Ella's Kitchen - The Red One Cook Book Review

We were lucky enough to be sent a copy of the Ella’s Kitchen - The Red One Cook Book to review. It is packed full of yummy ideas for making mealtimes fun for all the family!

There are over 100 recipes in this book for littlies and big kids. The instructions are simple and the emphasis is on getting children hands on and messy in the kitchen from a young age.

I love that this is more than a recipe book and also contains fun ideas and activities that get the kids involved with food other than at mealtimes. There are grow your own ideas, a fun activity to get the kids planting their own food, decorating the flower pots, watching it grow and eating the produce. Ideas for role play setting up a kids cafe, encouraging the children to use their imagination to make up their own menu and create fake food.

So far we have cooked 3 of the meals in the book. This is the Zingy Lamb and Cous Cous with Mangoes and Raisins. It was delicious!

We have also cooked Cosy Cottage Pie and Magical Moroccan-style Chicken. They were both also really tasty meals, so tasty in fact that I totally forgot to get any photos of them and they were eaten in no time!! 

We were always big fans of Ella's Kitchen while weaning Noah and so it's really great that we can continue to feel supported by them as he goes through toddlerhood. However don't think that these meals can only be eaten by toddlers as that is far from the truth, we have all enjoyed what we've made so far as a family. 

The recipes are really easy to follow and simple to make. There is nothing complicated about it and the timings are shown really clearly for each recipe, so if you know you only have half an hour then it's really easy to see which meal is more suited to the time you have to prepare that evening. We haven't tried any of the sweet recipes as yet, but they are next on the list of things to try out, I've got my eye on the Carroty Cakes, what better way to get some of that important Vitamin A.

Get your copy of Ella's Kitchen The Cook Book – The Red One here

We were sent this book free of charge. All views and opinions are my own.

Plum Baby Cookery School - Stage 2

Here's the next Plum Baby Cookery School Weaning Video - Stage 2! Enjoy!

Plum Baby Cookery School - Stage 1

As you know I was very lucky a few weeks back to win a competition prize of a trip to the Plum Baby Cookery School! It was a brilliant couple of days where myself and Noah were filmed with 4 other mums and babies to make some brilliant films to guide mums through the process of weaning. These films will be such a great resource for new mums, giving tips, information and recipes. Noah is 12 months old now and doing well with his weaning, but here is the first film for Stage 1 - when you're just getting started at around 4 - 6 months. Enjoy!

Plum Cookery School and Weaning

How many mums find weaning a real headache I wonder? I know first time round I found it quite hard to follow all the different advice that was flying at me from all directions. Obviously I managed as Isla is now chomping her way through lots of different food (although fish fingers remain her favourite!!) and we eat the same meals together as a family. She is a bit of a fuss pot though, and from one day to the next she changes her mind about liking things. One day she likes pasta, the next she doesn't. I *know* that this is all about her having control but it's still frustrating. We've actually come a long way since I wrote this post about her eating habits - as you can see the list of food she ate back then was quite limited and I worried a lot. I think we all put too much emphasis on how quickly children should be eating what we eat, they will get there in their own time.

We're now weaning Noah, who is 10 months old and I was really happy to hear that the people behind Plum Baby have set up a cookery school specifically to help mums, offering exciting recipe development classes and the opportunity to talk to child food experts.

One of my favourite TV chefs Rachel Allen is working in conjunction with Plum Baby to create some tasty new recipes. Isla and I recently baked some biscuits together following a recipe from Bake and I personally think as soon as children are old enough they should get involved in the preparing and cooking of food. It gives them more of an interest in the food they eat and stimulates their curiosity about how things taste. I can't think of anyone better for Plum to partner up with as Rachel is a mum and her food is top notch - not too complicated but oh so tasty!

I haven't got an obsession with Rachel's cookbooks....honest!

I would say from my experience first time mums are a lot more nervous - I was! Second time round I'm so much more relaxed. My biggest tip to anyone starting weaning is to keep the mantra "food before 1 is just for fun" in mind and try not to get too uptight. Before 1 a baby's main source of nutrition is milk so don't get too down hearted if they're not eating roast dinners and chilli con carne. Food is strange and exciting at the same time for them, they are mini explorers getting to know different tastes and textures! They can refuse food many times before they finally find it acceptable.

My other top tip is to try and relax about the mess and this means the mess your baby will get into, the mess you will get into and the mess on the floor! If you own a dog, he's going to LOVE weaning!

This muckiness used to annoy me a lot (even though Isla looks cute!)

Now I just embrace the muckiness with Noah - it's all part of the fun! (this was extreme I have to add!)

I would also say don't beat yourself up if you can't make your own fresh food all the time. Buying pre made baby food isn't a failure, it's a real saviour! I actually don't know where I'd be if there wasn't Plum Minted Pea and Lamb on the shelves! It was Noah's absolute favourite meal over anything I make (hmmm perhaps I should feel cross about this!?).

So weaning may feel a bit mind blowing at times but if you keep calm about it then so will your baby. Here's us having a bit of fun at dinner time - food must be fun....

This post is an entry into the Tots100 competition to win a super dooper all expenses paid two day cooking experience with Rachel Allen at the Plum Cookery School - I would love this prize as I think I definitely need to get my cooking mojo back and my husband can vouch for that! It also includes a stay in a swish hotel, a video camera and £500. It's worth saying that I LOVE Rachel Allen and the OH can also vouch for the fact that I drove him mad watching her on UK Food the whole time I was pregnant - I love her food!

Noah at 8 Months; Separation Anxiety, A Tooth & Crawling!

A lot has happened in the last week....

We've had a lot of crying. Separation anxiety is at it's height! And lucky old me, it's only me that he wants. I blogged last year about Isla being a Daddy's girl and my OH reminded me recently that I did say that I wanted a Mummy's boy. Well, I'm not saying that I'd like to retract that but let's just say it's getting a bit too much. I can't even step more than a foot away from the boy without howls of distress. It's like a siren and it gets louder and louder. I'm pretty sure that Isla did a little bit of this, but definitely not to this extent.

We did an experiment a couple of times, just to check if there was actually anything wrong with him. It went like this. I'm in the room, right next to him, Noah is all calm and collected. I move away from him. Howling commences. I must add that he can still see me, I haven't gone anywhere far! The OH picks him up, this is still not good enough. He is sobbing, uncontrollably, snot pouring from his nostrils. I come back into the acceptable distance I'm allowed away from him (an inch) and he visibly calms a bit, but still howls. I take him from the OH and all crying ends and almost a jubilant look can be detected as he snuggles up to me as if to say, 'YES! I got what I wanted in the end!'.

It's draining and has gone on my pro's list for going back to work (another post in progress to address that!). I hope he stops it soon and I get my happy contented boy back, however I also think it is linked to the appearance of a tooth. At last. I really hoped that we'd have a few teeth done and dusted by now, so that on my return to work I only had about another 12 teeth to arrive and sleepless nights would be fewer. But no, he's decided to follow in his sister's footsteps and get his first one at 8 months like her. I don't have to worry about him needing them for eating though. He's storming through solids, with even the nursery admitting to me last week that they forgot to puree his food and he was eating rather large sized pieces of pasta for lunch! Go Noah!

Another milestone we ticked off the list this week is crawling. Now this is a double edged sword. Brilliant because it's a step towards me not having to carry around a 25lb baby everywhere I go (yes, he really is that heavy!) but not brilliant because he'll be getting into EVERYTHING! Ashamedly, this another one of my pro's for going back to work....someone else will deal with this while I'm at the office! Seriously though I do love it. I love seeing him grow and it does feel that between 6 months and 8 months a lot has happened. He's no longer a sicky baby, we don't have to change our clothes (mine too!) a million times due to reflux. He's also full of personality now. I love the interaction between him and Isla (well not all of it), he's always watching her and checking out what she's doing and she has become more interested in him too. However I do think I need to get Isla's hair cut a bit shorter as he is forever making a grab for it which results in lots of tears. The funny thing is that while she is crying her eyes out, he is laughing like Nan (you know the Catherine Tate character?), really cackling.

He is the hungriest baby ever still. I am slightly worried by the fact that most nights he has a late feed and then will still quite often wake in the night for milk too. I wondered if this was a habit but to be honest I don't think I could persuade him not to have milk if I tried as he goes completely mad until he gets it. I pity the neighbours, because he ROARS, although they swear that they never hear him. I know all babies are different and there can't possibly be a hard fast rule on how much food they should eat at each meal, but I do find it hard to judge how much I should be serving up to him when weaning and the very fact he wakes in the night for milk could mean I'm not giving him enough solids I guess? Any feedback on that welcome!

As I mentioned before I'm due back to work soon and the closer it gets the more it actually breaks my heart, he's really made this family complete and I couldn't imagine life without him. So on that note I'll sign off. More on my big baby's progress soon.

Weaning with HiPP Organic

HiPP Organic recently sent Noah some of their lovely organic baby food to try which got his weaning off to a great start! I used HiPP a lot when I weaned Isla. She loved most of it - I'd say Spaghetti Carbonara was her favourite HiPP recipe back in the early days.

Noah has really taken to food, I kind of knew he would as he's a big lad and milk really wasn't cutting it for him anymore. He was beginning to watch us so closely while we were eating, even moving his mouth mimicking us. He'd grab for food if I was snacking on something while I was holding him.

The HiPP range is so varied and best of all it's organic so you know its full of goodness. I started Noah off on the baby cereals that you mix with formula and he wolfed those down, as he did with the fruit pouches (winner of the gold award for Best Baby food Product in the Mother and Baby Awards) and then the jars. The only one that he really didn't take to was the tender potato and carrot, I don't blame him though, if you're given the choice between that and My First Sunday Dinner, I know which I'd choose!

I filmed him tucking in so you can see how much he is enjoying his food.....



Things I learnt from weaning with Isla is to not get too precious about mess. I used to get really stressed about food going everywhere. This time round I'm more relaxed about it. I realise now that food must be fun and there should be no negativity associated with it. I've noticed that quite often Noah likes to hold his own spoon so I have a few spoons on hand so he can have a play with it too (the more the better as he's going through that dropping everything on the floor phase!). Since being on maternity leave we always try to have meals altogether as a family and I think that is really important. With Isla we would give her meals at a different time to us and I think that really didn't help with all the fussiness we went through with her - I'm relieved to say that she is actually getting really good with food now and I do attribute that to our family mealtimes. Although the majority of Noah's food at the moment is being fed to him by me, I'm also giving him finger food so that he gets used to handling food himself.

All in all, weaning is going really well so far. Thank you to HiPP Organic for sending us their yummy food. It can be bought from all good supermarkets and recently in Sainsburys they've had a deal for 10 jars for £5. Bargain!

Weaning Has Begun!