Equal opportunities carb savages – potato cakes & noodle soup

We love an aul’ spud.  For years I would deny them: my new found culinary freedom when I went to college meant I could alternate pasta and rice and never see a spud that wasn’t chipped & deep fried, or encased in a packet marked ‘Hunky Dory’. When I was little,  I would try to hide pieces of potato under my cutlery long after everyone had left the table, having been instructed to stay there til I’d finished everything (an 80′s phenomenon due to the starving babies in Africa, and the more recent memories of an fairly impoverished upbringing).  Luckily my darling father would take pity on me as he went about his daily washing up chore (we had a dishwasher, why on earth was there so much washing up done in our house?) and let me escape to watch Home & Away.  They were nearly always boiled, sometimes leftover & fried on a saturday morning.  There was the occasional baked potato, and the traditional roast, and quite regularly home made chips.   It was only boiled I rejected whole heartedly but the proliferation of them into every single dinner meant I couldn’t exclude them from my diet fast enough when given the opportunity.

mash you can hold

Then I had a kid, and mash became part of our lives again.  It’s buttery/creamy/whatever you’re having yourself deliciousness is so tasty, that it’s a pretty good fall back meal when you haven’t a clue what else to make.  Last weekend, with no shopping done and a few roosters in the cupboard, little potato cakes were on the menu.   It’s mash you can hold!  Incidentally ‘a few roosters’ is actually an item on our shopping list – my mothers influence is strong there.  We had no eggs and each recipe near the top of my google search seemed to contain one, so I just went with a roundabout experiment that really worked!  Binding, schminding…  This makes about 12-15.

Oven baked potato cakes:

• Chop a few roosters (okay, 3) quite small & cook.  I do ours in a microwave steamer, and the small pieces were done in 5 minutes plus a couple of minutes sitting.
• Mash well with a decent dash of milk and more butter than you think you should use.
• Grate in cheddar, add a couple of chopped spring onions and season well with black pepper
• Spread out little cakes on a baking sheet.  Either make little patties with your hand, or use a scone cutter (they don’t keep their shape and spread a little though)
• Bake in the oven at a high temp (I used 200c) for 7 or 8 mins each side.

The beauty of these is it’s not an exact recipe.  Throw in what you have – caramelised leeks would be gorgeous I’d say, or different cheeses.  If you’re cooking something else in the oven at the same time then just use whatever temperature you need it set to for that.

concentration face

a little from column A…

And the equal opportunities part?  Well, since we had spuds on saturday, we had risotto on sunday (and monday), and then our very favourite – noodley doodleys tonight.  In a noodle soup form for parents and Dominic (who used his pilfered Wagamama chopsticks - we took a bunch) and ‘deconstructed’ for Theo.  The constituent parts proved very popular with him too.  He has the art of the pincer grip down pat now.  I even left the plate in front of him while he ate and it lasted a good 8 minutes there I’d say!

We’re definitely enduring a throwback-to-the-eighties Ireland in some regards what with our rampant recession. But I thank the gods of air travel and globalisation for broadening the range of grains and carbs available in Ireland.  I know there was plenty of rice and pasta and maybe even noodles around then (just not really in our house) but cous cous and quinoa…far from it I was reared!

- Jill

Ahsotto. Toddler for ‘Risotto’.

I’ve written about risotto before. It’s a staple food in this house, but with my short attention span I like to mix it up as much as possible. Mark usually is in charge of risotto but I tackled this one – Hugh Fearnley Whittingstalls Tomato Risotto. Everything for the basic recipe was already in the house, but we bought some rocket for our packed lunches and its peppery punch was fantastic with the sweet tomatoes. I also threw in four ice cubes of red wine in with the rice before the stock stage. Yes, I freeze wine. Yes, I have leftover wine! (Sometimes). Sure the kids will sleep well tonight!

nyom

Barbecue, baby style

Now, if you’re looking for saussies you’ve come to the wrong place.  Though I can assure you the 2-44 year olds (except me) had plenty of traditional Irish barbecue (lots of meat and clouds) the babies were another story.   I sat Theo on my knee while I ate my delicious halloumi & courgette skewers, grilled asparagus, & beetroot salad  - seriously, how do any of you people need meat when things like that are available? I fully expected to hand him sticks of various things and to watch him chuck them to the ground.  He’s a shouty distracible baby so with his brother and 6 cousins around I figured he wouldn’t go for much.

The best little eater I know

But soon he was transfixed.  We all were truth be told.  Theo’s little cousin Tessa (8.5 months) was quietly and determinedly working her way through several pieces of courgette, her little fist firmly wrapped about it.  Then she chomped down on some delicious asparagus.  But that wasn’t enough, so next with the aid of her dad to steady the load, she munched her way around a large ear of corn.   The thing that struck me most of all…the neatness!  See that blue plate?  It’s not even glued or suckered to the table, she just didn’t bother with The Swiping or The Throwing so beloved of my sons.  *sigh* Jealous!  Tessa is the third of three children, and the first one of them to do baby led weaning.  She could not be a better ad for it!

Theo, wide eyed and inspired tried everything he saw over the next day.  We’re gonna have to hang out with Tessa a bit more!

oh this? is it good?

well if Dom is gonna leave his sandwich lying about…

oooh! squishy.

Rolling and moving and eating

fighting back

busy

gnocchi

We’ve been very busy here in Properfud Towers.   My mama does running away a lot now.  Sometimes she gets medals and Dom has to not hit me with them.  My mama and dada are work work working all the time and though sometimes I’m sad when they go I have lots of fun in my creche.  My lovely minders bring me to see my brother and all his friends sometimes and they all love playing with Baby Teddy which is me.

I like when they give me my fud in creche. But incase they forget now I eat my porridge or my weetabix every morning at home too. I shout at mama while she puts food on my spoon so I can grab it from her.  She tries to eat hers at the same time and that is slow.  Ssssh don’t tell them I have two brekkies. My big brother told me about doing that and I think it’s a good idea.   For my snack I like to have a banana too I like it whole with its little jacket still on it a bit.  I love nanas but DomDom doesn’t ever.  I try other baby’s food too, like Ambrosia Rice Pudding and fruit pots and I tried some of DomDom’s biccie and I don’t know if mama is always happy but I don’t mind if she isn’t because I am.

Mama is happy though really because now I eat my dinner with them too. She pretended she wasn’t worrying but she was and now I’m nearly 10 months and I’m  rolling all over the floor and pushing myself around a bit and it makes me very hungry so I have to eat.  Mama and Dada learned to make pizza and it’s yum I like the chewy cheese and crust and the little veggies on it.

I also like when she does other grubs called noki.  She does them a bit my brother likes them and my dada. I know because he ate the ones I dropped on the floor.  I see all the things he eats and I know if things are good that way. Mama says he’s to be a good infloons on me and eat up his veggies. He eats carrots and juicyredpepper n all while mama is making dinner but I saw him eat animally biccies with choccy too. I wonder when I will be having them? I shout and shout my loudest when I want what he has but it doesn’t work so instead I’m going to learn some of words soon so they can’t pick me up and sing songs and not give me what Dom has.

- Lil’ T

Progress Report: Not exactly progressing

I’d rather eat fork.

I’m gonna have to be honest here. We did have a big hit a few weeks ago with Kidney Bean & Walnut burgers but sure, baby likes to keep me on my toes.  When I made them again 2 out of 3 of my menfolk happily ate them up with me for dinner but not the little fella, not tonight.  He had them plated up with no bun and showed absolutely no interest but did chew some of the bun when offered afterwards. Doh.

It’s just, that now, at very nearly 9 months old Theo barely eats.  Barely at all, as far as I can see.  And that’s the crux of the matter – I’m starting to take it personally!  He eats in creche, oh yeah, loves his porridge each morning.  I offer him porridge an hour earlier and end up running late for work wiping it off the floor and wall.  Noms up chicken stew and all sorts with his minders.  Happily eats a yogurt, mandarin segments, grape halves.  (Main meals mostly mean spoon feeding in creche) Husband assures me the young fella eats a decent selection of small portions around him.  But me, oh no! I think I walk into view and all he sees is two giant boobs on legs.  That’s not how I look, not these days anyway.  He started in full time childcare a few weeks ago, and has gone from drinking maybe a total of 7 oz of formula during the day at the start, to today, where he drank none at all.  It’s called Reverse Cycling (he feeds very little during the day, and feeds at night instead), and it’s new to me this time round. Breastmilk may well be all I represent to him at the minute.  So that’s ok, but does this mean I can be excused from dinner duties?  Yeah right…

Storage in bib optional.

One simple quick lunch I can recommend is “quesadilla”.  The inverted commas are very necessary.  I don’t think if it would pass a Mexican test somehow.  These have proved popular  and I love them.  I’ve made these with 2 full size wraps and shared them with the kids, and done them with a mini wrap folded in half just for his nibs.  They’re dead handy, and super tasty whatever size you make them.

• Stick a wrap under the grill to warm briefly while you prep your filling.
• Grate cheese, grate apple or pear, or mash up some avocado.
• Take wrap and  scatter grated cheese & fruit, or spread avocado and top with grated cheese.
• Give it a quick grill.
• Top with another wrap, and warm that a little.
• Cut into wedges.
• Yum.

I’ll keep ploughing on.  I can only urge my readers to please, offer me encouragement, and support, and use the archives to find all the wonderful food that stuffed 6, 7,  8, 9, 10… month old Dominic to the the gills.

- Jill

There’s a new sheriff in town…

…And its name is Meal Planner.  Well, it’s a repurposed pirate-themed reward chart, which I guess undermines its authority slightly, but we’ve stuck to it for 2 weeks now.   Yup, I’m back at work.  The 1950′s housewife is gone, the harried career woman is back.  No longer do I present my husband with his dinner with a twinkling eye and a slick of fresh lippie as soon as he arrives home. (If he says this didn’t happen he’s LYING)  So it’s all a bit more rushed for everyone.

Must think of something to do with the magnets.

I’ve long envied organised friends knowing what they’re having for the week, and have vowed several times to adopt better habits in that regard.  It’s not that I particularly want to know what I’ll be eating in advance, but it makes life with 2 working parents and 2 kids a lot more streamlined, and affects the grocery budget positively.  Two things have jumped out so far at me since we started -

1. Last weekend, I noticed a satisfying lack of on-the-turn veg, and almost out of date products in our fridge. Winner! No pressure to  urgently concoct a soup with whatever is there.
2. I don’t like eating the same meal two days in a row.

To this end, I found a great recipe that can be used for 2 different meals.   We had lovely spaghetti bolognese one night last week (cooked at 9pm the night before – another of the joys of being a working mother).  Then I froze the other half of the bolognese, and yesterday we had it oven cooked with sweet potato mash on top, finished off with grated cheddar under the grill.  I call it ‘Unemployed Shepherd’s Pie.’

So this is the recipe for Dee’s Meat Free Spaghetti Bolognese.  It’s part of a promotion for people to try and eat no meat on Mondays, which is a world wide movement now.  It’s meat free every day for me  (mention that a time or 10?), but I do feel strongly people should have at least 1 animal protein free day in their week.  At least 1, and hopefully working up to 7 a week. No unhealthy animal fats, it’s cheaper, great for the environment and it broadens your palette.  Dee’s Wholefoods are a brand of delicious and super healthy veggie burgers and meals.* She’s got some amazing recipes over there on the VegPod blog, more of which I need to be adding to my meal planner!

Meat-Free Spaghetti Bolognese

Ingredients

• 2 carrots (small dice)
• 1 onion (diced)
• 2 cloves garlic (sliced)
• 1 stick of celery (diced)
• ¾ cup of green puy lentils (dried)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp Oregano
• Vegetable stock cube
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• Black pepper

Method

1. Add 1tsp of oil to a pan and sauté the diced carrots, celery and onion for 2 mins.
2. Add the garlic and lentils and stir.
3. Add the tin of tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes) bay leaf, oregano and black pepper.
4. Add vegetable stock until twice the amount of water is in the sauce pan as lentils.
5. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for approx 30 mins.
6. The lentils will absorb the water and swell up, keep an eye on the pot as you may need to add in additional water to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pan.
7. The lentils are done when they are soft to bite through.
8. Cook spaghetti according to instruction.
9. If you are not on a vegan diet, you might like to serve this dish with soft goats cheese or regular grated cheese on top.

Note: If it is  your first time trying lentils it is recommended to drink more water than usual to help the fibre flush toxins out of your body!

I did as suggested, and made double the amount.  However I stuck with the 3/4 cup of puy lentils, and added in 1.5 cups of quorn mince, but I think it would work find with just doubling the lentils too.

Now!  It’s himself’s turn tomorrow.

- Jill

*This is not a promotional post, all my opinions are my own and all my grub is purchased myself, unless the nice people at Dee’s fancy sending me some.

There’s no ‘I’ in team.

This is post is just one in a series by some of the Irish Parenting Bloggers group.  We’re celebrating!  Two of our members are having baby girls early this year – one has arrived (Aine of Andmybaby – on leave at the moment!) and one is to come (Lisa of mama.ie).  Best of luck girlies!  So for my part in this virtual baby shower – being the mama of 2 boys myself – I want to share a mama’s view of big brotherhood.

Surrounded by maleness so far, in partnership with your husband you have kept safe a Tasmanian devil of a small boy with its’ non-stop twirling, whirling, flinging itself off sofa edges, precarious chairs, the tiniest of steps…  I don’t claim your wee lass won’t do that too.  But not now.  Now is the time to drink her in, her rosebud lips, her button nose, her small mewling and load roars and her nuzzling at your breast.

Boys wreck your house, girls wreck your head – so the saying goes.  I think both genders can manage a good line in destructive physical or emotional activity.  But still, not now. Now she just has needs, and she needs you.

That little boy? He will be her chief tormentor, her fiercest defender.  She will light up for you, with gurgly smiles.  But she will light up quickest for him, the sight of him appearing in her field of vision will cause expectant giggles.  You will spend all day and all night tending to her, and to him, and sometimes they will only have eyes for each other.  He may hurt her with his love, he may throw himself across her small body – such is the weight of his love he must express it with wrestling.  Your patience will be tested as you pry the adoring elder sibling off, waiting to see if little one is happy or sad.  She will undermine your need to discipline him, by laughing, and you find you cannot scold.

And then you realise, you’ve created a team, and you are their biggest fan, and their trusted coach.

xx to Lisa & Aine!

My Countdown Conundrum-style letter for today, is (Give us a consonant please Carol) T. When the girls have all the letters from all the posts they get to jumble them up and receive a smashing baby shower pressie.

Yesterday’s post came from Kate at The Nest, tomorrow the shower will end fabulously with Amy at The Daily Muttering.

Other posts can be seen at all the links below.  There’s a beautiful mix of funny, touching, spiritual & political so I recommend putting the kettle on and reading the many and varied voices of the Irish Parenting Bloggers community:

Mind the Baby

Wonderful Wagon

That Curious Love of Green

Debalicious

My Internal World

Awfully Chipper

Go Dad Go

The Dare Project

The Clothesline

Dreaming Aloud

Kate Takes 5

Ouch My Fanny Hurts

Pomp

Musings of a Hostage-Mother

Wholesome Ireland

Beany burgery goodness!

Phew! I’ve done this whole weaning before, I know it works.  Still there are moments of doubt.

I persist, and most times a little food goes in, every few days finding something he genuinely is interested in.  Like with all things baby, no two are the same – Dom ate noisy slurping fistfuls of porridge by this age, Theo passively watches us eat breakfast (it seems Dominic is my son when it comes to the most important meal of the day, and Theo firmly Mark’s).

a handful

Some days he ignores what’s in front of him, others he prefers the bowl to the contents. But today, at lunchtime he ate a whole mini burger, and some wholewheat pitta on the side. I squished it down a bit then he patiently scooped up pieces. He spent the longest time eating I’ve ever seen, returning to the plate again and again.  I can see his methods improving too – a flat palm on the food, a fist clenched, then turned and opened flat against his mouth, or sometimes using his other hand to pick pieces out of the proffered palm.

I say burger – I mean kidney bean & walnut burger.  Inspired by an online buddy I went searching for veggie burger recipes yesterday. My imminent return to work means we need to get more organised in terms of meal planning – this recipe makes the cut!

Oooo colouredy!

The blog I got these from – The ‘V’ Word – has excellent tips for making veggie burgers in general. Anyone who’s tried will know it can be difficult to get the consistency right and to stop them crumbling on the pan. Worth bookmarking for that section alone! Below is the recipe using my adjustments.

 Ingredients
400g tin kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 small red onion, shredded & squeezed dry
1 small carrot, grated
2 scallions, finely chopped
1/3 cup chopped walnuts – chop really finely for baby
1/2 tsp. black pepper, or to taste
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
Some cayenne pepper, to taste
1 Tbs. soya sauce
½ cup wholewheat bread crumbs
1 Tbs. rapeseed oil

Method
Smash beans in a bowl with a fork until slightly chunky. Add the onion, carrot, scallions, walnuts, all the herbs & spices and soya sauce and mix well until all the ingredients are incorporated.  Skip the nuts if you haven’t tried them with your little one yet and you have a family history of nut allergies.  If not, go right ahead and put them in there.  I picked larger bits out of T’s just because I forgot to chop them finely enough. 

Add the bread crumbs little by little while mixing with your hands until you have the desired consistency. The mixture should feel firm and stick together well. Refrigerate the whole mixture in the bowl for at least 30 minutes.

Form the patties using your hands or a scone cutter.  This made 4 medium and 4 kid size burgers (the recipe states it makes 4 large)

Heat the oil in a large non stick pan over medium-high heat. Add the patties and cook until browned on each side. Each side may need about 5 minutes. You may need to flip the burgers carefully several times to ensure the inside gets cooked while the outside doesn’t burn.

Serve in wholewheat pitta with some mashed avocado or your favourite burger toppings.

- Jill

Liked, and shared

As I once again loaded up the recipe for banana pancakes on the blog this morning, I noticed the date on the post – jan 28 2011 – more than 2 whole years since I last raved about them on here. Honestly you would think I’d know it off by now.

This morning I decided I could mention them again as I looked at my new family configuration enjoying making and eating them. Dominic did his one handed egg cracking trick and enthusiastically mashed the banana. He also licked some spilled flour off the countertop. I didn’t teach him that. Theo gobbled up strips, some dipped in berry juice, some plain, some in yogurt. I forgot to put a bib on…

They have easily been the most liked & shared recipe – and not just in a Facebook sense, in a real sense. Sisters, new mums, friends over for brunch, other bloggers, Facebook groups, tweets.

They’ve been adapted (apple sauce, flavoured yogurt, wholemeal flour) and enjoyed by mums, dads, regular human adults and kids.

So it’s Saturday morning…raise your mug of coffee – to weekends & to pancakes!

That’s why we don’t eat animals. Recruitment drive.

I’ve been writing this blog for a couple of years now, and theres only so many baby/toddler/preschool straight up food posts I can write.  I kinda boxed myself into a corner with the subject matter.  So if you don’t mind terribly, from time to time I may write about something else.  Probably food, or parenting, or health and nutrition based – I won’t stray too far.  I did this before here, shortly before I had Theo I’ve done some guest posting in my time, most notably here on the fabulous MindTheBaby blog.

Bringing home the bacon…

Given my last post was about the cooking of the flesh, I thought the following exchange was worth recounting.  I don’t cook meat, I don’t touch it where possible.  In my 17 years as a vegetarian, and my 10 years with meat-eatin’-Mark, I’d say the most I’ve done it turn a rasher on the grill for him.   And for the child, I’ve put some cooked turkey in a sambo.  Okay, I didn’t ‘cook’ any flesh with the croquettes, I opened the tin of tuna, but sheesh, that was rotten enough.  And no, not baby steps…this is not something that will be progressing!

I’m not forcing my ways on anyone, but I’ll raise kids more accustomed to cooking tofu & lentils than burgers & sausages (unless they’re Lovely Linda McCartney’s), and then they can make their own call.

So, the other night, we were reading the gorgeous ‘Where The Wild Things Are’
DOM ‘We don’t chase dogs’.
ME ‘No we don’t.  Not dogs or cats or any animals.  We have to be nice to animals.’
DOM ‘Yes.’
ME ‘Mammy is so nice to animals she doesn’t even eat them.’
DOM ‘I don’t eat animals.’
ME ‘Yes you do.’
DOM ‘No I don’t.’
ME ‘Yes, mammy doesn’t eat animals, but Daddy and Dominic do.’
DOM ‘No we don’t!’    (*giggles likes eating animals is the maddest thing on earth which it is*)

It struck me that though chicken meat is called chicken, and turkey called turkey, and most fish flesh generically called fish, that wee Dominic may not have made the small ‘from farm to fork’ leap required in his mind.  He poked the bacon that came with his french toast in a restaurant the other day and though he knew it was a rasher of sorts, he asked me “What’s in this mammy?”

Where will this lead dear readers? Where will this lead…