwhile I roast my aubergine and chicken on the frying pan. You don’t have to do it but I find that this is the only way to cut chicken in to small cubes (I can’t do it with a raw one) and that aubergine keeps its consistency better when cut in to small cubes.

Add all of the other ingredients except peas and simmer for another 10 minutes. Add peas 2 minutes before the finish time. Hope that your baby will enjoy it

DESSERT : Yogurt with Blackberries

If your blackberries and sweet you natural yogurt, if the are quite sharp then add your baby’s usual flavoured yogurt.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL … PASTA WITH COURGETTES

DINNER RECIPE

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL ….

PASTA WITH COURGETTES 

Ingredients – 1 courgette

– 50ml of single cream

– 1 small chicken breast (cooked)

– 2 tsp of Parmesan

– 1 tsp of basil (chopped)

– 50g of baby pasta

Cooking method:

Grate you courgette.

Cut you cooked chicken in to a very small cubes (I have just friend the chicken breast in a little bit of olive oil). 

Cook your pasta according to cooking instructions.

Fry courgette in a little bit of olive oil for about 5 minutes (until it softens)  

add cream and basil and cook for around 3 minutes. If needs add a little bit of water to the sauce. Add pasta then Parmesan and it’s ready to eat !  

If your baby is still not eating solids you can blend all of it or blend everything except pasta. Good thing about this recipe is that you can make it in to a grown up version by just adding salt and pepper in to it to season! Hope that you and your baby will enjoy it !

SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR …. SUGAR EVERYWHERE ! Yes even in  BABY food! 

BABY ADVICE

 I love sugar and anything that is sweet … It takes a lot of will power not to eat chocolate all day long every day. 

 I assumed that baby food, especially the one labeled : heathy, organic, no preservatives added  will have no sugar or just minimal amount of it … NEVER assume  anything ! I couldn’t be more wrong ! 

 I was shocked to see baby food from 4 months old having over 20g of sugar per 100g. What was even more shocking is that things which shouldn’t have any sugar had lots of it !  

 Don’t get me wrong I am all for healthy but balanced diet, I give my baby, baby biscuits but I don’t want my baby to be consuming lots of sugar especially not when she is so small ! Also giving then sugar make the weaning and feeding so much more difficult because they refuse to eat things which are not sweet!  

 I started to check labels very carefully and found product which are nice but don’t have lots of sugar which I will share. Oh and just to clarify product is high in sugar when it has 20g or more of sugar per 100g.

CEREALS

 There is a very small selection of cereals that don’t have lots of sugar in it, and only handful of cereals that have little or non sugar. My recommendation will be those 2 :

– Organix Multigrain Porridge (only 2g of sugar per 100g)

– Organic Mutligrain Mini Puffs (only 1g of sugar per 100g). I use the puffs to add to other porridges for the texture. I usually mix it with whatever porridge I make, especially with the flavoured ones. It’s great when you start to introduce texture to your baby’s food. 

  

– Good flavoured porridge is by Ella’s Kitchen (11.7g of sugar per 100g). I usually make it with multigrain mini creel puffs. 

  
– Organix Cereal Bannan & Rospberry (12g of sugar per 100g and believe me this is the smalles amount of sugar that I could find in the stage 3 cereals)

  
Bad boys:

– Cow&Gate Fruity Porridge – 40g of sugar per 100g !!!!!!! This should be illegal!

TREATS FOR BABIES : 

Rice cakes.

 It’s a great snack for babies from quite an early age (I have Chloe her first one at 5,5 months). They not high in sugar but even in this one snac the sugar level waries depending on the flavour (those are the Organix rice cakes) : 
– Apple rice cakes -14g 

– Berry rice cake – 10g

– Banana rice cake – 9,7g

– Strawberry rice cake – 6,7g 

Biscuits:

 Biscuits naturally have much more sugar than any other snack, but again I thought that because they are for babies the sugar level would be reduced …. Not always the case. There are healthier options like:

-Ella’s Kitchen Apple & Ginger biscuits 16,5g

  
-Ella’s Kitchen Milk and Vanilla biscuits 16,1g

-Ella’s Kitchen Hello-Copter Oat and spelt cookies 13,4g 

A bit less healthier but not too bad :

– Heinz Biscotties Banana 22g

– Heinz Biscotties Apple 20g

– Heinz Biscotties Mango 22g

 All of the others I found had 28g of sugar and above which is very very high so should be a treat from time to time only. 

CORN SNACKS

– Organix  Crunchy Sweetcorn Rings 3,5g

–  Ella’s Kitchen Melty Puffs Tomatoes & Leek 0,5g ( the Strawberry and Bannan flavour already has 7,4g which is a lot). 

  
– Ella’s Kitchen Lentil and carrot sticks  0,7g

  
– Ella’s Kitchen Cheese and Lentil Crunchy Wheels 0,2g

– Kiddylicious Blueberry Wafers 9,6g

– Kiddylicious Cheese flying Saucers 0,5g

Bad boys:

– Kiddylicious Passion Fruit and Peach Yoghurt Melts 45g

– most of the frut snacks like Bear Fruit Paws are high in sugar with 40g and more in 100g

– Organix Goodies Fruit Gummies Strawberry has 67g of sugar !!!!!!!!!

 I could probably write a book about contest of sugar in baby food … Don’t want to bore everyone so the only thing I will say is check the back of the package for information ! Don’t be influenced by the colour of the package, marketing etc…. And remember that fruit and vegetables are always best option sometimes just not practical 😀

 What is you experience, opinion? Do you have know of a yummy and healthy snacks/foods? 

MUSHROOM PASTA

DINNER RECIPE

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL…

MUSHROOM PASTA
Ingredients:

– 100g baby pasta

– 1 onion (finely chopped)

– 100g brown mushrooms (finely chopped)

– 150ml chicken stock

– 50g cooked chicken (optional)

– 2tbsp of double cream

– 20g parmesan

– 1 garlic

Cooking instructions:

Cook your pasta according to instruction. Fry onion till soft and golden. Add mushrooms and fry for around 4-5 min then add garlic. Add chicken stock and cooked chicken, then a double cream.


Add pasta in to the mix then parmesan and it’s ready to serve!

SALMON NUGGETS

DINNER RECIPE, YUMMY BABY & KIDS RECIPES


ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL …

Today I have made Salmon nuggets accompanied by sweet potato and great bins. This will be Chloe’s first dinner made only of finger food.

Ingredients:

– 150g of Salmon

– 30g of breadcrumbs

– 15g of Parmesan

– 1/2 tsp of Lemon zest

– 1 egg beaten

Cooking method :

Heat your oven to 200 C.

Make sure that Salmon has no bones or skin. Cut in to a bit size pieces. Combine parmesan with breadcrumbs and lemon zest.

Put salmon in to the bowl with egg then coat it in your breadcrumb mix.


Bake for 15 min (until golden) on a non sticking baking paper.


You can serve it with whatever you want or  just as a snack. I served it with boiled sweet potato (sweet potato wedges are great alternative), steamed green beans and peas.


DESSERT:

 A bowl of fresh fruits

 

VEGETABLES WITH RICE

DINNER RECIPE


ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL …

Vegetables with rice


Ingrediants:

– 1 broccoli (I used frozen)

– 1 small sweet potatoe

– handful of young broad beans (I used frozen)

– 60g of peas

– vegetable stock (around 100ml but it depends what consistency you want)

–  100g of rice

Cooking:

Steam sweet potato an broccoli for 8min.


Then add peas and beans for another 5 minutes.

While steaming vegetables cook your rice and prepare the vegetable stock.


Because my princess is still at the stage 2 of weaning I blend all of the ingediance (except the rice). Add vegetable stock while doing so, if you want it more runny add more, if you want it to be quite thick add less.


Once blended add rice, and it’s ready to serve. You can ado add cooked chicken in to it.


DESSERT : Yogurt and blueberries pancakes

Ingrediants:

– yogurt 200ml

– flower

– 1 tsp baking powder

– 150g blueberries

Cooking:

Comine all of the ingrediants together except blueberries. Mix until smooth then add blueberries.

  Fry for a minute or two (until golden)  on each side. Great as a snack or when introducing finger food.

FINGER FOOD

BABY ADVICE

In my opinion you should start introducing finger foods few weeks after starting to wean your baby. 

On the very beginning whatever you give should be very soft :

– cooked carrot sticks

– toast 

– very small baby corn crisps (one from 6months)

– Cooked Apple cut in to sticks or Banana

– cooked sweet potato cut in to stripes

– rice cakes (one from 6months) 

Once you established good feeding routine at 7months you should be introducing texture to your baby food and so much more finger food. 

 I introduced texture to Chloes food by adding very small baby pasta or couscous to all of her meals. I would cook her normal meal, make it in to a poore and then add the texture. Also adding meat makes the food more textured when blended. For a desert I would start chopping fruits in to a very small squares and give it to Chloe instead of blended fruits. Good ideas when starting is to add some cooked apple cut in to a tiny squares in to a yogurt, or add some cut fruits in to a poored ones – banana is ideal. 

From 7 months you can start giving so much more finger foods (I started earlier as Chloe was a perfect eater and we started weaning much earlier) 

 – Corn snacks (very big selection)

– Biscuits (baby ones, remember that they are high in sugar) 

– Cooked vegetables – pretty much all of them- perfect one being broccoli, carrot, cauliflower.

– pancakes with banana or cooked apple are a perfect snack. 

– sliced soft fruits : Bannana, Peach, Kiwi, Strawberry 

– cucumber 

 From 8 months I became brave enough to introduce smaller vegetables and fruits like 

– sweetcorn

– peas

– blueberries 

And letting Chloe feed herself, which also helps with developing motor skills of picking small objects and putting them in to a mouth. 

 I also started giving her a bigger variety of fruits and vegetables :

– Pineapples 

– Mango

– Melon

– Pepper 

– courgette (cooked)

– breadsticks 

   
 

ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER MEAL ANOTHER OUTFIT 

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TODAY WE ARE WEARING : H&M lace cardigan and jeggings, Marska and  Spencer blouse and Mamas & PAPPAS hair band.  
VEGETABLE BALLS 

Today I have made those for the first time. Suitable from around 9 months, makes around 30 balls. Brilliant finger food . 

INGREDIENTS:

– 2 carrots 

– 1 courgette 

– 75g butternut squash 

– 1 onion

– 50g parmesan 

– 150g breadcrumbs 

– 1 egg

– a little bit of flower 

 All of the vegetables have to be greater or mixed in food processor. 
 Once that’s done add all of the other ingredients and mix together.

  
 Form in to small balls (around 30) and coat in flower. 

  
Fry in the frying pan for 5 minutes on each side. 

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MEAL, ANOTHER OUTFIT … 

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ITALIAN PASTA WITH CHICKEN 

INGREDIENTS:

– 100g of baby pasta (you can add more if you like) 

– 1 small leek (washed and chopped)

– 1 red pepper (deseeded and diced)

– 1 cove garlick (crushed)

– 200g can chopped tomatoes 

– 150ml unsalted chicken stock 

– 150g of chicken breast (skinless, diced)

– handful of chopped basil

– 25g greater Parmesan 

   
Fry leek and pepper for around 5 min. Then Add the garlick and cook for another 30s.

 
Add chicken stock, tomatoes, basil and chicken and simmer it for 8-10 minutes. 

Cook your pasta seperatly according to the instruction on the packet. 

Finish by adding Parmesan cheese! 

Now you can 

1. blend everything together and then to your pure add pasta so the baby has a texture (that’s when you starting to introduce texture to your baby diet) 

2.If your baby is eating now solid food just make sure that everything is cute in to a small squares when preparing all ingredients and you are ready to serve. 

3. If your baby is still eating purrs you can blend everything together and serve it like that.