Busy Doing

Well I keep thinking of posting here but then finding another thing to do instead (not that the thing I find to do isn't often a version of time wasting if I'm completely honest, but I'm starting to feel more productive again which is wonderful).

I've managed some sewing recently which tends to be the most difficult thing to fit in. I made a new skirt for myself from a thrifted sheet which I have not managed to get a good picture of. I used some of the same sheet to make a skirt for my daughter which she picked out to wear the other week to the farmers market so I took a picture of her balancing along the edge of a flower bed to capture it. You can't tell that there's a band of pink at the top of the skirt because on this particular day my girl decided to pair the skirt with a yellow with little black polka dots dress that I made back in March and never blogged about (it's from a nice simple and free pattern at BurdaStyle, can't find it now since they've redesigned but it's called the Vivienne I think if you find a project made from it you might be able to download the pattern there). That's my girl, that outfit made me feel so happy!

The thing that I've been doing a lot in the evenings (which is the time I use for blogging when I manage it) is canning. Mostly I've made several kinds of jams, the most recent being the Apple/Blueberry/Blackcurrant jam last night.

Now that we have a ridiculous amount of jam I thought maybe I should try something else and have made my first attempts at pickles. So far I've made a few jars each of pickled green beans and cucumbers (I added some red onion and carrot to the cucumbers as I didn't have as many as I'd thought I would and needed extra in the jars). I had some cucumbers that weren't going to work for the kind of pickles my husband and daughter usually eat so I looked around at some recipes online (cucumber relishes and some Branston style sandwich pickles) and came up with my own version. (I won't post the recipe until such time as we've found out what it tastes like and determined whether it's edible!)

There has also been some knitting but I don't have photos to share of that, and also I need to be asleep in bed, so goodnight all!

cooking and crafting

After a period where I was feeling undercreative (I don't think that's really a word is it, but you now what I mean right?) things seem to be picking up (as evidenced by actual blogging, new sweaters and so on). This makes me happy and hopeful that I can gain and maintain momentum.

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But to get to the point... I made soup. I usually make this quite often around this time of year. It's my Orange Soup (no actual oranges involved, just the colour). I cut a butternut squash in half, scoop out seeds (roast separately for snacking) and roast in the oven until cooked. I like to halve an onion to put in the cavities of the squash, some garlic cloves too, and rub with a bit of olive oil. Meanwhile also cook some red lentils in water or broth. That's basically all the ingredients, sometimes I put in some carrots too. I put the ingredients in the blender with extra broth (this time I had some made from the Thanksgiving turkey which my SIL would otherwise throw out). Heat, add seasonings (I sometimes add cider, this time I tried a glug of cider vinegar) and that's basically it. My husband is not a big fan of squash soup but he'll sometimes eat this -- the lentils make a big difference for him.

I like to eat this soup with a spoonful of salsa stirred in, and maybe a bit of grated cheese (or cheese on toast). Today I added some frozen corn kernals (I like some texture in my soup). It's also lovely with some fried up slab bacon cut into small chunks!

**********

My favourite thing I made yesterday though is this little book for my daughter.
Now I'm not claiming it's well made, but it's made which is the important thing. If I have a notebook anywhere in sight my daughter wants to draw/"write" in it immediately so I thought it might help keep what's in my notebooks legible if I gave her her very own notebook to draw in. She liked this idea and helped with some of the snipping of threads for sewing the pages together, and also with the gluing. I used some sheets of drawing paper for the pages and card and paper from the recycling to make the cover. I'm going to consult with the book's owner about how to decorate later!

Porridge Bread

My daughter's choice for breakfast most often is oats and raisins. Partly this is habit, and I suspect she also likes that she gets to do cooking (I measure the water and oats and she pours them into the pan, puts the lid on and watches for the bubbles).

Sometimes she'll devour her bowl of oats and raisins and sometimes she'll pick for ages and eat very little. I hate to throw out the leftover oatmeal but it's not something I like to eat myself and I've been meaning to experiment with making bread with the leftovers. I came across a recipe online the other day that prompted me to give it a go. So here's what I came up with.

Porridge Bread
(modified from this recipe, and I already forgot where I found the link I'm afraid, and influenced by my ABI5MAD experiences so far)

I had 1/2 cup of leftover oatmeal and raisins (had a little milk mixed in but was made with water)
to that I added 1tbspn walnut oil, 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 cup molasses

In the measuring cup I had measured out the molasses in I put 1/4 cup warm water and 1/4 cup milk then sprinkled over 1tspn yeast (if I'd thought about it more I would have used the warm water to dissolve the rest of the molasses and then transfered the liquids to the mixing bowl before adding the yeast)

Mixed wet ingredients in the bottom of a mixing bowl then on top added 1&1/2 cups AP flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat bread flour and 1/4 cup oat flour plus salt

Mixed until flour all wet, I needed to add maybe another 1/8 cup water and also decided to throw in a handful or two of currants (next time I might add even a bit more water as the dough seemed a bit denser than I might have ideally liked). No kneading.

This made about 1 1/2 lbs of bread dough.

Allowed dough to rise in the bowl for about 3 hrs (it was a cool day), shaped quickly and placed into small loaf pan and left the dough to rise maybe another hour until it was poking up above the top of the loaf pan.

Baked at 375 degrees for about 45 mins (this may not be the best temp/time configuration for the crust so I'll have to experiment).

I've been eating it lightly toasted with butter, I'm thinking it would also be good with some of the apple butter I made last year too.

modern conveniences

We've been planning to replace some of our old inherited appliances (after finally filing some overdue tax returns and getting refunds). There's good news and bad news...

Bad News: this morning our washing machine was still full of water when it should have drained and spun while we were sleeping. It did not seem at all interested in draining and spinning although it did still agitate so not completely dead. Now when I was in my first year at university I did all my washing by hand in the tiny sink and a big plastic container in my room. With a toddler who wears cloth diapers and a husband who also produce laundry in the house I am not so thrilled with the idea of going back to washing by hand while we wait for a new machine!

Good News: this got my husband to finally order the washing machine he's been talking about us getting for many many moons (unfortunately it will take 3 to 4 weeks to get here)... and after some coaxing and poking the washing machine did finally drain and spin and my husband rinsed the clothes out and put them back in the machine and got them to spin again - hurrah! We shall experiment with it further over the weekend I'm sure but it seems there is hope at least.

More Good News: We had a new stove delivered last Friday, hurrah! The old oven worked just fine but the burners were quite unreliable to say the least so this is very nice for me. I broke it in on Friday evening by making a roast chicken dinner and baking bread. I've also made banana chocolate chip flapjacks (recipe found here, tasty) and had another go at the beef and rhubarb dish (this time I did serve it over rice) for a potluck dinner. Last night I made another version of potato and cheese bake which I served with some pea greens bought at the farmers market (where I also got rhubarb) cooked up with bacon and mushroom. (See the nice shiny stove that the plates are sitting on? It makes me happy.)

Today I decided to make granola for the first time (having polished of the last of the bought stuff the previous day). I've always intended to have a go at making my own, but I always wonder whether it's worth it since I don't consistently eat it and somehow it'd be worse to let it go to waste if it's homemade. Well I saw a recipe for cocoa-coconut granola at everybodylikessandwiches, and since I love chocolate and have actually been eating cereal more often recently I thought this would be a good time to finally give granola making a go.

I started while my daughter's breakfast oats were cooking so she insisted on helping with the dry ingredients and I finished putting it all together while she was eating. I didn't actually try eating it in a bowl with milk or yoghurt or anything yet, I've just been snacking on it from the jar, mmmm. I'm thinking it'd be good with raisins, or dried cranberries (as well as the apples, or bananas in the photos posted with the recipe). Maybe tomorrow I'll have some with some of the strawberries I didn't put in our rhubarb and strawberry sponge pudding tonight...

Links for 2007-08-10 [del.icio.us]

• BBC NEWS | Health | Bones offer new hope for diabetes
  "An international team found the molecule osteocalcin, produced by bone cells, is active in helping to regulate blood sugar levels in mice."
• the barmy baker: Because Some Days You Just Need A Lot of Chocolate
  Saw a picture of these Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies cookies at flickr and thought I needed to add them to my to make list immediately (although I don't like the taste of coffee so may need to modify a bit)!
• 14 Numbers Your Cell Phone Can't Live Without · The Cranking Widgets Blog
  "if your cell phone has no other numbers stored in its memory, make sure it has these numbers." I haven't actually had a cell phone until just now but I was thinking this would also be useful as a starting point for a phone list to go on the wall by the phone (or on the fridge perhaps) at home so you don't need to go looking for numbers in an emergency (especially if the person needing the number is an out of town visitor or baby sitter).
  
• the knitted blog: Make your own envelopes.
  seen at :Craft
  
• Nearly half of early breast cancers missed by mammograms, research suggests |Guardian
• London looks at bike hire scheme | Guardian
  "Ken Livingstone yesterday confirmed he wants a network of hire pushbikes for London. The capital's mayor ordered officials to investigate a scheme to mirror the one introduced in Paris, where the provision of 10,000 bicycles at 750 dedicated hire points has been hugely successful. The study will also look at other cycle-friendly cities such as Barcelona, Lyon, Brussels, Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Oslo and Copenhagen."
• BakeSpace.com - Recipe Swap and Food Social Network
• tumbling blocks: oilcloth lunch bag
  seen via flickr, this is a blog post with a tutorial for making your own lunch bag with oilcloth.
  
• The Link Between Estrogen And Pain | Scientific Blogging
  "Estrogen plays an important role in determining how sensitive a person is to pain, and the estrogen receptor known as ER-beta is particularly significant in this context. These are the conclusions of a study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet."
• baby led weaning :: The NHS agrees with us that finger food is A-Okay from 6 months.
  "some links from the NHS Breastfeeding People and NHS Healthy Start that say finger food is fine from 6 months"

I've been slowly catching up with my backlog of links (they're showing up in the past here because they're automatically generated posts that I edit a bit so they're all backdated). Meanwhile a new backlog is building and I haven't been good about blogging about what I'm actually doing.

This has not a little to do with the death of a friend which I mentioned in a previous post. I feel as though I'm doing so little to help, but even what I am doing (mostly relaying email messages) seems to be taking up most of the writing time that I have at the moment. As usual I am very behind on household tasks. (Sigh.)

Tomorrow I'm going to be cooking lots of food for the potluck lunch at the memorial celebration. (Well, I will assuming my delightful daughter co-operates. It seems she's often happy to amuse herself in the corner of the room until I'm actually trying to get stuff done and then she NEEDS me. Oh well, that's the way it goes! Hopefully my husband will be able to look after her for a lot of the day.)

I'm actually in a bit of a cooking phase at the moment. Have been for a while actually, I think it's partly where my need to be creative finds an outlet in these days when I have no opportunities to get into my sewing room (I have been knitting too, even have some finished objects I should blog about sometime). Now with grief and the desire to do something to help (even if that's only providing comfort food for us) on top of general frustrated creativity the cooking's necessary. The other day I made a cake even though we still had leftover birthday cake to finish and at the best of times cakes tend to end up moldy in our house (we enjoy them and then forget about them before they're gone, I don't know how we manage this). It came out very nicely.

It's a banana bread recipe I hadn't tried before, I came across it drifting around the internet (as I do in all the spare time I don't have) at Orangette, it's got coconut and rum in it plus I added chocolate chips because I can't let well enough alone! It's very tasty.

Also I'm entering a bread making phase I think. I have them now and then. Someone got me The Bread Bible a while back and I haven't used it much since for various reasons. I've been starting to itch to make bread again so for one of the parties we had for my daughter's birthday I made the cheddar loaf (very tasty) and some crumpets (slightly disappointing but I have some ideas about how to do better next time). I also made a sandwich loaf a few days ago which came out so-so, it tastes yeasty and I'm thinking I let it go too much in at least one of the risings. It's good toasted with butter and marmite though.

Links for 2007-07-24 [del.icio.us]

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Nerve gas antidote made by goats

Multi Grain Rolls Recipe at Mothering.com

Wendy Cooling: I want to get every child in the country reading for pleasure - Independent

Identity theft: parents who steal from their kids - ParentDish
Well this is horrible to contemplate; sabotaging your own child's life.

The peace of paper » Little Boxes
A tutorial for making a cute little gift box.

Medical Imaging News Articles | Cholesterol-lowering diet can modify fetal Doppler velocimetry in mid-pregnancy | Radiology News

Links for 2007-07-23 [del.icio.us]

Everlasting Bagstopper - Knitty: Spring 2007

Baklava Loaf | Baking Bites

Parent's survival guide: How to entertain a brood of bored kids during the summer holidays - Independent

Jemima Lewis: You can't beat a traditional liberal education - Independent
"I am seized with jealousy of my husband, who had the closest thing to an old- fashioned liberal education that money can buy. He learnt Latin and Greek at eight, speaks fluent French, knows the Old Testament backwards and can still recite the Periodic Table. Life skills come easily to him because the basics are already there: if you can do Latin grammar, you can learn new languages in a jiffy; if you understand physics, you can (and will) wire up a digital surround-sound home entertainment system."

Andrew Franklin: The real reason why publishers miss good books - Independent

Jemima Lewis: We've created a genealogical nightmare - Independent

MOO | Stickers - Print stickers using your images
seen at howaboutorange

Sock it to me!
"[Mezzodiva] decided to self-publish [her] Campanula sock pattern (...) and offer it here for a nominal charge: To get the pattern, all you have to do is CLICK HERE and SPONSOR [HER] for the 2007 Weekend to End Breast Cancer."

nonaKnits: Sidewinders: The Prologue
links at end of each post to the next until you've knit yourself a sock, sideways!

Apron/Sunbonnet Combination - April 2001 Free Monthly Project
Saw an example of this pattern made up at flickr it's an intriguing idea; a garment that can be worn as an apron or a bonnet!

Links for 2007-07-19 [del.icio.us]

• No-Knead Bread - OregonLive.com
  I made some of the no-knead bread after it was in the NYTimes a while back and the second batch came out really nicely and I've been meaning to make more. It's a great way to make bread for someone like me who doesn't have much time to bake, but plenty of time to let things hang around to mature for a day! And I'm entering a bread baking phase at the moment.
• BBC NEWS | UK | Education | The dead parrot curriculum
• Guardian Unlimited | A precious provision
  "We were unlucky in the tragic hand dealt to our son, but blessed to have had British healthcare "
  This article resonated with me. It made me remember after my first daughter died at birth (I had a 40% placental abruption at 23 weeks) getting the hospital bill for the delivery and the autopsy and everything: Obviously those people who took care of us and our baby and were doing there jobs so well deserve to be paid, but (especially as someone who grew up in the UK and still hasn't got used to the way it works in the USA) it seems unthinkable that I should have to look at a bill for that when my baby just died. And thankfully we have good health insurance, but what if we didn't? In the midst of that experience or some other unexpected turn your life upside-down event I think people should be able to focus on the very real things happening in their lives and not have to worry about what their insurance will cover, and how to afford the rest. The money wasn't really a headache for us in our situation, but it could have been, and it certainly made me think.
  
• Knitty: Spring 2007 - Clessidra Stockings
  I think my mum would love these, she likes nice long socks. The question is should I just send her the link to the pattern or should I attempt to make her some for Christmas?
• Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less - New York Times
• Warming Report Warns of Increased Flooding - New York Times
• Dewey? At This Library With a Very Different Outlook, They Don’t - New York Times
• V-Neck Hippie Dress w/ 6 Strips - theElektron
  found via :Craft
• Top 7 Tutorials for Making Your Own Shopping Tote
  found via :Craft
• Tickle Turdle Wool Wrap Pattern
  I've been knitting wool soakers for my daughter since before she was actually here to wear them but I've never tried to crochet one. I'm definitely much more of a knitter, but I do crochet sometimes and I hear the crochet soakers make up faster and may be a bit denser too. (Of course I should also work on my ripple blanket again one of these days.)

Links for 2007-07-12 [del.icio.us]

• Dominic Lawson: From Pentecost island to modern Britain, the futility of trying to measure happiness - Independent
  "Nobody has yet come up with an entirely satisfactory definition of what constitutes happiness - although I think that Sydney Smith's "To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence" will do to be getting along with. A state of unhappiness could be described as the opposite of that, but we might also define it as a life whose reality falls far short of its owner's expectations.

  That is perhaps at the heart of the modern malaise, which has resulted in an unprecedented growth in clinical depression in countries such as the USA and the UK. We have increasingly allowed ourselves to think that happiness is ours by right - it's written into the American constitution - whereas in fact we can't find it: it finds us."

• Knitting Pattern Central - Free Pattern - Amy Doll
  Cute pattern I saw in a post on knitting dolls at V's blog, (you have to go look at the knees!).
  
• Dismay and anger as Pope declares Protestants cannot have churches | Guardian
  "Protestant churches yesterday reacted with dismay to a new declaration approved by Pope Benedict XVI insisting they were mere "ecclesial communities" and their ministers effectively phonies with no right to give communion.
  "Coming just four days after the reinstatement of the Latin mass, yesterday's document left no doubt about the Pope's eagerness to back traditional Roman Catholic practices and attitudes, even at the expense of causing offence."
• Mom Puts Family on Her Meal Plan - New York Times
  "The pitfalls of the modern family meal are well chronicled: the varying schedules, the demanding diets (low carb, no wheat, no meat) and the fact that all too often the dinner so proudly displayed is greeted by a cheerful “Oh, that looks disgusting.” For most working parents, even a 30-minute meal seems like a June Cleaver-era indulgence. By the time I walk in the door at 7:30 my children are off-the-wall hungry, even having had snacks. Ideally, dinner will take 15 minutes or less to put on the table.
  
  "But despite the challenges, I tell you it can be done. I committed to cooking a family meal when my first son was born, in 1997, not because of any psychology study about the well-being of children, but because it gave me comfort.
  
  "Every working mother has to draw the line somewhere. Maybe my children would take their first steps with a babysitter, or perform in school plays with only their grandparents in attendance. But mom would cook their dinners."
  I stay home with one child and still have trouble getting dinner "on the table" (dining room table is currently inaccessible) at a reasonable hour, so glad a I don't have to work full time outside the home, commute and then make dinner.
• Sarah Churchwell: Why can't British students write like Americans? - Independent
  "An impoverished understanding of their own language combined with an inflated sense of their own talents doesn't merely result in smug graduates with a beggared ability to express ideas. Sophisticated ideas cannot flourish in a linguistic vacuum. Expression and thought are inextricably linked: crude language permits only crude thinking. It's bad enough that these university students can't communicate their thoughts intelligibly; but those thoughts are themselves constrained by embryonic language skills."
  This is a great article. I still feel as though I really need to go back to school and take English Language classes. We did have some grammar "lessons" at middle school (we had a text book there was time set aside to work through). I would say my vocabulary is not too shabby, but my grasp of how the language works is not so good. And I have a degree in Women's Studies and English Literature! When I spent a year at college in the US one of my professors took me aside and asked if I thought I might be dyslexic because of my bad use of punctuation, I said no I just never really learned how a semi colon is supposed to work (and I am queen of the run-on sentence). I am better than I used to be, but have a long way to go and (besides blogging) not much space for working on my writing skills. I really wish we had been taught more at school. At least my primary schools taught handwriting, I think it's so sad that that doesn't happen so much any more.
• The Knitting Circle Shows Its Chic - New York Times
  "Formerly neglected domestic arts like knitting, quilting, sewing and embroidery are being eagerly embraced, especially by the young. Their passion kindled by the abundance of handcrafted looks on the runways, they are blowing the dust off these folksy skills and lending them the bright sheen of style.
  "“It wasn’t that long ago that people would cringe at the word ‘craft,’ ” said Melanie Falick, who developed a crafts imprint at Stewart, Tabori & Chang. “Ten or 20 years ago, there were far fewer crafters and knitters, certainly fewer who ‘outed’ themselves. Now it has become a badge of honor.”
  "And an insignia of chic. The new generation of needle hobbyists, nimble-fingered women in their 20s and 30s, is growing ever more sophisticated, seeking out novel yarns imbued with bamboo or fur, working confidently with elaborate patterns, swapping tips online and emulating styles by fashion designers like Marc Jacobs, Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga and Michael Kors."
• The World’s Best Candy Bars? English, of Course - New York Times
  "it would be easy to take a long, clichéd side trip into a discussion of the relative inferiority of British food. But for the rarefied palate that can appreciate the soft, immediate pleasure of an inexpensive candy bar, it's not difficult to give the edge to sweets from the realm of the queen."
  I'm totally biased on this subject of course, growing up with the sweets in England and then moving to the USA where I can be very dissatisfied with the candy on offer over here and wallow in nostalgia thinking about my favourite sweet things that I can't get here. Of course I can find good dark chocolate here (organic and fair trade and mighty tasty) so that keeps me happy mostly. When we visit England I come back with Cadbury's milk chocolate and licorice allsorts for me, and sherbert lemons and kendal mint cake for my husband. My husband is very distressed at the change to natural flavourings and no longer hoards fruit pastilles. The thing I miss most even when I'm back in the UK is the sweet shops with shelves of sweets in jars that were weighed and put into paper bags (cinder toffee, rhubarb&custard, cough candy, bon bons), and the case of penny sweets where I spent my pocket money as a small child (shrimps, bananas, flying saucers, the cigarette and pipe sweets that I loved but which never made me remotely interested in smoking). Sigh.
• Digital Cameras: The Top 10 Things You Need to Know - Unbiased reviews, prices, and advice from DigitalCamera-HQ
  Seen in a list of links at Not Martha, looks like a useful list to hold onto. Also love the link to the discussion how many is a few? as my husband holds very strong opinions on this subject.
  
• Organic Farming Can Feed The World, Says Study | Scientific Blogging
  "Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food as conventional farming on the same amount of land---according to new findings which refute the long-standing assumption that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population."

Links for 2007-07-07 [del.icio.us]

• The Big Question: As Bush spares Libby, what is the history of presidential pardons? - Independent Online
  
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Warning of data ticking time bomb
  "Unless more work is done to ensure legacy file formats can be read and edited in the future, we face a digital dark hole."
• Unpartisan campaigner: Alan Bennett, the rebel with a lot of causes - Independent Online
  
• In his own words: Alan Johnston on his release - Independent Online
  'You have to have been a prisoner to know how good freedom is'
• Robert Fisk: The forgotten art of handwriting - Independent Online
  "I find something painfully human about reading the letters of long-dead heroes"
• Piece of cake | Food and drink | Life and Health
  "British summer fruit is so damned tasty, it's easy to end up buying far more than you can ever hope to eat fresh. But there's no need to turn all those berries, cherries and currants into jam or, worse, let them go to waste..."
• Get a cutting edge | Homes and gardens | Life and Health
  "Many gardeners, even experienced ones, are intimidated by the idea of taking cuttings. Yet it's such fun, as well as a great way to save money."
• A shocking act of disrespect - Independent Online
  Another article about Bush pardoning Libby -- this one is (angry) opinion on this case rather than looking at presidential pardons in general like the first link in this post.
• Baking Dish and Pan Size Conversion
• Vegan Low-Fat Chocolate Applesauce Cake Recipe - Vegan Chocolate Cake Recipe
  I'm making this for my daughters first birthday party.
• Jemima Lewis: The lessons of George Melly's final years - Independent Online
  Wonderful thought provoking, challenging article about ageing, caring, family, duty and death.
  "At the age of 80, and despite creeping deafness and dementia, [George Melly] had not succumbed to the clichés of old age: he was sociable, funny, energetic and still much in demand. ...
  It takes luck and a certain kind of temperament to navigate your way through old age so successfully. You need to be open-minded enough to keep enjoying the world without resenting the young who have inherited it; physically mobile (and fearless) enough to keep going out into that world; financially secure enough to live at home, or at least in a comfortable spot of your own choosing; and sufficiently lovable that your friends and family want to keep you company."

Baby Food

There seems to be quite a bit of media attention (in the UK at least) being given to baby food and baby-led weaning (BLW) just now. I noticed an article at the BBCNews website yesterday - Pureed baby food is 'unnatural' - and there's a wikipedia entry on baby-led weaning too. And ParentDish has picked up on the BBC article too.

I came across Gill Rapley's Guidelines for implementing a baby-led approach to the introduction of solid food via a comment (I don't know where I saw that, but there's a post about introducing solids here)at the Ask Moxie blog when I was reading around about introducing solids. I think that a lot of what Rapley's saying has been distorted but the media unfortunately -- putting the general population on the defensive perhaps because purees and jarred baby food have been the norm for so long?

Although I haven't done things exactly according to her guidelines, so much of what Rapley says makes a lot of sense to me. I've done a mix of spoonfeeding and giving finger-foods to our daughter. Against my better judgement I did try giving her rice cereal mixed with breastmilk as one of her first foods, she was so unimpressed; she ate some but kept giving me these looks that said Really? I'll eat this, but you realise it's breastmilk that tastes nasty? Why are you making me eat this? So we didn't do that again, and if she doesn't like something I don't try to force her (not that getting her to eat something she's taken against is much of an option) -- sometimes I'll try again another day with a different prep method.

At 11 months she eats a fair variety of foods, and clearly prefers food with texture, and things she can put in her mouth herself. She'll give most anything a try, but isn't afraid to reject something that doesn't taste good to her. One aspect of BLW that I think makes a lot of sense is trusting the baby to tell you when it wants to eat food, and how much. It seems to me that it follows on naturally from breastfeeding on demand which is what we've been doing since she was born. Hopefully she's learning to eat when she's hungry/drink when she's thirsty and stop when she's had enough (she certainly seems to be maintaining a healthy weight and developing on track). I sit down with her in her chair for meals, but she also gets to snack throughout the day (as do I, not only because breastfeeding makes me hungry a lot but also because with PCOS the idea of more small and frequent meals is more valuable than ever).

Our daughter hasn't yet shown any food sensitivities (so far so good), started teething before we were introducing solids, always had good head control, was really interested in food (trying to steal it from us and mimicking our chewing motions while watching us eat) and could sit up before we got started. She's also never had much trouble swallowing so long as whatever she was eating wasn't too much at once. She figured out how to cough forward anything that she wasn't going to be able to swallow so that she could gum/chew some more and try again or spit it out. There's been very little gagging, and nothing she couldn't handle herself. Here's hoping that continues. I imagine this would be a lot harder if she had allergies, reflux or developmental difficulties that make eating a challenge. I'm sure she'll get fussier when she's asserting her independence (and really I was a terribly fussy eater so I keep thinking it can't be as easy as it's been so far).

I'm really pleased to say we haven't used any jarred babyfood so far (although right now I'm having trouble preparing for going away from tomorrow through Sunday to a place with no kitchen access and no idea what food will be on offer...). I have bought big jars of applesauce to mix with barley or oatmeal. There are some other processed foods she eats now -- teething biscuits (although sometimes I bake those myself), unsweetened breakfast cereal, pasta, bread, sheets of nori (the hands down favourite) and rice cakes for snacking. Mostly though I just cut up fruit and tofu (she'll only eat it plain in cubes), steam veggies, poach egg yolks and chicken and boil up oats, lentils and pearled barley. I do puree prunes in the food processor but mostly she doesn't like purees, prunes are the exception. She thought pureed peas were a horrible idea but whole peas are her candy. (Oh and she also nurses plentifully still -- I'm not worrying too much about which solids she eats because I'm remembering that breastmilk is still her primary source of nutrition.)

I'm definitely moving more and more in the direction of giving her what we're eating simplified. I've been more focused on introducing foods one at a time, and holding off on a lot of the common allergens (although she had wheat pretty early on) than one perhaps might be when following the BLW guidelines with not much of any food allergies on either side of the family. She's getting pretty close to a year now, her digestive system is getting stronger and able to cope with more and more new things so I'm looking forward to introducing her to lots of tasty things in the next year!

If you're interested in reading more about Rapley and baby led weaning there are links at the wikipedia entry I mentioned. I just listened to the interview on BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour from 2004 with Rapley and Annabel Karmel (author of Feeding Your Baby and Toddler). Karmel voices some concerns that I think a lot of people might have about Rapley's approach, and Rapley explains her approach. I found it interesting (although I found Karmel's delivery a little off-putting but that may be just me). The segment's about 12 and a half minutes long -- check it out here.

Part of what spurred me to write a blog post about this was the coincidence of the news stories and a new Ask Moxie post that led to a mention of the baby-led weaning introduction of solids yesterday. I had another look at today and saw that someone had posted in the comments with a link to another interesting sounding site that I've taken a brief look at. It's a site started by two mums following Gill Rapley's guidelines called simply baby led weaning

I'm also planning to read through this webchat Rapley did at IWantMyMum.com the progressive parenting site. This is a new parenting site to me but it looks right up my alley -- they say:

We are strong believers in each baby being an individual and each family have unique sets of circumstances. We also think a parent’s best asset is their instinct but that instinct has to be an informed one.

I'll have to check it out more and see what else is there.

Eating our vegetables

I read at Slashfood that June is National Fruit and Vegetable Month. I think I'm more inspired to eat fresh fruit and veggies around now every year just because 'tis the season. And of course there's all kinds of inspiration on the internet. These days I'm also trying to interest our daughter in fruits and veggies. Current favourites are steamed spinach, peas and most every fruit she's offered (especially peaches, plums, kiwi fruit and mango).

As suggested I had a go at the Chocolate and Beetroot Cake seen at the Great Big Vegetable Challenge. There weren't pictures from the blog, or the site with the recipe so I thought I'd take some to share. You can get an idea of how pretty the batter is! And you can see the slivers of beetroot in the slice of cake too. The recipe says that the beetroot makes the cake moist so I was surprised at how dry it looked when I cut a slice. I wonder if I should have grated the beetroot more finely (I did it in the food processor for speed and in the interest of keeping my hands closer to their original colour!). Actually it doesn't taste dry, although mine's quite crumbly. It's very chocolaty, I don't particularly notice the beetroot but maybe it's what's enhancing the chocolate so well.

I noticed that I also have a chocolate and beetroot layer cake in my chocolate cookbook. It uses canned beets though and I'm not sure how one would substitute canned for home cooked in terms of liquid. Perhaps I'll have a go some other time. *** edited to add -- I just came across another chocolate-beetroot cake while looking for recipes for my daughter. This definitely looks like something I want to try -- Beet Chocolate Cake with Banana-Peanut Butter Sauce**

Here are my purchases from the mid-week farmers market last week.

I've bought both rosemary and mint at the farmers market recently which naturally got me to thinking about lamb. So, I went to the coop and got lamb chops, new potatoes and heirloom tomatoes (I already had the mushrooms and peas).


For dinner I made a dressing of balsamic vinegar, oil, scallions, garlic, mint and rosemary, a little of that went on the lamb and mushrooms in the frying pan, and the tomatoes in the oven. I boiled the potatoes with some mint 'til soft then added the peas (the were frozen so just needed warming through). Once the meat and mushrooms were done I served them onto the plates and put the potatoes and peas in the frying pan and tossed them in the lamb juices and the rest of the dressing. So good, the mint is so refreshing with the rich taste of the lamb and I just love the brief opportunity for boiled new potatoes (which seem much harder to come by in the US).

Some of the strawberries from the farmers market cut up went very nicely with a slice of the chocolate/beetroot cake for dessert too.