Come Dine With Us - D1 Style

This Easter holidays D1 has been in charge of all our evening meals.  

I picked up a fab little cook book (What's for dinner) from the book club at a baby singing group that D2, D3 and I attend.  It is great in so many ways, we love the photography and more importantly there are not many recipes that we won't try.  It certainly isn't posh dinner party food but it definitely is a quick and easy everyday family cook book.

D1 flicked through the book and bookmarked every recipe that caught her attention (lots of pasta) and we are now working our way through them.  She is writing a shopping list and we are going to the shop for ingredients on a daily basis (we are walking distance to the super market), she is paying and then helping to prepare the meal.

It's proving to be a great exercise and the Italian Chicken Bake will definitely be going on the menu more often, even our fussy eater (D2) ate it all, along with the extra vegetables I snuck in!

Eat "Crap" Friday

Here in the mayhem household everything almost everything is cooked, everyday, completely from scratch and served up to include a good count towards our "five a day".

Last week, however, I was quite poorly and by the time Friday came around I just couldn't face it!  So I made the executive Mummy decision and decided the BigD was going to cook.  We had sausage, egg, chips and beans (Although I did insist the chips were still made from Scratch).

This went down a storm with everyone, particularly with my Fussy Eater, so it got me thinking...  Are meals like this really that BAD?  Am I a terrible mother? (I felt like a terrible mother and made up for it by serving up home made vegetable soup for lunch as well as jam-packed-with-veg stir fry for dinner the next day.)  I have since arrived at the conclusion that once in a while meals like that are not so bad and there is nothing wrong it.

And so the tradition has been born.  Fridays will now be known as Eat "Crap" Day AND what's more as BigD finishes work early on a Friday he can be in charge.

Tonight we are having shop bought (eek) wedges, onion rings and pizza!  I am quite looking forward to it...  Shhh!

Fussy Eaters

Just taking 5 minutes to rant about my 18 month old!

She was 100% breastfed, we did BLW and for the first 17 months of her life I had a fantastic little eater albeit a VERY messy one.

Number 2 prior to fussy stage

We now have the problem whereby if it isn't white/bread based, or in other words plain rice, plain pasta or toast, then we wont eat it.  We wont even TRY it, we wont look at it, in fact just having it on our plate offends us!

An example of her Diva-like behaviour:  Wednesday night I made a fantastic, home-made spag bog with hundreds of hidden veg.  The little madam eats only the spaghetti that hasn't been contaminated by the bolognese sauce and refuses point blank to even look at the rest.  I take away said leftover dinner add a little water, introduce it to my wand blender and return it to the child calling it "Soup" and I am presented with an empty bowl and the word "More".

We do have the saving grace that she is a little fruit junkie.  Oranges, apples and bananas are items worthy of a little tantrum so all is not lost.  I am getting some vitamins into our child - they are just not suitable items to make up the 3 main meals of the day!

We have had a period of illness in our household so I am hoping the two are related either that or it is just a phase.  I will keep telling myself that this will all be over soon.