Dealing With Toddler Pickiness, A Year On

It seems like a while ago now that I was first tackling some pickiness with my (amazing, strong-willed) girl, and to be honest, it seems to come and go. Right now it feels like we've turned a corner, but I'm sure that it's just going to be an ongoing thing. Current thoughts and tactics:

Scenes From Our Table (iPhone edition)

Hello! We're still away (and phone blogging exclusively!), so these photos are old, but I meant to post them before summer slipped away from us. 

Waffles, nectarines, strawberry Kombucha. Mismatched everything.

Those pickled onions, changing my leftovers and LIFE. Seriously, I'm going to have to make them every week until I die.

Congee, greens, tofu, onions and lacto-fermented radishes. The stuff of my dreams, basically. 

 Plantains, beans and rice.

Pretty stationary, iced decaf. 

Not our table, rather our kitchen side. Just 'cause I love summer fruit.

Simple late-summer supper of baked tofu and veggies.

Iced nettle tea. For the discerning pregnant lady.

Rainy day watercolours.

And some dahlias!

Also, FYI, we're going to be attempting to participate in Vegan Mo-Fo (Vegan Month of Food) this year, so from tomorrow, expect DAILY food posts. I just hope I can keep up!! Here goes nothing!

Scenes From Our Table

 

Some nights, you basically just want pan-asian restaurant starters. Corn cakes and spring rolls. Sweet chilli, and peanut sauce. Remind me to post the peanut sauce recipe, guys, it was BOSS.

 

Corn cakes.

 

 

Stewed rhubard isn't the most photogenic of foods, I will grant you, but hot damn, it does the job.

 

 

Buckwheat pancakes.

 

 

Posh take-out.

 

 

Taking the 'table' outside. I made this quilt a few years ago from thrift store scraps.

 

 

Take that, Dad. Defeated!

 

 

A breakfast series, starting with quinoa sourdough (sadly, not homemade. I am still struggling with sourdough). 

 

 

Waffles and peanut butter. She just calls it 'butter', because she's the sweetest.

 

 

FRENCH. TOAST.

 

 

My new thing - multigrain porridge. This is oat, quinoa and millet with Udo's oil , a little brown rice syrup, and seeds. And lemon water because I'm soooooo virtuous. Just a note, the millet takes a bit longer to cook, so use leftovers!

 

And finally, some inspiration. Been craving homemade tortillas, and I'm going to make that business happen for us.

Hope you are all having a good weekend!!

Things My Mother Taught Me About Food

Hands up if you're a sucker for a Netflix documentary? If A Tree Falls (fascinating), Nim (deeply depressing), Man on Wire - I can't resist. The other night I watched Fed Up, which is about the obesity 'epidemic' and the strong arm of processed food companies - particularly pointing a finger at outrageous levels of added sugar. It wasn't actually news to me, being a bit a a food nerd: the softening of McGovern Report due to industry pressure, the conflicts of interest with the FDA, junk food in schools, advertising to children (a nauseating quote from a McDonalds rep at a hearing: "Ronald McDonald doesn't sell to kids; he informs and inspires through magic and fun"). A fascinating tidbit was the government simultaneously recommending less dairy fat consumption in official literature, while actively peddling all the excess cheese made from the leftovers from skim milk. Depressing, but not surprising. I hadn't really thought about it before, but those of us born in the 80's and 90's were growing up in this unbelievable boom for processed foods, when families were marketed junk from all angles. Low fat! Fun! Convenient! Affordable! My childhood could so easily have been full of Lucky Charms and Spaghetti-O's, but it wasn't, because my parents knew better. I'm so grateful that they valued real food and made us eat it! That's not to say that we never had pizza or soda, but it certainly wasn't the norm.

 

These are some of the best things my mother taught me about food, that I hope to pass on to my kids:

Scenes From Our Table

Her new favourite book, I think I've read it 15 times since yesterday.

 

Taco night! And salad, obvs. 

 

Little hands.

 

Sometimes I think I'm just an old-school, sprouts kind of girl.

 

We have a little alcove above the table where we store jugs and serving plates...

... and cookbooks and table linens. I like it.

 

 

Another new friend.

 

Why are the chipped mugs always the best? Got it in Provence and can't bear to part with it.

Oranges, my mother's ring.

 

A fairly typical weekday lunch - a little bit healthy, a little bit not. Salad and Violife quesedillas.

 

Trying to get organized, and little hands shoot in there, like, instantly!

 

Who, me?

 

Little hands.

 

Yeah, I'm a sprouts kind of girl.

 

Hope you are all enjoying the long weekend, and hopefully some spring weather. Don't forget to give the link below a click if you want to vote for us!

 

Baby-Led Weaning: A Year in Review

I can't believe she's 18 months old. That means she's been eating solid foods for a full year. A year of real food! Baby-led weaning, if you're not familiar with it, is simply allowing babies to feed themselves from the get-go with solid foods, once they are able to sit up properly at about 6 months old. (It's also sometimes called infant self-feeding, because of the confusion over the word 'weaning'. In Britain, weaning means to add supplementary foods to a baby's milk diet. In the US it refers to cessation of breastfeeding. We're using the British meaning here.) No purees, no jars, no stages of lumpiness. You provide a variety of healthy options, and they explore them at their own pace.

 

People who do baby-led weaning are sometimes evangelical about it, as seems to be the case with so many parenting approaches. However, everyone seems to agree that it doesn't matter nutritionally which way you go - so it's just a question of what works for you and your family. My health visitor is really into it, and as it was 'invented' by a UK health visitor, I suspect the NHS is widely supportive of the practice. I would definitely do it again, but it isn't without downsides. I won't go through all the ins and outs of HOW you do it (for one thing, I'm not qualified - read the book!), rather our experience:

Scenes from Our Table

More pictures of our table. Now, it's finally light in the evenings, hurray! I love living in a place with seasons, but by the time spring really kicks into gear, man, am I ready for it.

Breakfast for dinner. Pudla and veggie sausages, avocado and tomato. I had Tapatio on mine.

We got her some little cutlery. Look at the little deer!

Setting up for brunch with friends.

 

Strawberries, to have with brunch.

A rare treat for me: real coffee.

That lovely new plant is living on the table for now.

A side of greens, because always. To go with our...

... random dinner of scrambled tofu burritos (tortillas in the basket) and roasted cauliflower.

French Toast. Does anybody else always think those two words (well, three words really, but I'll keep it PG) in Leslie Mann's voice, from 40 Year Old Virgin? FRENCH TOAST.

 

Little hands and those hotcakes. 

And finding these little things EVERYWHERE. I find it amusing until I step on one.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend! Enjoy the spring weather, Northern Hemisphere-ians!