Today we have been eating...

Some very tasty food!Here's today's menu:

BREAKFAST
Banana Ready Brek.
This is quite complex. It involves both concentration and skill. Take 90ml of warm milk, mix into 2 heaped dessert spoonfuls of Ready Brek, and stir in half a mashed banana. Be careful now!

LUNCH
Chicken Royale meal with Fanta (for me, at Burger King, as I'm not fat enough. Nomnomnomnom!)
Tub of pasta (recipe below)
Tub of Pear and blueberry mash (self explanatory!)

DINNER
Frittata (recipe to follow - remind me!)
Strawberry pudding
Strawberry wedges and squashed blueberries

THE RECIPES

VEGGIE PASTA
Ingredients:
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Tomato purée
Half a wee onion
Clove of garlic
Quarter of an apple
Small sweet potato
Half a carrot
Grated cheese
Italian herbs, if you like
Macaroni slightly overcooked and chopped into about half the size.

1. Fry finely chopped onion in olive oil in a pot.
2. Add pressed garlic - fry on low til onion is transparent.
3. Add 2 teaspoons of tomato purée. Cook it out for a few mins.
4. Cooked grated or finely chopped sweet potato, carrot and apple.
5. Tip in a tin of tomatoes, herbs if you fancy.
6. Cook covered on hob (low) for 20 mins.
7. For novice chewers, mash if diced veg used.
8. Stir in macaroni, and some cheese.

Makes loads! Keep a couple of meals worth in the fridge - great cold if you're out. Freeze the rest, with or without pasta. At home, serve with lightly toasted bread, unsalted spread and rub a garlic clove chopped in half on it. Baby garlic bread! Cut into fingers (once garlicky crusts scoffed by your good self).

The Bairn bloody LOVES garlic!

Sheizen! We're Going to a Wedding!

A wedding! First we've been to since back in the day. Back in the day meaning a time when I was "up the duff" and therefore very acceptably fat. Now, I can't really get away with "I've just had a baby" as I "Just had a baby" last October. Now, alas, I am just fat. I look more like "I just consumed several babies" than having one left my personage 7 months ago. I have ordered some of Mr. J. Lewis' Large Pants which will magically shrink my personage to it's prior size 8 glory. While my bingo wings remain at albatross proportions. And just as white, unless I remember my industrial vat of St Tropez from Boots tomorrow. I'll be a tiny-bodied, mango-rippled albatross. With bloody lovely shoes. Which my orange striped trotters will have to be wedged into and my little piggie toe will spend its entire day trying to escape out the side, between 2 straps. And I will have plasters in my clutch, and there will be much rejoicing! I LOVE weddings.

Baby Cuisine - Cod Korma

No, I'm not chucking The Bairn in a super-sized crock pot with a handful of shallots, a sprinkle of herbes de Provence and a dash of tabasco sauce. (Mmmmmm....) I'm going to share some recipes with you lucky people! Either Alex has not developed taste buds yet, or he finds my cooking to be reasonably agreeable.

Warning - the following recipes may be offensive to your particular baby's palate. The idea is to let people know you can usually find something in the cupboard to throw together a pretty healthy, tasty dish for all those Other Bairns out there.

Requested by Lianne and Lyla

Cod Korma

Ingredients
Quality cod fish fingers
Quarter of an onion
Half a tin of chick peas (in water) mushed
Turmeric, cumin, ginger (or curry powder)
Butternut squash
Coconut milk
Greek yoghurt
Rice

1. Roast your butternut squash
Cut in half lengthwise, scoop out seeds, brush with olive oil/butter, cover in foil and cook for about 45 mins at 180 degrees. (A pain I know, but babies love it in anything so stick the leftovers in the freezer or in another pasta sauce, with pear for an easy mash...or you can boil it but it's not as tasty.) if it's not soft yet, put it in for longer.

2. Cook 3 fish fingers according to instructions. Remove batter once cool (easy, lazy option. No bones - I hope!)

3. In a saucepan, fry 1/4 onion chopped very finely until soft.

4. Add a pinch of each of the spices, until it's as tasty as your baby can handle!

5. Add half your scooped out mushed squash, and half your tin of chick peas - I mush the chick peas a bit with a fork first. Mash your cod with a fork and tip it in.

6. Optionally, add a handful of washed white rice.

7. Add some water or homemade stock (I'll NEVER be that organised.)

8. If using rice, cook for 20 minutes, otherwise 10 should be fine.

9. I use a wee tiny bit of coconut cream (is that allowed for babies?) and a big spoon of full-fat Greek yoghurt or full fat milk at the end to make it creamy.

10. Serve with a few finger sized bits of naan bread.

If you make loads, add extra spices and milk, water or stock to turn it into a tasty soup for yourself! The Other Half won't touch fish, so I ladled out The Bairn's 2 portions worth at the end and mixed the fish in then.

It's flipping yummy, I'll tell you that much! And you can just adjust it to whatever you have in the cupboard.

Hope you and your babies enjoy it!

PS of course, shamefully my leftovers are sitting taking up hunners of space in the fridge rather than nearly organised in the freezer. See even I'm not 100% perfect. More like 97.56% perfect.

A Revelation

No less!

A real revelation!

Ok, a few pre-revelations, before I forget.

1. Red wine FACTOID.
It's consumption enables the blowing (careful there Ted) of bubbles of magnificent magnitude. Usually my bubbles are meh, about 4/10 on the Morningfreshometer scale. Today, PRE-REVELATION! A frickin delightful 9/10! Ginormous bubbles of gargantuan girth.

2. Babies are not always as impressed by ginormous bubbles as one might hope.

3. Red wine facilitates blogging like it facilitates knicker droppage in the over 30s on a Friday night in Yates.

4. I am going to be an actual illustrator.

5. I am going to be an actual ILLUSTRATOR.

Indeed. I have decided. Every Tuesday and Thursday night once The Bairn is slumbering, and The Other Half is camped out in front of the TV with some recorded MMA (Mangled Male Arguments with Added Fisticuffs, I believe is the title in full), I will, with steely determination, climb the stairs to my humble spare room... Ahem, studio.

I shall then create wonders of which you may never have dreamt possible! Pieces of artistic gold, nay, platinum - no less, that are so aesthetically pleasing you may well have minor problems controlling your very own urinary output. Uncross those legs ladies and gentlemen! And let the pee-stained fun begin!

May I be clear that no wee is involved in the making of my art.

Unless its a book on potty training.

Exciting times dudes! Exciting times!

6. Red wine might, on occasion, cause some minor inebriation.

My Portfolio

Well. For the first time in nearly a year, I returned to college. A couple of years ago, I embarked on one of the best and most frightening journeys of my life. A return to education as a Mature Student. As a "proper" young uni student, The Mature Student seemed to be an almost untouchable entity. Often sitting in the front row of the lecture theatre, asking clever questions confidently, and attending every single one. Oh ho yes! Even Friday morning's Law lecture - while resembling Alice Cooper I lay in my Banana Concorde scented pit, following whatever shenanigans had materialised during Thursday's Student Night at The Garage.

I was always a bit in awe of the Mature Student.

And I'd like to say "Ahaaaa! The roles were reversed, my fellow students looked up to me with a mixture of reverence and awesomnity."

But in fact they were a mixture of cheeky beggars, noisy little oiks (that's right, OIKS I tells ya) and also some of the loveliest people I've met. A humbling experience meeting genuinely nice teenagers.

One day I may decide to delight you all, my many many (one or optimistically two) followers, with some images from said Portfolio. But I can't be bothered as I'm busy making iArt.

***********

(muthaflippin yeeeeeears later....)

So busy making iArt I forgot to blog again. It's just finger painting for the iPad. Here's what I did in about 10 seconds of mess free self-absorbing art-ertainment. Like it?

Well I do, so shut up.

Topic 3. Baking and Whatnot

Holy moly.

Today I gifted my beautiful friend Donna and her family some my finest chocolate brownies. They are the most deliciousest brownies in the whole world. Even that guy with the pies - Hollywood is his name, off that Bake Off TV show - would sink into a sublime coma of sugary happiness after one of my SPECTACULAR brownies. Would probably declare me to be "Britain's Finest Amateur Chef" and give me some sort of edible award. Hopefully one of my own chocolate brownies, but maybe with a bit of that gold powder you can eat dusted carefully on top.

Anyway, I don't like to go on about my chocolate brownies, but I'll tell you an interesting factoid about them.

You know that lady? The one that purées EVERY-BLOODY-THING and puts the recipes into a book and has made millions from suggesting that you can make food smooth and your baby WILL eat it? (Probably true...)

("Just add a bit of papaya to last weeks leftover cabbage leaves from the bottom of the fridge, stick it in the blender, and hey presto - irresistible" is (not really) a true example of one of her recipes.)

Well, "My Favourite Chocolate Brownies", are in the Healthy Snacks For Ages 3-17 section of her book. Yes really. They contain vitamins A, B12 and D. Ho yes, people! Health food! More than half a block of butter, and an entire SHED load of sugar. But think of the vitamins! My God they are scrumptious, healthy or otherwise. (it's otherwise)

I kept 8 of the yumsters for me and The Other Half. I'll purée 2 for The Bairn. Might be nice mixed in with cauliflower cheese purée i made earlier....

New Flipping Topic!

Draw Something.

No, you spud! Put the crayon down! I'm NOT asking for your artistic interpretation of a random subject of your own choosing. I'm talking about the brilliant iPhone/iPad app!

The whole point of this post is the image attached, in which The Other Half attempted to draw a hippopotamus.

Hahahahaha!!
Hahaha!
HAHAHA!

Rubbish.

Topic 1. Babies

Well today was SUPER exciting.

Apart from the stress of me trying and failing to sort out an actual job where i can earn ACTUAL pennies (rather than domestic slavery, my current career, which is oddly very poorly remunerated), me and The Bairn were tres busy trying stuff I'd bought from trusty Amazon with my NO pennies.

First was dribble bibs - The Bairn produces so much saliva, I've ordered him a face wetsuit. A rubber balaclava. I've not. I got him some very metrosexual chin/neck adornments. Fetching - yes!

Second was Mock-Ons which are rainbow coloured stripy knee high moccasins. The Other Half's response?

"Queeeeer."

Fetching? Absofrickinlutely my friend!

Also, I puréed. Pure hunners of purée. To be exact, some apricot, lentil and sweet potato puree, and ratatouille. Is it still ratatouille if its pulverised to a brownish kinda gloopy thing?

I've discovered three things in my hand-blender spattered kitchen.

1. You can purée anything.
2. Baby food is sometimes bloody lovely - why don't adults stick a bit of pear in a shepherd pie? Then purée it.
3. No chewing = low effort dining! "Just slurp it already! Oh you already did? In one go? Then get your shoes on, we're going out!"

Win win win.

Topic 5. My New IPad

Well this is it.

My new life as an iPad user/lover/addict. I imagine I'll now be encouraging my 6 month old son (hereafter and forthwith referred to as The Bairn) to nap more frequently and for longer. Perhaps I'll force him into several deep Waybuloo-induced sleeps per day. Bless him. In fact my partner (hereafter and forthwith referred to as The Other Half) has just held a very naked The Bairn aloft, and forced his chubby little arm into a pseudo militarial salute. I love them much, those guys!

Anyway I digress.

Did I mention I got an iPad for my birthday? Well I did. It's amazing. Did you know there's a voice recognition thing for it? Well there is! It's amazing.

As demonstrated by an over-enthusiastic The Other Half:

"Siri. Call Mam." OH
On screen - options to call several contacts beginning with M excluding my mother. How? I don't even know.

"Erm, ok, play Vampire Weekend."
Plays very quietly. Much smugness from The Other Half.
"Volume up" ......nothing.....
"VOLUME UP!".......nothing....
I turn it up manually.
"Well what do you think?" says he.
"I think it's crap" says I.

Mansard Roof (first song) cuts off and I KID YOU NOT on comes the 9th song...

I Stand Corrected. Is it just me, or is that a) quite funny, and b) brilliant?

Anyhoo, after further mucking about with voice recognition stuff that actually worked The Other Half says
"Siri. Close email."
"I don't understand anal" says iPad.

Technology's not all it's cracked up to be, eh?

Boom boom.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Me me me. It's all about me, this blog is. Which could make it a pretty hair-raising experience, this roller coaster of a journal! Fasten those industrial strength harnesses, hang on to the bottom of your spinny desk seat with knuckles of alabaster, and try to retain those screams of pure delight and excitement. Careful now! It begins. Well, maybe I'm over-exaggerating the "wowness" for anyone happening upon my blog (I've got a blog! Hark at me!) as I lead a perhaps less than fascinating existence. In fact, maybe less than interesting. Actually, it's bog standard. But since you're here, you may as well continue reading.

 Did I mention that today is my birthday? Did I mention that my wonderful other half and son clubbed in to buy me an mother-flipping iPad? Not just an iPad. Ho no!

A New IPad.

That's good. It means it does stuff an Old IPad didn't do. It has yet to prove its dish washing capabilities, and didn't recognise the voice command "Shave my toes, minion" but, nonetheless, im liking it muchly. In fact I'm writing this Shizzle on it right this very minute.

 Things I may be writing about in future entries:

1. Babies
2. Art, illustration and crafts
3. Bakery and cooking
4. TV
5. Did I mention I have an iPad?
6. Gardening
7. Optometry
8. Other.

 I'm going to enjoy this self-absorbent reflection on all things meeeeee! I hope you will too. And if you don't, get tae!!! Love you though.