Family Food - Spicy Roast Butternut Soup

Been properly poorly this week with a stinky, horrible cold (or dare I say, flu?) - with which I have likely infected most of my family near and distant, at my cousin's wedding. I'm a naturally huggy/kiss-on-cheek type person. I did try to curtail my affection, but one hug-n-kiss combo issued unavoidably involves a sequence of events whereby you can't leave anyone out - can you? They might feel left out, for goodness sake! What kind of animal would omit a relative from a (virus) cuddle? Not I!

On my first rare day off sick, I decided soup was required. The usual "go-to" staple in our home when we feel guff (or just really lazy) is Heinz Cream of Tomato soup, so you can imagine my disgust on finding NONE in the tin drawer! Horrified screams may have been heard as far away as Wick, or even Jupiter.

What I did have in the Busyalibee fridge was a butternut squash and half a leftover huge sweet potato.

 

Ingredients

Medium sized butternut squash

Half a huge sweet potato, or a normal sized one

An onion chopped finely

2 garlic cloves

Teaspoon of cumin

1cm cube of fresh ginger - I use frozen

Sea salt

Black pepper

Chilli flakes

1/2 pint Vegetable stock

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees C.
2. Slice butternut squash in half lengthwise, then each lengthwise again.
3. Place on roasting tray, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper.
4. Roast for 1 hour. Meantime, set timer for 30 mins and...
5. Peel and roughly chop sweet potato, add to roasting tin, drizzle with oil and season.
6. Roast for remaining 30 minutes with squash (hope that makes sense?)
7. When veg is roasted, fry up onion and crushed garlic with teaspoon cumin, ginger and teaspoon of chilli flakes.
8. Scoop flesh from squash skins and chuck in pan, with sweet potato.
9. Add stock, stir, simmer for 5 minutes.
10. Blitz with hand blender until smooth.
11. Add more water/milk if it's too thick for you.

And that's it! Very easy - and absolutely gorgeous. Though I still feel like absolute crap, so it's medicinal qualities are perhaps lacking somewhat. And do you know what? It actually tastes better today than it did 2 days ago when I made it!

Lovely Jubbly.

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Family Food - Pink Porridge

Picture the scene:

5.54am - "Lorr-rry. Dig-ga. Pa's NeeNaw. NeeNaw NeeNaw NeeNaw. Aw done. MUMMEEEEEE! Baba-na." You open your eyes to check the time on your mobile - it's actually 5.54am! You lie watching the lights on the baby monitor, listening to assorted gibberish until 6am, which is, these days at least, an acceptable hour to arise. Because those 6 minutes in bed will ensure a radiant complexion and positively vibrant mood for the rest of the working day.

6.01am - Walking into The Bairn's room - och, alright. We'll let him off this time, because of his wee face and stuff. Look at him! Beaming at this time. Yeah, there may be a crust of bogeys surrounding the button nose, and he may be emitting the foul stench of morning poo - but he's adorable and will only improve following a good scrub.

6.30am - You're sitting on the sofa with a cuppa, increasingly absorbed in Postman Pat ("No honey, it's Pat's Van - not his NeeNaw... I mean fire engine) while policing The Bairn's ever decreasing distance from the TV screen. He's got his Baba-na and a cup of milk - to stave off his hunger until you can face the morning Weetapocalypse.

7.00am - Breakfast!

So here's an alternative to chipping Weetabix from your walls and recovering Rogue Rice Krispies from the Wee Yin's nostrils. Pink Porridge!

Ingredients

A yoghurt pot and a half full of porridge oats

Large tub of yoghurt - or make your own with Easiyo or similar

Some milk

Dried/fresh fruit

1. The night before, mix together oats and enough yoghurt to form a gloopy mess. Add milk if it seems too thick.
2. Stir in whatever you like - chopped berries/fruit, handful of currants, seeds....
3. Put it in the fridge overnight, covered.
4. Next morning - voila! Yummy sweet flavoured brekkie.
5. Add milk to loosen consistency if required, serve warm or cold.
6. Leave dishes soaking til after work. It's the only way. Honest.

I have not attached a photo. Once you've tried this recipe, you'll see why. There's a definite resemblance to up-chuck.

But YUMMY up-chuck! That's a Busyalibee guarantee! If you like that sort of thing.

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Family Food - Pasta and Roast Veg Bake

I have been REALLY living up to my industrious pseudonym

I have:

1. Actually had a proper night out (whoop whoop) with the lovely ladies from my antenatal class. May I add that I AM NOT UP THE DUFF AGAIN - the class in question was pre-The Bairn.
2. Lost an entire day following the afore-mentioned night out.
3. Started painting again, after a break of a couple of months.
4. Began a new exercise regime, a.k.a "toddler chasing" now the Bairn is a confident staggerer.
5. Got right stuck in at work again - dealing with such delights as eyes stuck together with dried mucus, 5 year olds lying about what they can see, and (the piece de resistance) an argumentative elderly lady with dementia and double vision.
6. Doing an entire actual SHEDLOAD of cooking.

My very gorgeous fellow optometrist friend was over for lunch today, so I decided I'd make things easy for myself and create a dish using only items I already had in my over-stocked fridge. WRONG! The dish I had chosen necessitated a morning dash to the supermarket, followed by an unscheduled Bairn-related nap-tastrophe; culminating in a wild panic to tidy the house, prepare lunch, prepare dinner (to be heated up later), as the wee monkey then refused another nap until 5.30pm - in a bowl of fish pie.

Ingredients

• Pasta - I used shells, enough for 4 people
• About 1 pint of white sauce (or a jar if you're cheating, as I did)
• Red onion
• Yellow pepper
• 1/2 a large aubergine
• Courgette
• 10 cherry tomatoes
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Mozzarella
• Seasonings as required - salt, pepper, Italian herbs

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C, heat up 2 roasting trays with a drizzle of olive oil.
2. Roughly chop garlic, aubergine, pepper, courgette and red onion - 1cm thick at least for aubergine and courgette.
3. Scatter veg over trays, should be spaced out a little, add seasoning and a drizzle of oil on top.
4. Roast in oven for 30 minutes, mixing up half way through.
5. Cook pasta as per packet instructions.
6. When it's all done, put it all in a casserole dish, stir through the white sauce, handful of grated mozzarella on top.
7. Bake for 30 minutes.
8. Serve with garlic bread.

It's not hard, it's just the washing up after that puts me off making this regularly! But then again, I am a lazy cow.

Variations

I also used about a "tit and a bit" of roasted chicken from the previous night's leftovers.

Plus, a few wee blobs of pesto over the top with the mozzarella, and added cheddar.

If making a homemade white sauce, laying off the salt etc - it could be mushed for babies.

 

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Family Food - Mulligatawny Soup

Oh look, chaps! It's suddenly become Autumn! (You may - my American friends - alternatively wish to call the season "Fall". But this Blog is British, so I'm right, and you are definitely all shades of wrong.) My favourite season. It's so pretty! And chucking on an extra jumper is a great way to disguise the ole post (extremely post, in my case) baby "Michelin Man" body-shape. Who needs serial dirty-pillow groper, Gok Wan? And his plethora of intestine-confining under garments. I mean, "How to Look Good Naked" should reeeeally be called "How to Contort Yourself Into Uncomfortable Clothing and Hire a Photographer to Blur Out Your Wobbly Bits", c'est non? Oui Madame. Oui!

So basically, my lovely friends, after a positively tropical summer (I believe, in The Tropics), it's fridge-eezing yet again, but now the trees are a different colour. We're back to winter warmers!

Ingredients

• An onion, chopped
• Clove of garlic, crushed
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 medium carrot, chopped small
• 1 red pepper, chopped small
• Cube of frozen spinach, or a big handful of fresh washed spinach leaves
• 1/2 cup of lentils (washed)
• Tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1/2 pint chicken stock (baby stock cubes for the young uns)

1. Soften onion and garlic in a little olive oil, in a deep saucepan.
2. Add spices - stir through and cook for a few minutes - don't let the onions burn!
3. Add carrot and red pepper - sauté for 5 minutes, low heat.
4. Add lentils, stock and tomatoes.
5. Bring to boil, then simmer for at least 30 minutes.
6. Add spinach - stir into soup, simmer 10 minutes.
7. If you like it, a couple of teaspoon of fresh, chopped coriander leaves can be added before serving.
8. Serve with a dollop of sour cream, natural yoghurt, or full fat soft cheese.

For younger babies, closer to 6 months, you may want to use less of the spices.
For the grown ups - a chopped chilli (seeds left in, you say? Are you mental? Yes I am!) adds even more warmth.

Check out The Bairn with two - YES, TWO! COUNT 'EM! - spoons. That's m'Boy. Also resulting in bi-wall mulligatawny pebble-dashing, unfortunately, but very proud nonetheless. Mad skills.

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Family Food - Return of the Mac (aroni Cheese)

Altogether now:

"Retuuuuurn of the Mac, Retuuuurn of the Mac, Retuuuurn of the Mac, Blah blah blah bl-blah blee blaaaah."

So sang the 90s pop dude Mark Morrison, winning him a number 1 spot in the UK charts for a year and a day. (Factoid - he was painfully denied this accolade in the US, when scrawny street urchins Hanson launched a worldwide auditory assault with their catchy preschooler-appealing ditty "MmmmmmmBop" or something.)

I know I keep harping on about it being Baltic - and I should face facts and remember I live in sunny Scotland (it IS sunny today - see below for indisputable evidence).

Tampa - smug

Tampa - smug

Tampa - smug

Out the window - blue! (With layers of grey of course.)

As I was harping on, it IS cold, and as I am most comfortable in my comfort zone of preparing and consuming comfort food - here it is. Return of the Mac (aroni cheese).

Ingredients

• 25g unsalted butter
• Heaped tablespoon of plain flour
• 3/4 pint of full fat milk (semi-skimmed is fine, just not as nutritious for babies)
• 2 large handfuls grated cheddar - or adjust to taste
• 250g dried macaroni pasta
• Pinch of nutmeg or black pepper if you like that kind of thing
• Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius

1. Cook pasta on the hob according to packet instructions. Mine was 8 minutes boiling with a little olive oil. Drain, then empty into oven dish roughly 30cm x 20cm.
2. Easy, no lumps, white sauce see steps 3 to 7 (I use a plastic measuring jug)
3. Melt butter in jug - 15 seconds on high power
4. Stir in flour and beat a bit - should be a thick rue. Looking like a lump of moist plasticine (nice!) (more butter or flour until its right)
5. Put back in micro for 15 secs on high
6. Very slowly add your milk, stirring a few drops at a time to start with. That's the key to smooth sauce. Also if the milk is warm, it really helps.
7. When all the milk is in, heat it 30 seconds on full power, stir/beat any lumps; then 1 minute on full, stir again; then another minute on full - it should be nice and thick. Whisk if its lumpy!
8. Stir in cheese, until melted and seasoning if required.
9. Pour over pasta in dish, sprinkle over remaining cheese.
10. Cook in oven on a baking tray for 15-20 minutes, til cheese is golden.

Optional variations - broccoli and cauliflower florets cooked with pasta, chopped cherry tomatoes and ripped basil leaves stirred in with cheese sauce, maybe you could stir in cooked white fish chunks to tuna? I don't know! Good luck!

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Family Food - Frittata Taverymuch

Imagine this scenario.

• You can't be bothered to make a meal.
• You have hee haw Magraw in the cupboards.
• You have lost track of time, and the Wee Yin is starving. There's only so much emergency breadstick this Bairn can take!

Here follows an easy and nutritious meal! If you're unfamiliar with it, frittata is basically an omelette with veggies in. Is it? I think so - well this one is! Please don't tell me if I'm wrong. I was really excited about sounding pure knowledgable in the foodie department. Theoretically minimal mess, as it's really finger food, although The Bairn can pebble-dash my dining room walls with pretty much any edible substance. And the inedible too.

All you needs eggs, and stuff! what I find TRULY BRILLIANT is frozen veg - those packets of peas, sweetcorn, tinily chopped carrots and peppers etc.

Ingredients

Small non-stick frying pan and olive oil

2 eggs for a baby/toddler

Full fat milk

Cheese

Small veg - think peas, finely chopped and cooked anything really

Maybe a potato or sweet potato.

1. Cook your veg. I like to steam it - retains more vitamins that way.
2. If using potatoes - leftovers are great, just dice them and fry them in the pan you're using for the frittata, until golden coloured. Otherwise, boil until tender in thin slices or finely diced, dry off (by leaving without water in a hot pan for a bit) and then fry up.
3. So your potatoes and veg are fried up a little in olive oil - now sprinkle on grated cheese.
4. Beat eggs and a splash of full fat milk in a jug.
5. Pour over veggies in frying pan.
6. Fry until bottom looks golden, top just cooked.
7. If required, brown top off under the grill.

Sweet potatoes, peas and cheddar in ours...

Omnomnomnomnom.

For an adult version (too salty for the sprogs) fry some chorizo, red peppers and chilli in with your potatoes - maybe a bit of spinach or rocket in there too. The possibilities are practically endless!

Disclaimer - Some possibilities may be absolutely rank.

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Family food - Gnocchi

There are 3 indisputable facts about Gnocchi:

1. No living person knows how to pronounce the word "gnocchi".*
2. Historically, we KNOW there must (surely?) have been at least three more vowels in there.*
3. It can be made at home. You don't even have to have Italian ancestry.

* Not necessarily actual facts, as such.

I've found quite a few gnocchi recipes online and in books at home - even in the 9-12 months section of a baby cookery book. For my 10 month chunk of a Bairn, I halved the final lumps when they were cooked, I'm always paranoid about choking! But I've since found a more baby friendly shape - and will describe that method instead. The final pictures do not correspond with the method! You'll have to use you beautiful imaginations until I make it again and take more photos.

Ingredients

• 6oz diced white potatoes (7oz if baking them)
• 4oz diced sweet potatoes or butternut squash (5oz if baking)
• 6 tablespoon of plain flour
• Egg yolk
• Seasonings optional - pinches of nutmeg, black pepper, cinnamon (salt if not for a child under a year old)

Method

1. Cook your veg first. Either steam them for 15 minutes (until tender); OR bake them whole in an oven at 180 degrees C, for an hour or so. If you have the time to bake, your gnocchi will be much lighter and easier to handle as a dough.
2. Mash potatoes etc together in a flat bottomed bowl.
3. Stir in flour, egg yolk and seasonings. Add more flour or water as required until you have an easy to handle, light dough.
4. Make into teaspoon sized dumplings, press with fork so they're flattened and grooved (ie not what's in my photos!), easier for a wee one to handle.
5. Bring a large pan to the boil.
6. Pop about 8 dumplings in at a time, once they're done they'll rise to the top. Takes a couple of minutes.
7. Serve with chopped tomato, peas, spinach, cheese, pesto - whatever you fancy.

mashing it up....

Aaaaaargh! I've created a monster!!

Not how yours should look! More disc-like with ridges, for babies. 

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Baby Cuisine - Custard From Scratch

You heard me! You can actually make real custard by yourself - WITHOUT BUYING A TUB OF POWDER. That was my pre-conception of home-made custard - surely the non home-made version comes out of an Ambrosia tin, right? WRONG.

Anyway, one day The Bairn was perusing one of the many second hand weaning type recipe books that my lovely friend VM passed down to me. She is a Domestic Goddess. Nigella can flip off, my mate VM is an old school, proper family cooking genius. 3 kids - the youngest is 2 1/2 - and WITHOUT THE AID OF FOOTMEN, BUTLERS, MAIDS OR HELPFUL ELVES, her home is a pristine, but fun and friendly place to be. I may move in someday.

As his chubby little chipolata handles carefully searched through the pages of

(well, it's now more a collection of individual pages right enough) he articulated to me that he wished to purchase some vanilla essence from the local supermarket in order to concoct some Creamy Egg Custard.

"Oh, The Bairn!" says I. "There's really no need to add vanilla essence. As a baby, you wouldn't understand, but it'll likely be delicious with this expensive item omitted."

"Ah Mummy. You are so clever, beautiful and simply divine. I trust in your every uttering" says The Bairn.

Creamy Egg Custard

Ingredients

1/4 pint of full fat milk

2 tsp castor sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius.
2. Heat milk - I used the microwave, full power 40 seconds.
3. Beat together sugar and eggs til sugar dissolves.
4. Whisk in hot milk and vanilla.
5. Pour into ovenproof dish and bake for 30-40 minutes until set.

I may add that it looks brilliant - BUT DO NOT OMIT VANILLA! If you leave it out, it tastes of sweet scrambled egg. Now, The Bairn loved it anyway with a bit of banana, but it proved to be inedible to adults! And smelled boak-tastic after a day in the fridge.

So there you go. In the book, it's in the 6-7 months section.

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Family Food - Jellicious Fruit

I know. Genius title, eh? It took me quite some time scratching my sunburnt scalp to come up trumps with that one. But then, that's the kind of wonderful human being I am.

At last, summer has returned! And what's better than a bowl of chilled, wibbly-wobbly, jelly and fresh fruit to cool you down after running about after a maniac in a baby walker? A class of ice cold white Zinfandel, you say? A mojito with a sprig of dewy fresh garden mint tickling your pink, peeling nose? Lounging in a private outdoor hot-tub with Tom Hiddleston.... I mean, your nearest and dearest?

You read my mind! Here's a recipe to concoct your own backyard paradise complete with fricking lovely man.

No, it's a recipe for jelly.

But a magnificently beautiful summer jelly you can share with your whole family - baby included!

Ingredients

Sachet of Dr Oetker gelatine (as pictured)

120ml hot (not boiling) water in a jug

450ml fresh apple and raspberry juice, younger - babies dilute very well with cold water

Summer fruits (chopped strawberry, raspberry, currants, etc)

Full fat Greek yoghurt

1. Sprinkle gelatine into hot water while stirring constantly, until completely dissolved.
2. Add juice or juice/water combo.
3. Pop some fruit into the bottom of several ramekins or small dishes (and some in a bowl for the adult servings).
4. Fill with jelly mixture.
5. Set overnight or for a few hours in the fridge.
6. Top with yoghurt and garnish with a raspberry.

I made the stupid mistake of allowing The Bairn to "self-feed" (ie paint the dining room with) the jelly. The terrifying outcome has been documented below.Well hello there jelly perfection!

Ahaaaaa.... My infant nemesis.....

No shit Sherlock!

Hurray for kitchen roll!

Happy summer, folks xxx

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Family food - Rice Pudding

Me and The Bairn are loaded with another Stinking Cold, and since it's October (it's not! It's actually July! I know! Couldn't believe it either. Can Prince Charles please come back and do the BBC weather again? I'm sure he got it right when he did it. And I'm sure he made June weather appear for June. I love the monarchy. Aren't they fab? Especially Her Jubbly the Queen. Anyway, I digress....) here's a winter warmer type affair.

Mam (My mam, not the Queen, though I hear Her Maj gets annoyed when people call her Ma'am and not Mam. My mam could be Queen. She is majestic. Am I overdoing the brackets? (I like grammar.)) has been making rice pudding since me and my sisters were wee. Probably since the dawn of time - though I can't imagine who'd be consuming it. Depends on your belief system I suppose. Therefore her customers were likely a diplodocus and a pterodactyl. The current day incarnation of her historical rice pudding is flipping awesome - I've toned down the sugar so it's baby friendly-er. You'd probably not want to serve it up at lunch and dinner, every day for a week, or your precious infant may start to take on the appearance of feather-duster wielding scouser himself - Ken Dodd, in the dental sense.

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

1 pint of full fat milk

1 1/2 oz of short grain rice (pudding rice or arborio rice)

3/4 oz of caster sugar

Optional cinnamon, nutmeg, dried fruit (small pieces, and for older babies)

1. Pre-heat oven to 150 deg Celsius.
2. Butter up a pudding tin, pie dish or something like that. Mine was about 8" by 6" roughly.
3. Heat up milk in a pan or microwave for a minute or so.
4. In the bottom of the dish, scatter your (washed) rice, sugar -and I like a tiny pinch of each nutmeg, cinnamon and a handful of raisins.
5. Put on a baking tray in the middle of the oven for about an hour and a half. After an hour, check every 10 minutes.

Et voila! When the "skin" (sounds horrific, but actually delicious) is this gorgeous golden colour, get a fork in and have a taste of the rice beneath. It should be creamy and very soft. After its been left to cool for a bit, it'll congeal, turning very thick and rich. It apparently freezes well, but I've not tried that yet. I have heated it in a microwave which dries up a bit. If you give it a good stir and mix it with full fat milk, its good as new. If you've made it plain, you could try adding fruit purée to it (or jam for adults), but it's delicious in its most basic form.

Mmmmmm.... skin......

Baby Cuisine - Baby Ketchup

Yes, you read it right! Ketchup for babies. Mine seems to enjoy it, and just as well, as I've made an entire shed load of the stuff. I serve French Toast or sweet potato chips with this ketchup, so here's how I do it. It's so easy.

Baby Ketchup

Simply fry a pack of roughly chopped cherry tomatoes in a little olive oil, add a chopped ripe nectarine, and simmer with a couple of teaspoons of vinegar (i used balsamic) for 5 minutes. Blend. It's tomatoey and sweet and sour - a bit like proper ketchup! Pour into ice cube trays and freeze for little easily defrosted portions - perfect baby-sized condiments!

(Tomato/optometry factoid - cooked and processed tomatoes contain more lycopene than raw tomatoes. Therefore actual Tommy K has some nutritional value! If you ignore all the sugar, salt and preservatives...)

French Toast

I'm sure you all know how it's done, but here you go... (Serves mum and wee yin)

• 3 slices of white bread - 2 for you - cut in half. Baby slice - cut off crusts, and cut into 8 fingers.
• Beat 2 eggs into a flat bottomed dish with a splash of full fat milk.
• Soak bread in it.
• Heat olive oil in a frying pan.
• Fry eggy bread until golden brown.
• Do the baby bread first so it's cool enough when yours is done.
• Demolish!

Sweet Potato Chips

• Wash and peel a sweet potato
• Slice into chip sized fingers
• Toss in olive oil
• (for adults, season with salt and cracked black pepper, or peri peri, or jerk, or anything really!)
• Roast on a baking tray in oven at 200 degrees C for about 15-20 minutes
• They really hold the heat, so try it yourself before giving it to your cherub!
• Serve as a lovely soft finger food, keep some in the fridge as a cold snack for the next day.

Hope you enjoy it!