Organised Mummy

This week, I decided to get organised and create a menu for the week as I was fed up of scratching my head every day thinking what to cook for lunch & dinner.

So armed with my reliable recipes from the BLW site and a few other places, I created the weeks menu and this is what we have had so far. (I've posted the recipes at the bottom of the post.)

Mon - Brekfast:Apple & cinnamon hot cross bun with 2 pieces of nectarine
Lunch: Cheese, carrot & spring onion pitta pocket followed by a few raisins
Dinner: Chicken stir fry and 1/2 conference pear for dessert
Tues - Breakfast: 1/2 weetabix and small bit of banana
Lunch: Savoury Muffins followed by 1 bit of nectarine
Dinner: Vegetable chilli and rice and banana yoghurt for dessert
Weds - Breakfast: 1/2 Blueberry bran muffin
Lunch: Jacket potato with cheese and sweetcorn fritter followed by dried apricot & mango
Dinner: Cheese & spinach quesadilla and strawberry yoghurt (with Plum 4 grain porridge in)

So, Monday & Tuesday's menu went down well.

While I was in M&S last week I noticed they had an offer on their hot cross buns and as they are a firm fave in our house I took M&S up on their offer of buy one get one half price and bought 1 pack of regular and 1 pack of apple & cinnamon to give them a try, and oo they were yummy! TP (as always) loves his pitta pockets and I thought I would try something different by adding the spring onion which was a rgaing succes! The noodles, again are something he loves - I'm not sure whether he prefers to eat them or swing them around his arm the most though!

Tueday was another day for trying new things on the menu and I made my 1st attempt at savoury muffins, well I followed the cheese & onion recipe and added a few bits to suit us. So I used half red & half regular onions and added a tiny bit of bacon. Yes, I know bacon has alot of salt BUT TP doesn't really eat that much salt - mostly in bread & cheese and it was a tiny bit to add some flavour, I also threw some carrot in there too because you can never eat too many carrots. :D Disaster struck when I took my silicone muffin tin from the oven and it bent (as they do!) and I dropped the muffins, so had to start again and cook another batch! Anyway, they came out lovely and tasted so nice they were almost like dumplings that are really crispy on the outside and so soft and melting in the middle - I will definately be making these again! The veg chilli was nice but I think next time I will add more chilli powder as it was a bit mild, and I know TP can stand more heat. Oh, I overcooked the rice so it was nice and soft to mix in with the chilli.

Recipes:

Savoury Muffins - makes 6

Ingredients
5 oz plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 large egg
4fl oz milk
2oz cheese - grated
1/2 small red onion
1/2 small regular onion
1/2 strip bacon
1 carrot - grated

Method
Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 and line a muffin tun with 6 muffin cases
Fry the onion (until soft) and bacon - I used a griddle
Sift the flour and baking powder together and put into a bowl
Beat the egg in a jug and add the milk, whisk together
Fold into the flour (don't over-fold as we want to keep the air in)
Add cheese, onion, bacon and carrot (again, with minimum folding!)
Pour the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Leave to cool (if you can wait that long!).


Vegetable Chilli - makes enough for 1 baby & 1 Mummy

Ingredients
1/2 onion
1/2 pepper
1/2 courgette
couple of mushrooms
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp smoked paprika (optional)
1 small tin of kidney beans
1 small tin of tomatoes
water (the amount depends on how thick you like your chilli)

Method
Dice the two halves of onion and fry in olive oil on medium heat until soft and add the chilli powder & smoked paprika if using and continue frying for a minute or 2
Slice or chop the vegetables and add to the pan and cook for a coule of minutes
Add the kidney beans, tomatoes and stir together the add the water to desired thickness
Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 -30 minutes

If you make it too spicy for the baby, you can stir some sour cream or mashed avocado into the chilli to cool it a bit.

Serve with over-cooked long grain rice or put into wraps for burritos!

So much has happened

Wow it feels like ages since I last posted here and quite alot has happened. TP is trying to crawl! He can commando crawl backwards, swivel round on his tummy and is rolling all over the place. On the down side he's doing it in his sleep and there have been a few times that I've had to go in and turn him onto his side or back again because he's stuck in his cot.

Sleep.. hmm thats something that is very rare in this house, for Mummy at least. TP is going through a phase (yes, thats what Im calling it for my own peace of mind!) and he will wake anything from every hour to every three hours. Every three hours is bliss, actually anything that ISN'T every hour is bliss!! I invested in Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution and we've done 10 days, so tonight will tell whether we've any improvements but we'll leave that to another post. We've discovered how good co-sleeping can be, well good that I get some sleep, bad that I have to lie on the edge of our King Size bed because a certain 8 month old feels it neccessary to lie like a starfish!

Oh, last night when TP woke up at 12.30, I fed him and popped him back in his cot and he was just dosing off when he he turned onto his back and clapped his lips together a few times and said, clear as anything, "Mama!", why do they always do these things in the middle of the night when you can't jump up and down for joy and scream YAAAAAAY, he FINALLY said it !!!! Anyhoo, I sat in the chair and beamed inside. Ofcourse, he hasn't said it since but I can wait. :D

Well I'm sure alot more has happened but I can't think of it right now so I'd better get off to put TP in the bath.

A day of new dishes

As TP is off his food still, I thought I would see if he would eat something new. So, armed with a couple of recipes, noodles with ketchup from babyledweaning.com and blueberry bran muffins from a book called Healthy Cooking For Your Kids (ISBN 1-40546-993-5), although I adapted them slightly. We had noodles for lunch and muffins for afternoon tea.

TP tucked into his noodles and especially enjoyed the mushrooms (another new thing!), although the noodles were a bit sticky - I think I maybe needed to add a bit of water or maybe I cooked them for too long. TP's pincer grip is really coming along now he picked up his peas, which were quite small without too many problems. Putting ketchup in noodles sounded really gross to me but a friend of mine tried them and said they were really nice, so I thought I would give it a go - Im not a great cook so anything thats easy is good by me! So, with an open mind I dug into my share of the noodles and was pleasantly suprised at how yummy they were.

The muffins came out perfectly, I've never made them before and had to substitute and leave out a few of the ingredients so I was slightly nervous! I was quite suprised how much he seemed to enjoy them.

The recipes are below, for the noodles I would just use however much of everything that you want to, it all depends on how strong in flavour and what you want to put in there!


Noodles - makes enough for Mummy & Baby

Ingredients
1/2 bag of ready made chow mein noodles
Olive oil
Squirt of garlic paste / fresh garlic
Sprinkling of five spice
A couple of dribbles of soy sauce
A few squirts of tomato ketchup
A few prawns (I used defrosted ready cooked prawns)
1/4 of red oinion
1 mushroom
Handful of frozen garden peas

Method
Heat the olive oil in a wok
Add the garlic and five spice and the onion, stir-fry until the onion softens a little
Add the prawns and mushroom and cook until they are cooked and then add the peas
Stir in the noodles and add the soy sauce and ketchup and keep stir-frying until the noodles are heated through

You can add any vegetables that you want, I just used what was in the house but next time I will probably add some mange tout and baby sweetcorn too and maybe use sprig onions instead of red oinions.


Blueberry Bran Muffins - makes 10 small muffins

Ingredients
150g/5 1/2 oz white plain flour
100g/3 1/2 oz wholemeal self-raising flour
1 tbsp oat bran - I used ground up All Bran (its all I had in the cupboard that was remotely bran-like!)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g/1 3/4oz light brown soft sugar
1 large egg
250ml / 7fl oz buttermilk - I made a substitute with 230ml milk & 1 tbsp lemon juice
180g fresh blueberries

Method
Preheat the oven to 180c/350f/Gas Mark 4 and line 10 holes of a muffin tin with muffin paper cases
Mix the flours, bran, baking powder, bicarb of soda together in a bowl and stir in the sugar
Whisk the egg and buttermilk together together in a jug
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir briefly to combine. Don't overmix - the mixture
should still be a little lumpy. Fold in the blueberries
Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases and bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes until risen and lightly browned
Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin (Or foof on one and burn your mouth when you taste it like I did!!)
Serve warm or cold, with greek yoghurt or cream (for Mum!)

Burrito Joe!

TP made his Daddy a proud man tonight by eating a burrito. They are somewhat of a tradition in our house, we have them every Tuesday and I make a huge batch for TP's Daddy to take to work with him the next day, aptly named "Burrito Club" by the guys who he works with - they're famous you know!! :D

Anyway, tonight I made a little bit for TP. I took the mince and refried beans out of the pan before the chilli sauce went in and it was wrapped along with sour cream and Monterey Jack cheese, although TP isn't eating alot of food at the moment he did give the burrito a go.

Happy 8 Month Birthday TP!

Well today is TP's 8 month birthday, where has the time gone? We've not had much of a food week since his bout of teething but last night his sleep was MUCH better and he only woke twice in the night so Mummy had lots of sleep!

TP doesn't crawl yet, he shows no signs of being interested either if you put him on his front he rolls straight over onto his back! He would much rather sit up and play or stand on his legs, which is ok by me, I see my friends struggle trying to keep an eye on their little one's who are crawling EVERYWHERE! Stay sitting as long as you want to my boy, thats what I say. :D

TP just babbles endlessly, he loves to scream and is always laughing, he is such a joy, although I guess I am biased! :P He can say dada, calls our dog A (her name is Angel and he ALWAYS says A when she is close by, probably coincidence but hey!) but very rarely says mama, usually only if he's crying and having a tantrum, oh yes, he has those too but generally only at night!

Toothy problems.

Well it's been one heck of a week. TP spent the first part of the week with a temperature, he was hovering around the 39 degrees mark and jumped up to 40 one night. After a quick call to NHS Direct I felt a bit calmer, but he went off to the Dr's the following day and the Dr decided it was teething and I was most annoyed that she didnt even bother to take his temperature (!). Anyhoo, a couple of nights in bed with Mummy & Daddy later his temperature went back to normal and his sleep got worse! Up every hour and a very tired Mummy & Daddy are hoping that the teeth will make an appearance very very soon.

On the plus side, TP's three 30 minute naps a day are changing and for the past 2 or 3 days, he has been having a 90 minute nap mid morning and then another 30 minute nap at about 2pm, Im trying to get him to take a further nap at about 4.30pm which seems to be key to him going to sleep alone at night without the need for having a booby in his mouth to sleep. The question is, how on earth do you make a baby sleep?! It's going to be late afternoon walks with him in the pushchair I think!

TP is comlpetely off his food at the moment, we've been offering him all 3 meals but are lucky if he puts anything to his mouth; most of it is ending up on the floor! Nevermind, he's been taking lots of milk and that's the most important thing.