Family Food - Banana Bread

Firstly, I want to reassure you that this is the first baking I've done in about a year. I'm not some sort of Baroness Nigella of Lawson type lady with bags of time on my hands and a butler (perhaps a few footmen too) to tidy up all the bloody mess that is left in the inevitable aftermath of bakery. Sieves. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again! Oh, that's right, sieves are good for making floury carnage of your kitchen worktop.

The recipe I'm adding here is from a magnificent website.

http://blog.homemade-baby-food-recipes.com/easy-banana-bread-for-baby/


I've used this website for loads of things before. Mostly for inspiration, but also for advice on what's safe for babies to eat when. I think it's a US site, so guidelines are a little different to those in the UK - but I think it's really useful.

Banana Bread

Ingredients

2 1/2 ripe mashed medium bananas

4oz currants or raisins

4oz Stork cooking margarine

8oz sifted self-raising flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger

2 beaten eggs

• Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees C, line or grease a loaf tin.
• Rub marg into flour, cinnamon and ginger - until like breadcrumbs.
• Stir in eggs, currants/raisins and bananas.
• Bake for 45 mins to an hour (mine took 55 minutes) until top is golden and it's well risen.
• Wrestle those Marigold rubber gloves on. Spend ages trying to remove gloopy cooking mixture from bowl and wooden spoon. Just throw away the sponge. It's disgusting now. Yuck. Why is there always icky stuff to deal with after the creation of something so perfect?
• Sigh to self, and get on with it. Stop moaning. And make sure you get a slice before it cools! Mmmmmmmmmmmm.......
• 
  

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Baby Cuisine - Beginner's Curry

I am absolutely cream flipping crackered.

It's been one of those days when your body feels like it's been hiking through a Ben Nevis sized sand dune in the opposite direction to a hurricane. Wearing stilettos, and carrying an ironing board. Or three.

As usual, I have achieved practically nothing at all, although have barely left the kitchen sink all afternoon.

And this, alas, is what I have to show for it.

Is it just me? Or do all Mums struggle to keep on top of everything?

The Bairn was "settling in" at nursery today. My plan for this golden hour was as follows:

1. Kettle on, cup of ACTUAL hot tea.
2. Become one with sofa.
3. Stick iPad on (ooooh! iPad. Check me out. )
4. Watch remaining 45 minutes of the GLORIOUS BBC adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 2, starring the ridiculously handsome and talented and magnificent and gorgeous and handsome Tom Hiddleston, on the iPlayer

How the hour actually transpired:

1. Switch on kettle. No, don't actually, because THE BUTTON WON'T STAY DOWN.
2. Pour glass of water, as forgotten there's no diluting juice left.
3. Become one with sofa.
4. Stick iPad on.
5. WHAT. THE. F....AAAAARGH! The evil Beeb has obviously decided that I do not wish to complete my viewing as ALL OF THE SHAKESPEARE STUFF HAS GONE.
6. Tears merge into glass of tap water forming equilibrium state of sadnes and blandness combined.
7. Wash some dishes.
8. Collect The Bairn.

Better still, when I turn up at the nursery, my son - my own flesh and blood - hears my voice and immediately let's out a blood curdling scream. Clearly my name will now be placed on a list of nasty ogre mummies whose children hate them.

One thing I did do without ballsing it up was make my wee cherub a delicious, very mild curry.

Here it is...



Ingredients

Chicken breast diced finely

Teaspoon of curry seasoning powder

Half a green bell pepper, chopped finely

Tablespoon of finely chopped spinach

Third of a tin of chopped tomatoes

Tablespoon of full fat natural yoghurt

Tablespoon of tropical fruit juice (or fruit purée)

1. Fry up chicken in olive oil.
2. When cooked through add green pepper.
3. After a few minutes (pepper getting soft) add seasoning and stir for few more minutes.
4. Pour over tomatoes, juice and spinach.
5. After 5 minutes stir in yoghurt then remove from heat. (I also stirred in some microwaved white rice).
6. Serve with mini naan bread.

I used the juice from a tub of pre-chopped tropical fruit (a Del Monte thing) with pineapple, mango and papaya in it. The wee man enjoyed eating the fruit pieces with his fingers for snack age, and I puréed some to stir into yoghurt, which he loved too. The lazy option, but I can barely manage keeping the blimmin work top clear, so chopped hunners of fruit up just AIN'T HAPPENING.

The little monkey was so happy with his curry, I nearly forgot I was in a huff with him for making me look like he hated my guts at nursery.

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Baby Cuisine - Weensy Steak and Chips

The Other Half and I (certain elements - you know who you are RM - may take the time to appreciate my lovely use of grammar) get a bit excited about a good, hearty steak. Ever since our very first holiday in Nice, where I believe we each consumed 6 1/2 French cows of moderate girth over the course of a long weekend. Well, it'd be moo-de (ie rude, but with a moo in? Tenuous? Doesn't really work? Fair dos) not to, in the epicentre of steakery that is La France. I believe I'm correct in saying that 99.4% of restaurants in Nice serve steak frites avec vert... pepper sauce (not sure what French for pepper sauce is. La sauuuce p'perrrrr? Probably) and its likely all crap in comparison to what our finely tuned taste buds are attuned to these days. Now we're total grown up with careers and stuff and that and dead posh and everything, eh?

Fair enough, one can't quite achieve the same effect when cooking for a baby - I can't imagine The Bairn chomping through a medium rare bit of Aberdeen Angus fillet, quashed down with a tiny glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. Aw how cute! But no. With 2 teeth and an infantile weeny liver, it's a decidedly mushier and most certainly non-alcoholic version of my favourite meal ever.

Make this most palatable to your baby by slow cooking the beef - make it a day you fancy a steak pie or casserole and you can all eat together. Do you know what? It's really closer to a stew. I'm kidding myself a bit.

Ingredients

Pack of diced stewing steak

Tablespoon of flour

A carrot chopped

An onion chopped

Parsley

Bay leaf

Black pepper

Paprika

Olive oil

A medium sized waxy potato

Baby ketchup as previously blogged (I'll try and figure out how to link it in...)

1. Parboil Sliced carrot and chipped potatoes for about 8 minutes.
2. Put paprika, black pepper, flour into a freezer bag. Add diced steak and shake it all up.
3. Fry beef in olive oil and a bit of butter if you fancy, til just coloured.
4. Put in slow cooker (crockpot if you're in the states) with carrot, parsley, rest of seasoning from the bag, and a bay leaf; cover with hot water.
5. Cook on low heat for... Aaaaages. 6 hours if possible - so really soft for you Bairns. Pre heat oven to 200 degrees C for chips.
6. Meanwhile, give it several hours, then CHIPS (American? You might call them fries. But you're wrong. They are clearly chips). I warn you, these are BETTER than oven chips so you may want to make lots for yourself. Put parboiled CHIPS in a bowl with plenty paprika, maybe a wee touch of garlic and/or black pepper if your bambino can handle it. A glug of olive oil. Mix it all up.
7. Spread evenly over a hot baking tray, and bake for about 20-25 minutes. If they're not nice and soft by then, stick them back in. They need to be really soft and fluffy inside!
8. Take chips out to cool - takes a good while. We may all have experienced the heartbreak and tongue-burnt devastation from trying that chip just too soon. But better it's your tongue that gets frazzled than your lovely little smasher, so ALWAYS TEST IT ON YOURSELF FIRST!
9. Remove a few nice soft bits of steak from the slow cooker, some onion and carrot - check you've not accidentally removed the sneaky wee bay leaf too - and whizz it all up. If your meat's reeeeally tender, you could just mash it all with a fork for older babies.
10. Serve with defrosted baby ketchup!

And now I'm craving cattle again. Moooooo!

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Homeward Bound

© Copyright Walter Baxter and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

I love home.

I've just been there for 5 whole days, with The Bairn in tow, for a holiday. Well, not so much a holiday as it was for work in a neighbouring town. Why do I still call it "Home"? I've lived a hundred miles away since I was 18 (which was approximately 73 years ago), and am perfectly AT home here in my actual home. In fact, when I go to the Ol' Ancestral Home (true story - my 7 Greats Granda was one of the village's first occupants in the 1700s. And this time I'm not even exaggerating! Fascinating stuff if you're interested in my Bee-nealogy) I no longer recognise 90% of the people I see. It can be a bit embarrassing. For example - The Bairn, Grampa and My Good Self went for stroll with the buggy yesterday. As we're attempting to push the decidedly suburban stroller (the Baby-style-but-little-substance Oyster) down a muddy, overgrown-grassy, steeply sloping back lane, we meet a girl. Someone I should clearly know. Some reasons for this:

• She calls my Dad's name, East Clintwood (not necessarily his real name).
• She knows my Dad's friend - whose greenhouse he'd been watering.
• She's my age.
• She has a toddler not much older than The Bairn.
• There are only about 4 girls ("ladies" I should say, i won't flatter myself) my age in the village. And they made up 50% of my primary school class.
• New people don't move to the village. Not ever.

We had a whole conversation about the merits of monkey shaped baby rein rucksacks and the easy purchase thereof from The Mighty Amazon.The whole time I'm thinking

"Who the hell are you, woman? Take off your sunnies! Give me something to work with for Chrissakes! Or at least go the opposite way so Dad (that's East to you) can tell me who the *#%+ you actually are? You nice lady, you!"

We then overtake with the buggy - no mean feat in this terrain, but we can just about get past a wobbly-legged year old toddler in grass taller than him - and I ask Dad who this was?

"Dunno".

Marvellous. In conclusion; my ancestral home, which after all these years remains in my heart of hearts as Home, seems to have morphed into Where I Once Belonged. Sadly I recognised only ONE LADY the whole time I was Home.

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