Guest Post: Making Food Fun - Healthy Snacks and How to Make Them

This guest post comes to you from the lovely Lily Helitzer. Full of great ideas for getting kids into different sorts of food, this article covers breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hope y'all enjoy! Will let you know how we get on with the 'pancake pen'.

With the summer holidays upon us, many parents are faced with the task of doing two things that their children’s teachers and dinner ladies are usually responsible for: occupying them and feeding them. However with a little bit of initiative and forward planning, you can combine these two by enlisting the kids help in creating their own meals. This will keep them entertained whilst simultaneously teaching them basic cooking skills and giving them an understanding of healthy, nutritional foods. Here are some ideas to give you inspiration on how to make meal times more fun, how to make healthy foods more appealing and how to enable your little ones to create culinary masterpieces that they can enjoy making as much as eating.

Breakfast
Presentation is everything so to make a healthy breakfast seem more enticing to your little ones by layering granola and yogurt into a Sundae glass. Top with chopped fruit and sprinkles to make their healthy breakfast look just like a sweet treat.

To encourage the kids to help prepare pancakes, why not let them create their very own ‘pancake pen’ instead of using a traditional ladle. By putting the pancake batter into an old ketchup bottle (or another similar squirty bottle) they can draw letters and shapes onto the griddle to make customised pancakes. When they’re done they can even decorate them with syrups, sauces and fruit. Voila!

Breakfast wraps are also great for kids to enjoy on the go. Spoon scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon into a tortilla and let them take them outdoors to enjoy. It’s an easy way to give them a filling, cooked breakfast on the go.

Lunch
Homemade pizzas are great fun for kids to make and whilst they’re perhaps not the healthiest meal in the world, you can certainly adapt them to include a variety of vegetables as toppings. To make pizza prep fun for the kids, encourage them to see their pizza base as a blank canvas that they can decorate with all of their favourite toppings. Spinach could become trees, ham slices could become a goofy smile and pepperoni could become a football. The possibilities are endless. The only problem is that they may not want to eat their pizza paintings after all of that hard work!

Alphabet noodles are cheap, easy to prepare and a great way of making a variety of soups more fun. Simply boil them up and add them to chicken, beef or vegetable soup and let the kids go wild with their spelling.

Sometimes the easiest thing to rustle up for lunch is a simple sandwich. But don’t just stick with boring cheese or salad. Why not try a ‘fruit’ sandwich by mixing chopped pineapple and dried fruits into cottage cheese for an exciting, different taste that gives the kids at least one of their 5 a day.

Dinner
Let the kids stare in amazement (and horror) as you coat their steaks or chops in blackcurrant jam or marmalade. They may think it looks disgusting but when they are grilled the fruity flavours work brilliantly alongside the meat. Serve with vegetables and mashed potatoes for an interestingly, healthy dinner.

Encourage the kids to use their initiative and the knowledge they’ve learnt about cooking to create their own twists on culinary classics. Start with a base dish (such as stew or macaroni cheese – these are suitable because almost anything can be added to them and they’ll still be edible!) and give the kids free reign about what they want to add. Anything from sea food, to fruit to red meat can be added to macaroni cheese and it can also be served in a variety of different ways – in a cocktail, a pie or even deep fried. Let the kids go wild and offer a prize for the best creation to spice things up a little!

For those warm summer evenings, it’s great to get the kids interested in salads. There are so many healthy and colourful ingredients that you can add to a salad to make it bright and interesting. Think outside of the box (or bowl in this case) and encourage the kids to make salad on a stick by adding feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, olives and celery to a stick in a kebab style. Using strawberries, blueberries and exotic fruits within salads can also add colour and flavour.

Refreshing Snacks
The kids will love watermelon carving which is, unsurprisingly, just like pumpkin carving. Only unlike pumpkin carving, they’ll probably be a lot more eager to eat the leftovers!

Homemade ice lollies are also a summer favourite and can be made from a variety of fruit juices and fizzy drinks. You can even buy lolly moulds that allow you to make multi flavour lollies!

Finally why not try making your own lemonade by squeezing the juice of 3 lemons into a mixture of five cups of water and one cup of sugar. Then add ice and leave to refrigerate for a fruity, refreshing drink.

Lily Helitzer is a health and nutrition writer who works on behalf of Kwikmed, an FDA-approved pharmacy which offers an accessible and safe outlet to buy Cialis and other prescription medication.

Finger Food recipe - sweet potato falafel

Well, I thought it was about time I shared another recipe. These are currently Daughter's favourite finger food, freeze very well and are cheap and easy to make.

I took my inspiration from a BBC Good Food recipe, but changed some of the ingredients for those more readily available in an average store cupboard.

• 1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes , about 700g
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 2 garlic cloves , chopped
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 100g plain or gram flour (I use gram, which I'd suggest for those avoiding gluten)
• 1 tbsp olive oil (omit if you're avoiding fat)

Bake the sweet potatoes and mash, then stir everything else in. Spoon onto a baking sheet and leave in a hot oven until the edges are crispy and brown.

I serve these for Daughter with peas and sweetcorn - she loves picking up every individual thing and putting it into her mouth.

For us, I serve them with a garlic sour cream dip (buy sour cream, chop garlic, combine) in homemade tortilla wraps with a side salad.

Super cheap, good for the whole family and quick to make. Hooray!

Guest Post: How to feed your baby in the car, by Gargi Shastri

So, I am pleased to say that from now on, I'm going to be featuring some shiny guest posts. This is the first of them.

As some of you may recall, I had a big crisis of conscience surrounding the whole breast vs.bottle feeding debate. In accordance, this post does not favour one method over another. 

How to feed your baby in the car

With the right preparation, you can overcome some of the hassles associated with feeding babies on car journeys. Feeding time can be a more relaxed experience if you know how to do it safely and what to bring along. Read on for ways to ensure that your baby is fed safely and comfortably in the car.

Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding is considered the most convenient way to feed babies in the car by some mothers. It requires no additional equipment, such as warm bottles and sterilizers, and can be done in relative privacy.

However, the NHS warns against breastfeeding in a moving car because it involves mothers having to take their baby out of the child car seat to breastfeed, which is both unsafe and illegal. Therefore, it is essential to pull over in a designated parking area first.


Expressed milk
According to NHS guidelines, expressed milk can be stored at room temperature for up to six hours in a sterile bottle. However, if the length of your journey means you need to store the milk for a longer period, it might be a better idea to first express the milk at home and immediately refrigerate it. Expressed milk can be stored in the fridge for up to 5 days at 4০C or lower. For the journey, the refrigerated milk can be stored in a handy travel size mini-fridge or cool bag.

Formula
When it comes to formula feeding, it might be easiest to use ready-made sterile liquid feeds, instead of carrying hot water and powdered formula in the car.

If you prefer making the formula at home before your journey, make sure it has cooled for at least one hour in the fridge. Take the feed out of the fridge just before you leave and carry it in a cool bag with an ice pack in the car. The formula should be used within four hours. If you don’t have a cool bag, the formula needs to be used in two hours.

It’s not a must to warm milk before giving it to the baby, but if your baby prefers it that way, both expressed milk and ready-made sterile liquid feeds can be warmed in a travel bottle-warmer, which simply plugs into the car’s cigarette lighter.

Hygiene is a big concern for many parents when bottle-feeding their babies. Whether you’re using expressed milk or formula, make sure that your baby’s bottles are properly sterilised. You could use pre-sterilised disposable bottles and teats to make feeding in the car more convenient.

Solid food
Once your baby has moved on to solids, there are many options available for feeding them on a car journey.

• Pack jars and sachets of ready-made food.
• Take fruit that can be mashed up and served quickly, such as bananas, avocados, plums and pears.
• If you take food that needs to be ground up, a hand-operated food mill can be convenient.

It’s important to supervise babies when they’re being fed, to avoid the risk of choking.

Consider carrying all liquids in spill-proof sippy cups and use cutlery that your baby is familiar with.

Plenty of disposable bibs and wet wipes can help keep mess to a minimum.

Planning ahead for your baby’s feeds on a long car journey can take the hassle out of your trip. But make sure you also have adequate breakdown and car insurance cover so that your family is properly protected.

Author Bio:
Gargi Shastri writes for the Sainsbury’s Bank Money Matters blog on a range of topics including car insurance, car safety and other motoring topics. When she’s not writing, she enjoys yoga and cooking Indian food.

Nutritional help

I stumbled on this little site while surfing through the Netmums forums today: https://www.infantandtoddlerforum.org/toddler-food-calculator-flash

I've found it really interesting. Where I've been sure that Daughter has been getting a healthy, balanced diet, it turns out that she could do with some more of everything except carbohydrate and meat...

Must try harder, Mummy...

Sainsbury's Little Ones, Recipes and Nutrition

Not technically a children's book, but a very useful tome nevertheless if you're planning on making all your own food for little people.

Sainsbury's Little Ones, Recipes and Nutrition cookbook is a lovely addition to any shelf and has given me a wealth of ideas in regards to feeding Daughter.

I decided early on that I didn't want her to eat jarred food. I wouldn't want to eat it myself so I saw no reason to feed it to Daughter. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with going down the jar route, just that it wasn't for me. Too much waste, too much money and I just didn't think it looked palatable. Which is where this book came in.

To begin with, beyond the usual fruit purees, I had trouble coming up with ideas of what to feed my little girl. Aside from the various mashes I featured on here, I was stuck - especially when it came to introducing meat. Luckily, the first few pages of Sainsbury's Little Ones cover a selection of different mash, following up with a range of foods that introduce varying textures. The only qualm I have with this part is the inclusion of beetroot - don't get me wrong, I love the stuff, but my carpet, walls and Daughter's clothes don't...

Usually I have a load of other things prepared when it comes to dinner times, but when I don't, Little Ones offers a lot of quick and easy ideas. I also use it as a rough guide regarding appropriate portion size, something that I just had no idea of to begin with. It's all very down to earth - not 'organic everything only'. Most of what's there can be prepared on a budget.

There are also various recipes for the whole family for when you get to a stage where you're all eating the same thing.

So yes, all in all, a very worthwhile book if you're starting off on the adventure that is weaning. I'm going to head to the library soon and look for some more comprehensive books about feeding slightly older children though as I think Daughter might be getting bored of these offerings now!

Baby breakfast ideas

I don't know about you, but breakfast was never really my thing. I only started eating it at university because the campus cafe did a cooked one really cheaply (marketed correctly as the ideal hangover cure). In my food-snob days which followed shortly after - and which, frankly, never really vanished - I switched to porridge because it's filling, nutritious and cheap.

After a week or so of giving Daughter that foul baby rice gloop which can be easily confused for white emulsion, I switched her over to my prefered breakfast but thought that after three months or so of having oats, she must be pretty sick of the stuff. Variety, after all, is the spice of life.

The first meal of the day though, is a deceptively complicated affair. I wouldn't want to eat curry, or lasagne, or anything else of a particularly heavy nature, which leaves choices reasonably limited. With honey and uncooked cows milk still out of the question - roll on 1st birthday! - choices were further diminished. After a bit of thought though, I found the following things which Daughter loves:


Fruit yogurt, compote and oats - a nice vanilla yogurt, a sprinkling of oats and some stewed fruit makes a really nice start to the day. Yogurt, oats and banana is also really tasty and requires a little less forethought. Normally I stew fruit in the oven at the same time as I'm baking Daughter's other foods, but since batch cooking isn't for everyone, you can get some nice fruit mush from Ella's Kitchen and Plum.

Banana bread - this has become something of a staple in our house. It freezes well, uses up any leftover bananas and doesn't need any unusual ingredients that you're not likely to have in the cupboard. I make 2-3 loaves at a time so I don't need to worry about it later but it's quick enough to do from scratch. I used the Sainsbury's Little Ones recipe for it but it doesn't look to be online. This one is nearly identical though and is well worth a try.

Tea Loaf - I forget where I stumbled on this recipe but it has no added fat, is wonderfully moist and costs next to nothing to bake. The raisins give most of the sweetness so if you're worried about adding sugar, this is possibly the way to go, rather than the banana bread. I forget where I got my recipe base, but this is how it stands at the moment:

1 tea bag
around 250ml boiling water
ground white pepper
ground ginger
ground cinammon
ground nutmeg
250g raisins
125g sugar (brown is good but white works too
225g self raising flour
1 egg
spash of milk


Make a cup of strong, black tea and soak the raisins in it for at least 4 hours. I've left them for a week in the fridge before as they only get better with time. Mix the rest of the ingredients into the raisins adding the spices to taste and bake in a loaf tin on a low heat until cooked through. Slice and serve. If you're worried about it being too spicy, leave out the white pepper.

Fruit loaf - I've just been toasting Daughter a few slices of the supermarket's own brand fruit loaf for breakfast the past few days and she loves it. Her favourite sort - expensive tastes! - is the Marks and Spencer apple and raisin kind.

Toasted goodies - of course, there's always scotch pancakes, crumpets, toast and jam. Any toastable treat goes down well.

Baby recipe ideas.

It's getting better, the daily grind. At the moment, I'm working on shifting my focus. That sounds awfully psycho-babble, but it's something I decided myself. For the longest time, Daughter was an obstacle to my doing what was necessary i.e. moving house, washing the nappies, making dinner etc. What I'm trying to do now is tell myself that she is no longer an obstacle, that she is the task. It's a very utilitarian way of looking at it, but that's just how my brain works. I like to concentrate on very simple black and white goals rather than the somewhat ambiguous 'adjust my expectations' - the advice I'm usually given.

I feel that the whole thing would be slightly more 'fair' were Daughter to work on her sleeping as I'm working on cheering up. The two things are very much linked.

In any case, I just thought I'd update on where I was personally before I shared my awesome discoveries:

1. Finely chopped frozen vegetables.

Specifically, Aunt Bessie's finely chopped frozen vegetables (most supermarkets do a version but this brand is chopped the smallest and has the biggest selection of veg included). Perfect, as the bag declares, for bolognese and soups. What they're actually super-amazing for though, is feeding babies. I would like to state at this point that I am in no way affiliated with the producers - I just couldn't survive without this handy little bag in my freezer.

I'm not a fan of liquidised baby food as I don't think the lack of texture does them any favours. Whilst it's practical to begin with, I've known babes who grow up to favour bland mush into adulthood. Seriously. I knew one guy who wouldn't eat any veg unless they'd been boiled into a grey sludge.

So yeah, not only are there 5 good staple vegetables in the mixture, but they're cut into tiny pieces - perfect for baby mouths. Cooking time is practically negligible too since they're so tiny. Hooray!

2. Soup pasta

I noticed that in the baby food aisle at the supermarket, you could get minuscule pasta for massive amounts of money. In the pasta aisle, you can get minuscule pasta for a price to match. Intended for use in minestrone soup, this stuff has fast become a staple of Daughter's diet. Again, because of the size, cooking time is nearly nothing.

Recipes

Here are a few of our favourite things to make from the above. Most of these assume that you have a quantity of stewed down meat ready - I like to cook down chicken, beef, lamb and pork until they disintegrate into stringy bits - very tender, easy to eat without teeth and unprocessed. All of these recipes work as vegetarian too.

Baby Minestrone:

Boil a handful of tiny pasta with the same quantity of frozen veg. When these are cooked through add some tomato puree to the cooking water (thus retaining all vitamins from the veg), add herbs and seasoning to taste and serve. This freezes well.

Baby lasagna:

As above, but drain the mixture before adding the tomato puree. Add pre-stewed meat of your choice to make the base. Top with white sauce (you can make this with formula milk, vegetable margarine and corn flour if you're worried about dairy and gluten. I haven't checked to see if you can get gluten free soup pasta because it isn't something that worries me, however I can't see why you wouldn't) and bake in a moderate oven.

NB: Since a lot of these dishes are bakes, I tend to do a load at once and freeze in portions so I'm only cooking once every 2 weeks or so. It's a life-saver.

Fish pie:

Mix up a white sauce and add the fish of your choice. I use pollack because it's cheap and - at last check - sustainable. I know there's a big fuss about tuna and the mercury levels in it but I have been known to use it because that was the only fish in the house. Add a handful of the frozen veg and either mix in some of the tiny pasta or spoon some mashed potato over the top of the filling in an oven proof dish. Bake until golden on top.

Stew:

Easiest of all - mix some pre-stewed meat with a handful of the frozen veg, add a little stock and some cooked pearl barley. Enjoy.

Vegetable pasta dinner:

Boil pasta and veg together, drain and add half a teaspoon of pesto and tomato puree. This doesn't freeze well.

Vegetable cous cous:

Add a handful of frozen veg to some cous cous - sometimes I use the plain variety and add my own spices whilst others I use the pre-mixed sachets. Make up the cous cous as usual - the heat of the water will also cook the vegetables.  This doesn't freeze well, but if you add some chorizo, it makes a good lunch for mum/dad too.

Liquid meat

For some reason, I find the idea of liquidised meat distinctly unwholesome. Something about drinking a steak... I dunno. Euch. So while Daughter is still unable to chew, I either have to put aside my idiosyncrasy, or come up with an alternative to pureed creature flesh.

Here's the confession. I was a vegetarian once and actually, I really liked it. The food when eating out tended to be more imaginative than the meat dishes - cheaper too - and I was a damn sight healthier than at most other points during my life (thanks Mum for your nutritional cooking and not letting me eat fake meat). But I don't think vegetarianism is the way to go for a growing girl. So, I started to think about how to break down the meat into manageable mouthfuls.

Stovies were the answer. To those of you who are unfamiliar with stovies, they are a Scottish dish. Not as famous as haggis, but equally as delicious, they consist of onion, potato and stewing steak, cooked right down in stock until the ingredients meld together in an incredibly tasty paste.

I use:

1 beef stock cube
1 large/2 small onions, cut into half rings
250g/half a pound of meat - stewing steak works well, but any leftovers are best. Turkey is awesome post festive season.
2-3 big potatoes/any left over ones from dinner.
Water to cover

Stew all of the above together until they're a thick, glue-like paste. Yes, it will look revolting, but tastes incredible. Serve with pickled beetroot or pickled red cabbageand oat cakes. Daughter loves pickled anything so will happily suck away on a chunk of beet for hours - same with the oat cake - but your child might not like the sour taste  so best to keep sundries separate.

Toys and butternut squash

Why is it that no matter which fun, noisy toys you give a child, they still want the sweetie paper you're trying to hide from them?

Anyways, yesterday I made a butternut squash soup which both Daughter and I thoroughly enjoyed.

Basically, you chop a butternut squash into cubes and boil it up in milk. If you're paranoid about milk, you can use water but the soup won't be as flavoursome. You add 3 cloves of chopped garlic and the wait until the squash is soft. Blend it all into a puree and place a small portion aside for baby, whilst you add chopped choritzo to your own bowl. The salty, spicy meat makes up for the lack of stock, whilst the sweet, creamy squash and milk compliment it wonderfully.

I'm trying to come up with more recipes like this, where I don't have to give Daughter food that is different from ours. I will let you know what else I come up with...

Super size vs super skinny

Naptime means 4od and a cuppa. Today I stumbled across Supersize vs superskinny, something I haven't seen in years.

According the the intro of the show, 12 million people are overweight and the same number of people suffer from eating disorders. As the narrator said, the UK has a terrible relationship with food.

Has anyone thought that perhaps all of our food hang-ups come from the fact that we are constantly being given advice about what we should and shouldn't eat? Every generation, dietary recommendations seem to change so that public knowledge is awash with conflicting information. When my mother was pregnant, she was told to eat plenty of liver. I was told that liver could potentially harm my baby.

Having the NHS to dole out treatment and advice is brilliant, but its also taken away a degree of responsibility from us. We no longer have to think about what we're eating. We don't need to consider what we're putting in our bodies because someone else will do it for us. When we are left to our own devices after school, after pregnancy, we do not know how to moderate because moderation was never a factor in the foods we were brought up on.

At the moment, I am repeatedly told that Daughter should get no sugar, no salt and limited fat whilst weaning. But if I do this, she will grow up afraid of those things. They will become poignant and forbidden. She will either fear them, or over-indulge because she does not know that they can exist within a diet in moderation. Remember, fruit is sugar, meat is salt and milk is fat. As long as she grows accustomed to a diet which balances all of these things, I see no reason why she shouldn't be fine. 

Some weaning food ideas

I'm not an expert. I don't know if these things are nutritionally sound. I do know that Daughter LOVES them and often cries if they run out before she's had enough. I also know that I haven't added anything untoward. So, in case you're interested, here are some ideas for weaning foods.


Avocado and Banana mush - both ingredients are raw and mashed. It is tasty to add tiny quantities of pure cocoa to this - not drinking chocolate as that has all kinds of sugars and salts in - but very messy. Prepare for anything it touches to stain.

Mashed sweet potato and parsnip - boil half a sweet potato and half a parsnip until soft. Add 1 spoon of formula and 1 fluid oz of cooking water then blend together for a creamy root veg mash.

Apple, pear and raisin - sweeten cooked apples with pear and raisin. Blend them all together into a mush. It's really good if baby's bowels aren't moving along as they should be.

Mango and strawberry - again, both fruits are raw and can be blended together easily.

Papaya and orange - use small quantities of orange juice to sweeten papaya fruit then blend.

Daughter also really likes trying to bite iceberg lettuce leaves. I think it's the fact that they're crunchy so make noise, and the cool feeling on her sore gums.

So yeah, as I said, no expert, but thought it might give you some new ideas. I'm really struggling to find interesting things for her to have so it's not just banana all the time.