Sausages! Nyommers

Best way to introduce sausages in my opinion is by using skinless sausages.

Denny skinless sausages seem to be Sam's favourite.

Keeping this "lunch" speedy and simple is so handy for last minute meals

What do you need?
Mixed frozen veggies (carrots, peas and sweetcorn)
Skinless Sausages
Spiral Pasta.

Cook pasta and frozen veg in together in a pot

Fry or grill your sausages and then slice them up.

Country Relish or Brown sauce go lovely with this! Sam's favourite is red pesto!

Popeye Dinner

Pasta, Cold Water Prawns & Spinach

Spinach a great source of iron shouldn't be recalled as that horrible stuff that came out of a tin all stringy and watery and well to be honest Yuck.

What do you need?
Pasta Spirals
Cold Water Precooked Prawns
Spinach (baby or regular- fresh or frozen)

Boil up the pasta, throw in the prawns and spinach in the last few minutes of pasta's cooking time.

Drain when done and that's it!

If you want to add a sauce then work away but this is totally suited to self feeding (hands) little people as a lunch or late tea idea.

Tomato based Sauce

For any pasta dish, for Bolognese, Chicken dinners or just on its own with some veg and pasta.

Passata - Tesco do a small carton for under a euro!
Chopped Onion
Garlic Clove Chopped
Basil
Oregano

How simple is this

Sauté the onioin and garlic
Pour in the passata and add basil and oregano
Simmer until slightly reduced
Taste for flavouring

For a creamier pasta sauce why not add a scoop of mascarpone?

Portion these off into freezer bags and they are there to add to whatever you want.

First Pasta's

Cheesy Pasta & Broccoli
Baby sized Pasta Shells (UK & Ireland - available in Boots)
Cheddar Cheese
Milk
Unsalted Butter
Broccoli

Simply boil the pasta in water - for first time pasta experience have it as soft as possible
I threw in the broccoli at the same time.
Drain the pasta and drop a nob of the unsalted butter in with the cheese to the pot.
Add a small bit of milk and stir.
Remember to have this off the heat as you do it; the heat from the pasta and broccoli will be warm enough to melt the butter and cheese otherwise the milk and cheese can curdle.

Three Cheese Pasta

As per above but without milk, add mascarpone, gouda and cheddar cheese and a small bit if black pepper.

 

 

Baby pasta from Boots



Badabing Meatballs

Teeny Tiny Meatballs!
Great for finger food

What do you need?
Round steak mince,
breadcrumbs,
egg,
basil and
oregano
flour
olive oil or unsalted butter

How?
Mix: mince, breadcrumbs, egg, basil and oregano
then roll into little balls and dipped in flour,
Fry off in a little olive oil or unsalted butter

simple finger food or add to passata to have with pasta or with a bowl of vegetables.

Baby Chicken Curry

So I decided to expand the young man's taste buds.

Curry, would it be too spicy/hot for him?
Lets google some recipes.
I must admit I found some that were very similar so I adapted to what I had in the press.

What you need?
Ok for sauce;
clove of garlic chopped,
one red onion chopped,
a cube of ginger chopped,
4 semi dried apricots chopped,
spoonful of curry powder (heaped teaspoon),
mango chutney (tablespoon),
half a tin of organic Thai coconut milk
baby chicken stock
sprinkle of paprika
chicken
basmati rice

Add Garlic, Onion, Ginger and Apricots to a pan,
as they cook sprinkle the curry powder over them and stir.
Add in the mango chutney and stir again.
Once everything is softened add the coconut milk and chicken stock.
Sprinkle the paprika and let it simmer.
Taste of course and add more flavour if you feel it needs more.

Once it has thickened; blitz with a blender.

I separately cook off the chicken - fried or poached whichever suits you.
Cook basmati rice. (I don't add salt to season for little people)

Can't beat it; Lamb Stew

Hands down, a little man's favourite meal which can be shared with the whole family.

What do you need?
Diced Lamb
Carrots
Onion (white or red)
Sweet Potato or Potato
Baby Vegetable Stock
Unsalted Butter
Pearl Barley and/or Split Red Lentils (optional)
Water

How do I prepare?
Melt a nob of unsalted butter in a pot.
Add Diced Lamb cubes and brown off.
Chop Onion and Carrot in whatever fashion you like as long as even in size.
Add to the pot. *
Stir
(if adding pearl barley or lentils do so now)

Dissolve the baby vegetable stock in some water and add to the pot.
Bring to the boil.
Turn down the heat.
Cover the pot with a lid and leave to cook.


*Chop up sweet potato and either add to the pot if cooking for baby only at this time.
If cooking for the whole family prepare separately.

I leave this whole meal simmer until the meat is completely cooked and then some. In other words until the meat is so tender you can pull apart with two forks.

This is the stew before going through the blender - in other words the meals he has today because he is old enough to eat it as is.

Storage: Best Buy?

For initial portions:
An ice cube tray is brilliant!
Pour in the foods after cooking, let them cool, then freeze.
Pop them out to defrost individually, perfect.

When portions get bigger?
Rather than buying expensive storage pots (yes I did that too)

Freezer bags! Sealable bpa free Freezerbags!
You can flatten them out or roll up, whichever suits your freezer space and can easily write on them with a Sharpie or permanent marker:
What it contains: Chicken Stew
When it was cooked: DD/MM/YY
etc...

That way you keep on top of what is in the freezer and how long you have it for!

First Meat's

I had an awfully stupid first experience introducing meat to Sam.
I used a hand blender and health and safety, shall we say was abandoned due to stupidity and well I nearly lost a finger.

So when I did get back to it, it was all very carefully planned out.
What to make?
Chicken. Of course chicken its the most bland tasting meat right?
So I did my veg as normal and well just boiled up a bit of chicken and lobbed it in to the pot and blitzed it all together.
So it was
Chicken
Cauliflower
Sweet Potato
Brocolli

It was a bit thicker than just the veg and smelled just like the tinned/jarred stuff you would get.
He demolished it. I added nothing bar water to this food. Basic, no added salt, no stock etc.
It looked horrible but it was fresh, wholesome, no added Anything.

I went on to change meats daily and had a rotation going.
I would blend in steak or lamb. So we were now on a 3 day rotation of meat.

Lamb was his favourite by far.
Lamb recipe to follow in the next blog.

Introducing Fruit

I decided to vary the little man's diet and finally introduce some fruit.

I boiled the usual: Pear or apples. Grand.

Then I wanted to mix it up a little.

What about Apple and Plum? They go nice together don't they? Plum would be great for upkeep of healthy bowel movements rather than giving prune juice (same thing but fresh right?).

I bought a punnet of plums and let them ripen until they started to get soft, a bag of apples and went for it.

Pitted the plums and cored the apples.
In to the pot of water.

 

 

Bring it to the boil, let it simmer until it has reduced and the fruit will almost go to mush itself, the smell is so fresh and inviting around the kitchen!

 

For the Christmas season I added a pinch of Cinnamon and even family members used it as a compot for dessert's!

These get demolished every time!

 

Another option was green apples with green grapes!

I added to this some readymade custard and fresh strawberry purée:

The strawberry purée was literally done as follows;

Chopped up and into a frying pan and over heat until bubbling and simmer.







Attack of the Veggie Monster

There was nothing for it.
I had to buy every kind of a vegetable I could think of that might "blend well" and be bland enough on a tummy so as not to cause discomfort, telling myself; Veggies are great, he will be having proper bowel movements in no time (All of the reflux formula's and medication had exacerbated his on-going issues with bowel movements since he was born) .

I bought;
Pumpkin
Butternut Squash
Carrots (Carrots can be hit and miss with Refluxers - took Sam a few weeks before he could tolerate them and now they are his favourite)

I saw a trend - they were all orange.

So what do first time mothers need to do?

Chop up your vegetables and boil. Simple.
Chop up your pumpkin flesh and boil, drain and then (not like me with a sieve and spoon) blitz it in a blender, instant soup for an adult to season if you will and the remainder put into an ice cube tray and straight in to the freezer!
Jobs a good'un!

I did this with the previously mentioned vegetables as well as cauliflower and broccoli

Check out this great Community on Facebook for Irish Reflux Parents
https://www.facebook.com/groups/RefluxIreland/?fref=ts

Its a closed group so you have to request to join.

Introducing Food's

Where do I start?

That's the question I asked myself when other mothers talked about introducing solids to their babies.

A first time, older mother, I recalled memories of semolina and my gag reflex kicked in.
I am (to me) a desperately fussy eater; I loathe: Mushrooms, Turnip, Parsnip, Courgettes, Aubergines, Custard, to name a few; including Semolina.

I Googled foods and found links to many pages and as I recall them I will share.

The public health nurse issued a booklet on what you could introduce when, a very minimalistic guideline but I always remembered him saying introduce fruit flavoured foods last; why?; he said "once babies taste sweet things, they refuse all other food". Ok so no fruit for my little Sam.

I noticed when he was three months old he was smacking his lips and drooling watching me eat. He stared at me with a look of want. Its the best way I can describe it. Two weeks later I gave in, yes 3.5 month old baby, 14 weeks, he got his first taste of food.
What did I give him?
A very watered down taste of an off the shelf brand of baby cereal, no wait for it; not baby rice but orange flavoured baby cereal! Rule no. 1 broken! I felt so guilty, I hadn't even told my husband I had given our first born a taste of food, fruit flavoured at that.
I did buy the plain baby rice flavoured cereal after that, (I had waited until he was 16 weeks before properly introducing the right measurements - not so watered down) and he refused it; I thought I was in trouble.

Sam was/is a Reflux baby. Even his formula was pre-thickened Enfamil A.R. and he was on Losec Mups 10mg a day and for really bad days ontop of these he had infant Gaviscon. I didn't realise these baby cereals were made with milk because all I added was cooled boiled water.

I needed to do more research. I found a Facebook page dedicated to parents of Reflux babies and it was here where they discussed what foods helped with Reflux and what triggered it. Some varied.
So it was time for Trial and Error.
My poor baby.