My microwave exploded!

It couldn’t just stop working and die in a quiet sort of way could it! I was reheating the Veggie Baby’s lunch yesterday and it went ‘POP’ and started smoking.  “Not good” I thought.  So I tried it again, and it went ‘POP’ and carried on smoking.  After the third POP my kitchen was starting to smell a bit, so I decided that it really had given up and died.

So after getting Veggie Baby weighed at baby clinic – she now weighs 16lb 14oz – we pottered over to Comet to buy a new microwave.  I never used it before Evie came along, I only had one because we inherited it from my Grandma (who also never used it) and we just never got rid of it.  However, I have found that it’s quite useful for defrosting and reheating small quantities of baby food that would just be lost in a pan.  So after messing about trying to defrost her lunch in bowls of hot water, I decided that I do need a new one.

Unfortunately when I got to Comet, the choice was ridiculous.  Combination grills, digital ones, integrated ones and all kinds of fancy stuff.  I just want a plain and simple one that doesn’t do anything fancy, and won’t take up too much space.  Eventually I chose this one.  It’s actually almost identical to our old one, except the old one was green (so I’m quite glad to be rid of it really) and this one is a lovely silver.

Anyway, Veggie Daddy plugged it in, and it works, and it’s actually a little bit smaller than the old one, so that’s a plus. So we’re all back to normal again now.

Eating out

I went shopping to the Trafford Centre yesterday (a huge shopping mall).  I love going there because although it is a ‘temple to consumerism’ according to the Veggie Daddy, it’s very buggy friendly, they have private breastfeeding rooms that are separate from the toilets and nappy changing areas and so don’t smell horrible, and there are lots of lovely places to eat and drink enormous cups of coffee (decaf and Fairtrade of course!).  I went with my mum, and this was the first time we’ve been since Veggie Baby started solids.  We went to John Lewis for lunch.  We went there because we’ve been there before and it was nice, and also because it tends to be a bit quieter than the main food hall.  However, I was a little bit disappointed this time.  We got a high chair for Veggie Baby, because she can now sit up well enough to use one, but the straps to hold her in were FAR too long, so we had to give up on that and leave her in her buggy, which she wasn’t too impressed about.  They were quite busy, but the staff were really helpful, and when we asked for something to warm her food up with, they gave us some boiling water in a vacuum flask, and a bowl to put the dish in.  This would have worked brilliantly, except that her food was still frozen – I took the ice cubes out of the freezer before we set off, and I thought that would be plenty of time for them to defrost.  She had sweet potato and cauliflower.  Sweet potato defrosts pretty quickly, but cauliflower takes ages – presumably because of its high water content.  So it took me ages to defrost the food and get it to a reasonable temperature, so she was starving by the time we started.  She did really well though and polished off four ice cubes of sweet potato and cauliflower, and she still looked hungry, so it was a good job I’d also taken two cubes of nectacots with me, because she ate all that too!

My mum and I had the soup of the day, which was leek and potato and would have been really nice, except that it was really salty – even my mum thought so, and she puts salt on everything.  So that was a bit disappointing.  And I must be too used to Starbucks and the like, because my latte was teeny, and then they took my bread away before I’d finished eating it, but I was too embarrassed to complain.

But, that’s another Big Thing for the Veggie Baby, her first meal out, and it was relatively painless – apart from the shrieking and singing when she got impatient waiting for it to all heat up.  Next time, I’ll make sure I take the food out of the freezer first thing in the morning.

Nectacot!

Sorry, I do have photos, but I can’t upload them at the moment – they will follow though.  Edited: all sorted, so now we have photos.

I saw these on my weekly supermarket shopping trip. I was actually looking for apricots, because they seem to feature in a lot of the recipes that I’ve got. Instead, I found Nectacots! I can only presume from the name that they are a cross between a Nectarine and an Apricot. They’re roughly the same size as a plum, and they’re a rich, golden yellowy-orange colour. I bought a pack of 6 for £3 (about US$6), so they’re not particularly cheap, but curiousity got the better of me!

I skinned them (by immersing in boiling water like you would for a peach or tomato), chopped up the flesh and stewed it until soft. Then I pureed it with a teeny bit of cooled, boiled water to get the right consistency.

They taste really nice, they’re much sharper than nectarines, but not too tart. The look on the Veggie Baby’s face when she first tried them was priceless! She’s never tasted anything that has that sharp taste to it before. I didn’t think she’d go for it at all, but she loved it! I’ve tried them on their own, and also mixed with a little thick Greek yogurt, and she likes them both ways.

So if you see them in your local shop – give them a go.

The aftermath of the prunes

Evie had prunes for breakfast yesterday.

Today, I had to change the fullest nappy in the world!  Unfortunately Veggie Daddy had changed her at about 6am.  All was well then, and he put on a new nappy.  Note, at this point it’s important you understand we’re using terry nappies.  Big towellling squares, folded into interesting shapes and then wrapped around your baby, followed by PUL pants (like plastic pants but nicer) that do up with poppers.  Because he doesn’t change as many nappies as I do, frankly he isn’t as good at it as I am.  I’m not gloating, or having a go – I’m grateful that he makes the effort and changes any of them at all – I’m just being honest.  But loosely fitting nappies and enormous baby poos are not a good combination.

So that’s how I started my day – what’s that saying about eating a frog, then your day can only get better?

Exciting new foods

I’ve had a bit of a crisis of confidence over the last few days, because Evie still doesn’t seem too interested in solids, and because the Health Visitor told me that she should be eating about double the amount I’m giving her, three times a day, and having a pint of milk a day as well.  Anyway, I’ve caught up on my sleep, and spoken to knowledgeable friends about it (thanks to you all on the TTC board, you know who you are), and I’m now much calmer.  I’m going to offer her food, but if she doesn’t want it, then I’m not going to let it bother me.  She can still have all the booby milk she wants, so she’ll be fine.  Although I may not get to sleep through the night, but that will happen too, eventually!

So.  We tried the avocado and I learned that although I like guacamole with nachos, I do not like avocado on its own.  Evie did pretty well with it, she didn’t hate it.  I also learned that although all the books say that you can just mash the flesh with a fork, that’s not necessarily true.  I managed to get it pretty smooth, but I think it would have been quicker, easier and better to just use the mini bowl of my Magimix.

Then today we tried Papaya.  Again, I listened to the books which said that you don’t need to cook them, but puree.  Well, when I eventually managed to wrestle the flesh from the skin and put it in the Magimix, it didn’t puree all that well.  It ended up a bit….gritty.  So I think it would have been better if I’d just steamed it very lightly for a few minutes first to soften it up.  Ah well, you live and learn.  Still, Evie liked it, and she even liked it when I stirred in a spoonful of Greek yogurt to smooth it out a bit.  I thought it tasted quite tart then, but she ate the lot anyway!  For those of you who’ve never tried it, it’s quite nice.  Tastes a little bit like melon, but stronger.  But it’s not cheap – £1.48 for a single fruit.  Nor could I get organic papaya, and it certainly isn’t local.  But it was something new and interesting.

Hass avocados

When I went shopping this week I found this teeny avocado – it’s a Hass avocado!! It was so cute I had to buy it. Now, I don’t know very much about avocados, the first time I tasted one (knowingly) was a few weeks ago when I had a thing for Mexican food and decided to make Guacamole. The Guacamole wasn’t brilliant – it was Delia’s recipe, and I thought it had too much lime juice in it, that was more or less all I could taste. I did try the avocado on it’s own though, and I wasn’t altogether taken with that either – it didn’t really taste of much to me. However, all my baby cookbooks rave about avocados and how wonderful they are as baby food. So when I saw this little one (and for reference I have tiny hands, size 5) I thought it would be perfect for Evie. I think I may give it to her for tea today as according to the health visitor I should be trying to get her onto 3 meals a day.

I then searched the internet to try to find out if all Hass avocados are tiny, or whether I just got a really small one. I was surprised to find that Hass is a very common variety. Maybe that’s just true in America, because I haven’t seen them in my Morrisons before. In doing so, I found out lots of stuff I never knew about avocados (yes, I know, I do need to get a life).

• Accoding to Wikipedia the name derives from an Aztec word meaning “testicle”
• There are over a thousand different varieties
• All Hass avocados are descended from a single female tree
• The skin and stone are poisonous to cats (as if cats would be stupid enough to eat them)
• Avocado is one of the few fruits that is a complete protein (i.e. it provides all the essential amino acids that must be provided by diet as they cannot be synthesized by the body)

As it’s so wonderful, I may well give her some for tea tonight (as she didn’t particularly like my offering of carrots at lunchtime).

Butternut squash

This week has been going much better than last week.

Banana went down a treat yesterday and so did butternut squash.  I went out to see a friend, and so Evie had to eat in someone else’s house (with a very clean, cream carpet!).  I put her in the carseat, and she did OK.  Although she did spread butternut squash on the canopy thing, and I’m not sure that will come out in the wash, but never mind, the carpet stayed clean and that’s more important!  I gave her one ice cube of butternut squash, mixed with one ice cube of baby rice, and she ate the lot really quickly.  After speaking to one of the health visitors today, they’ve said she should probably be having more than that, and to double the quantity.  So that’s what I’m doing today.

I gave her banana again this morning, but it wasn’t such a big success.  To be honest, I think she’d had enough milk and so wasn’t hungry enough, so maybe I should just give her one boobie in the morning before breakfast, and then the other one afterwards if she wants it.  We’ll see.

She must be eating something now though, because she seems to have dropped her first night feed.  She was waking sometime between 11pm and 1am, but now she sleeps through from about 7:30pm until about 4am.  Fingers crossed she’ll drop that feed as well in the net few weeks.

A production line

I thought I’d let you see what my kitchen looks like these days.  I had to clear out a whole cupboard to fit in Evie’s new feeding stuff.

She’s got a few jars of baby food, there are bits of a Medela breast pump (just the hand held one, as I can’t express more than about 30ml so it’s a slightly pointless exercise anyway), and various bowls spoons and containers.  The multicoloured bowls are from Ikea, and the little purple lidded ones are Tommee Tippee and very useful for eating out and about.  Oh, and note all the ice cube trays in the top right!

Cooking some cauliflower.  Not sure how well that will go down as it isn’t as sweet as the root vegetables, but she’ll have to get used to it some time.

And finally the fruits of my labours:

Everything seems to be either a milky white colour, or bright orange.  I didn’t label the first lot of carrots I made, but then I quickly realised that carrots, butternut squash, sweet potato, mango and probably lots of other stuff all look exactly the same when turned to mush!  Klippits from Lakeland are absolutely essential.

Today’s meals went down well – banana is a big hit, and butternut squash was accepted very well too.  So I’m a very happy mummy today.

Success! Pear and baby rice

So it seems we have some success to report. I know it looks as though far more of the food is on her face than in her mouth, but trust me, this is progress!

“Daddy, stop distracting me when I’m tryng to eat!”

“Hmm, this isn’t too bad really”

“But I think I’ve had enough now”

Yesterday I made up a batch of baby rice, and today we had breakfast for the first time. One ice cube of baby rice and one ice cube of pear puree. The baby rice was a little bit runny (even though I used less milk than it said on the packet), but that seemed to help things. I tasted it myself, and it was actually quite nice, so I’m not surprised she liked it.

She ate pretty much all of it, which I think is quite a lot, so she must have been hungry. Then she went straight to sleep for her morning nap. Lunch will be sweet potato again. She didn’t like this yesterday, so I may try mixing it with more baby rice so that it isn’t such a strong taste.

I’ve also added a ‘Menus‘ page, at the top where you can see what the Veggie Baby will be eating for the current week. And when I work out how best to organise it, I’ll put the archived menus there as well.

Tumble Tots

I took the Veggie Baby to Tumble Tots today (well, actually it’s Gymbabes when they’re so little). The timing worked out really well for us, as Evie had a great morning nap, and was really happy and alert when we got there. We sang songs, and then played on the equipment – big mats and foam blocks, tunnels, boxes etc etc. I think she liked it, and it was nice for her to have some different toys to play with, and a bigger space to roll around in. So we’re signed up until Christmas. I wanted to go to Baby Ballet, but there isn’t one near us. I might consider travelling to one next year though because they look so cute in the little pink tutus!

On the food front – nope, she still doesn’t like carrot!