Matt Hazell Blog

It’s been nine months and time’s flown by with Tyler and Rachel at home with me.  However, Rachel’s back to work very soon, and now Tyler’s 8 months old, she’ll soon be going to full time nursery with Luca.  Dealing with this monumental milestone is not easy for any parent, and if you’re a first timer its especially hard, but I can say from experience that it does get easier giving your little baby to someone else every day.  I remember when we introduced Luca to this new world, and how Rachel and I both felt.  But over time, we realised how good it was for him, and how in reality, you can’t do without it.  It’s one of those necessities in life, as we all need to make money and in most cases child care becomes a fact of life.

However there’s one area in particular that I take a keen interest in at the nursery, and that’s the food.  I think as a parent you’re always looking to provide the utmost for your children, and for me, food is one of the best ways to do this.  Good overall nutrition and a healthy diet will help little minds to grow and the body to develop.  I remember thinking when we started to research which nursery Luca would be going to:- Will the food be up to scratch? How will he get on eating other peoples food?  Well, I’m happy to say he took it all in his stride, and from day one he loved it.  Given my love of food, and having read lots about how bad food can be at nurseries it was important for Rachel and I to know he was going to get the right balance of food every day, and that it was cooked on site.

I read a report some time ago by a lady called Lizzie Vann (who founded Organix) and The Soil Association, whereby they exposed the truth about nursery food.  It was an absolute eye opener, and really shook me up.  Findings like some nurseries spending only 25p per child per meal on the ingredients or that 9 out of 10 nurseries that are not state-maintained had no clear nutritional standards.  And for me the worst of all, the findings reported that colourings and additives not permitted in manufactured food for young children were regularly served in nurseries as this sector has no defined governmental guidelines???  The report can be found at www.soilassociation.org

Now, for me this is even more of a reason to be cooking from scratch and making it simple for you at home.  Knowing what you’re feeding your child at home is a good thing in my book, and if you do batch cooking it’s fast, simple and real value for money.

In my next blog, I’m going to write about this subject, while providing a few simple recipes that always go down well with Luca.  For us, it’s important to know that when we’re both at work and time is short, we’ve got quick meals we can prepare for Tyler and Luca in minutes when at home.  It’s worked for us so far, and I’m hoping to share some of this with you.

Matt.

The Baby Chef

I get asked a lot about how to get the variety into the diet of young children and i've written many times about how, in my opinion, giving your child a choice at an early age helps massively as they progress through life.

However, I also think that it is down to what is being said at feeding time and your overall attitude to food.

For me 'the first bite is with the eye' and regardless as to whether I'm cooking for adults or young babies I always try to make it look good, and I think this is part of the reason Luca (our first child) eats so well.  Now I'm not saying you need to become a Michelin star chef, but by cooking from scratch and adding colour to either the puree or to the plate with a sprig of parsley, basil leaves or even tarragon, you'll be setting the scene for time to come.

Luca now, without question, eats his greens and many parents as how I get him to do this.  Well. first it is not me, it is Luca, and from day one he has seen colour on his plate and so he's accepting of it.  Second, I try never to speak in negatives to him.  What I mean by this is that I don't make comments like 'You won't like this' or 'He/She doesn't like peas' or even 'If you eat those carrots. you can have dessert'.  By doing this these little people pick up on the negatives and may start to see food as a negotiation.

As a parent, your overall desire to provide quality and natural taste along with value may be strong.  And so, like me, cooking from scratch and knowing 100% what you're putting into your child's mouth should provide you with confidence, and allow you to explore and try new things, while always putting a positive approach to the new foods they will be trying.  So simple, easy food with lots of natural colour and postives should at least put you in the right direction to getting the greener things in life inside your little one.

This article also featured in ABC , which is the local information magazine for parents in Kent, in their Spring issue. www.abcmag.co.uk Spring Issue #16

The news for us this week at Baby Chef is that we launched on www.mothercare.com on 8^th February. This is very exciting for us and I really appreciate the support and commitment that the team at Mothercare have shown Baby Chef. 

If you follow this link you’ll be taken direct to the site, and our page:  http://www.mothercare.com/b/42865041/279-9883332-9901541?_encoding=UTF8&mcb=core&rh=n%3A42865041%2Cp_4%3ABaby%20Chef

Lucy and I feel very proud of the Baby Chef DVD and hope that the expert advice and recipes help all those parents about to embark on first stage weaning.  If you are a regular reader to my blog, you will know that I have been doing this process with my daughter, Tyler, who coincidentally turned 7 months old on our go live date with Mothercare! 

This whole process has been amazing to see and do again, and Tyler’s been fantastic.  As with Luca, she’s taken to solids really well and eats just about everything.  We do have days where she seems to be off a particular food, but as we’ve got lots of frozen variety in the freezer it’s not an issue.  This is one of the major plus points when cooking from scratch for your baby.  All the pots are small, easy to handle and great in terms of the cash value.  If you had purchased a jar or pot from the supermarket, throwing what’s not used away would become very expensive.  I’ve always questioned why these manufactures make the jars so big for first stage??  Anyway, Tyler has just about moved on to Stage-2 now, and as the DVD is all about Stage-1, we thought we would continue with the updates and explain the process we’re doing with her.  Over the coming weeks I’ll be posting new recipes and more exciting ways to have fun with the little ones. 

I hope you’ll join us.

Matt  The Baby Chef

We have been weaning Tyler now for just over 4 weeks and she is making great progress.  She now opens her mouth when she sees the spoon approaching, along with encouraging noises from me about how yummy this new food is.  She has now tried apple, banana, pear, suede, sweet potato, carrot, courgettes, parsnip, and yesterday – cauliflower for the first time. That's the picture - cauliflower all over her face in her Cosatto High Chair. As well as these fruit and vegetables on their own, we have also started to introduce some new flavours in the form of apple and cinnamon, apple and nutmeg, carrot and parsley, sweet potato and coriander.   

She is now eating nearly 3 cubes a day – one for breakfast, one for mid morning and one for dinner, and because of this, over the last few days, has not been wanting her evening feed.  So, last Friday, we made the decision to drop this feed and she slept soundly until 7.15am this morning.  Great news for my sleep deprivation!  Of course that will only last until she starts teething.

We will now introduce a cereal for breakfast, as she now needs to start getting carbohydrate in her diet.  We will start off with a gluten free, salt free, sugar free, oats based cereal.  I like to add apple puree to it, to add a bit more flavour.  Remember if you mix it with milk, use either breast milk or formula, as cows milk should not be introduced until they are 1 year old.

Cereal for breakfast also has a knock on affect to the time of the mid morning feed, and we can now start pushing that back to 11.30 and eventually midday, so her routine starts fitting in more with the rest of the family. 

It is essential to keep the milk feeds going as this time is still about first tastes.  Here is an example of Tyler’s diet today to illustrate what I mean:-

- Breakfast at 7.15am of 7oz milk and some cereal mixed with apple puree

- Mid Morning at 11.15am of 5oz milk and a vegetable puree

- Mid Afternoon at 2.30pm of 7oz milk

- Dinner at 5pm of a couple of ounces of the milk and either vegetable or fruit puree, and the rest of the milk after her bath so she is in bed by 7pm

Here is one of the recipes mentioned above:-

Apples, with a dash of winter spice

Apples are one of the best first foods for your baby, and I'm sure they're going to love them.  When picking the apples for this recipe, try to use any of the following as they'll be sweet and full of flavour. Gala, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Washington Reds or Pink Lady.  As a nice touch try adding a quick dash of Cinnamon & Nutmeg. 

Ingredients

·         6 – 8 Apples

·         A quick ‘shake or grate’ of nutmeg or cinnamon

This will provide around 10 pots x 50mil

Method

1. First boil water (It’s good to steam apples, so if you’ve a steamer, please use this)

2. Peel, core and cut apple into nice chunks

3. When the water has come up to the boil, place the apples into the steamer or pan

4. Steam or boil until tender, you’ll know this is right if you can put a knife or fork into the middle of the fruit. (About 6 minutes on medium heat)

5. When tender, place the Apples along with a quick shake or grate of both Cinnamon and Nutmeg into your blender and blitz for around 10 seconds 

So, just finished our first week of weaning Tyler.  Her first tastes this week have been Apple, Pear and at the back end of the week Banana and she actually loved them all.  At the start of the week most of it went all over her face, bib and hair and hardly any in her mouth.

A few little tips for you – if you’re finding it hard to get your baby to open their mouth, I’ve found with Tyler, that if I give her a spoon she’ll try and put that in her mouth and when she does, I pop a little puree in.  Also, try to remember this is a “true first” for your baby, and as such you’ll need to take your time and relax.  Also, I find that if I gave Tyler half to three quarters of her milk before trying the puree then shes content and calm enough to give it go, but not too full not to want to. 

By the end of this week, she was actually beginning to open her mouth and now sucks the puree off the spoon with her top lip which is amazing and really quite funny to watch. 

However, we’ve found her developing a nappy rash with all these new foods going through her system, so Rach and I have started to give her lots of airtime over the last few days and it seems to be getting better.  

Next week we are going to try Carrots, Swede and Sweet Potato – all fantastic root vegetables.  She is getting hungry so I think next week I will introduce purees at two of her feeds.

Have to say a "Huge" thank you to Cosatto who gave us their new 3Sixti Circle highchair for Tyler – very funky looking.  Check it out at www.cosatto.com.