It’s fabulous, I read it nervously, I think my book is great, I would, I wrote it and it was wonderful to read this from a font of baby and foodie knowledge that make up the wonderful team at In Mamas Kitchen in the US. Some of the recipes are up on their website too if you’d like to have a sneaky peak.
So thank you guys, I really really appreciate it. Fingers crossed the UK reviews are going to be as good.
Big, big thank you to Andy Richards of Celebrity Chefs for making me his Chef of the Week, this is such an honour and I’m so proud.
It links in brilliantly with the launch of my book tomorrow, 500 Baby and Toddler Foods and finished up the summer holidays after an amazing stint as Master of Ceremonies at Oxford Foodies Festival over the August Bank Holiday. .
Release re Beverley’s new book 500 Baby and Toddler Foods published by Apple Press on 5 September, please do contact us for interviews or further information or Apple Press directly for recipes, press copies for review or any other queries relating to the book. Please click on the link to access the release.
500 Baby and Toddler Foods by Beverley Glock
Baby and Toddler Cookbook
Two weeks to go until my book launch, I’ve had a lovely lady call the office today to ask about the book as she has a 7 month old and wanted to know if it really was no faffing recipes. It really is, honest. The recipes are all based on the food I cooked for my three children who are now 15, 11 and 9.
When you have one child and you’re on maternity leave you have time to cook – providing your baby sleeps and providing you are sensible enough to go back to bed and sleep at the same time as your baby working on the principle that you’re only going to get 4 hours in one go if you’re lucky.
Even with one baby the only time you’re going to get to prepare food and cook is when they’re asleep which means that you are going to miss out on potentially 4 hours sleep, you never know when your next sleep is going to come so this potential sleep time is very precious and in a lot of cases rare. Do you really want to spend that ‘sleep time’ cooking, ‘no’ so the idea with this book is that the recipes can be adapted for all the family and they can be prepared ahead, just about all of them frozen in bulk and taken out of the freezer when needed – you get to sleep, yeay!
Once you get to 2 or 3 children the whole concept of cooking and preparing food goes out the window, so does the concept of sleep, as a new Mum you know you’re not going to sleep for the next 12 months so when you have the choice of sleep or cook, sleep gets it every time, or it should. Jars come in handy, apart from when you have a child like my middle one who totally and completely refused anything out of a jar, even apple puree, no idea how she knew but she did. Nightmare. She started on spag bol at a very early age, the issue now is that tomatoes are not recommended for babies under 12 months due to their acidity. I had to get creative to come with alternative family meals without tomatoes for the first 12 months.
It’s a minefield working out what baby can and cannot eat, more so as the goalposts change frequently. I’ve written a section about the new ‘baby led weaning’ craze – sorry anyone out there who thinks this is a great idea, I don’t, at all, no way. I want to know how much food my baby is eating and the concept is great but mixed with normal pureed food too otherwise you’re either going to feed the whole family stick veg and finger food or prepare different meals again, no, no, no. Sorry, feel a rant coming on.
However, it could be very funny serving up your partner with finger food when he comes home from work, I’d love to see is face, getting a fit of the giggles just thinking about it. Actually, maybe that’s what we should do, just to try it out, go on, if you do please tell me how it goes.
I’m thinking of digging out my old baby diaries and blogging them, taking you through day to day with babies from a while ago, could be interesting so watch this space.
In the meantime, preregister for the book, it’s on Amazon on pre-order and currently making it into the top 100,000, out of 5.2 million books that’s not bad seeing as it’s not even launched yet.
500 Baby and Toddler Foods by Beverley Glock
I’ve just received the first copy of my new book ’500 Baby and Toddler Foods’ published by Apple Press on 5 September 2011.
Wow, it’s real. It looks amazing. My Big Girl looked through it this morning and exclaimed that the recipes in it were far nicer than the food we ate at home – I did point out that actually, the recipes in there were all recipes I cooked at home and that she probably just hadn’t noticed. She then declared that she wanted to try some of them. Yes! That’s the whole point, it maybe a baby and toddler cookbook but it’s designed for the whole family to eat and share the same meals.
The first copy has, of course, been sent off to my Mum. That’s where the real critical review will come from, hmm, we’ll see.
Shortly the press copies will be winging their way to Netmums, Mumsnet, Families Mag along with all other manner of family and baby websites, magazines, shows, whatever, it will be interesting to see the reaction, especially at it launches in the US, Canada and Australia at the same time. Fingers crossed it will do well.
I’M A PUBLISHED AUTHOR – YEAY!
I’ve just had an email from the PR company for Camp Bestival notifying me that that I have to be in fancy dress and the wonderful Smiffy’s fancy dress experts to the stars will have a costume waiting for me to collect on Friday – thought I’d get away with that one, obviously not! So I’ve been looking through medieval costumes and figuring out what I would like.
Princess – only if I can have a pointy hat, but actually being Princess Fiona would be cool, just a little worried about being green all weekend without any decent means of getting the green stuff off especially a I’ve spent ages doing St Tropez.
Fever Princess – would this help me get an interview with Martin Fry of ABC? Not really appropriate for a family festival though, although it does have a pointy hat.
monk - just imagine if ALL the blokes at the festival wore monk costumes, that could be cool,
tavern wench – actually that looks interesting,
Maid Marian – a litte boring methinks, although with a green wig it could be good
pirate – oooh, yes, going as a pirate, well that counts, they were around in medieval times weren’t they? History isn’t my strong point, maybe they were a little later? Actually all the pirate costumes look cool, they’d go with my walking boots too. OK maybe that’s pushing a bit.
Maid – actually I quite like this one, a little ‘safe’ though.
Braveheart – this one appeals, alternatively you could hire a smurf outfit, put on a scottish accent and pretend that they sent you the wrong item – please, please any Scots out there don’t take offence, I just had a ‘moment’ and my son was watching the preview for the new Smurf movie and it appealed to my very sad sense of humour.
Sheriff of Nottingham – ooh, now this one appeals, not for wearing but for having Richard Armitage wear it – I so miss Robin Hood, it was a real treat on a Saturday evening.That would be so embarrassing if Richard Armitage is going Camp Bestival and he reads this
This is the costume I want to wear, it’s so cool, the black knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you know, the one where his arm gets chopped off ’tis but a flesh wound’ one. It’s fantastic – Smiffys if you have this one at Camp Bestival please can you keep one for me?
However, this one is the coolest of the cool, you can rent a proper suit of armour, the full thing, in metal it’s fab but not sure I’d want to walk from the tent to the site in it.
You could be totally obtuse and just go with a stuffed snake draped around your neck as a python – ‘monty’ python and the Holy Grail or dressed a dragon, this time the dragon won and ate Saint George!
What are you going as?
Beverley Glock is a food writer and broadcaster, she’s the founder of Splat Cooking and her first book ’500 Baby and Toddler Foods’ is published on 5 September 2011 by Apple Press, her APP ‘Cupcakes, Muffins and Afternoon Tea’ launches in September from the Apple Store.
Monty Python Black Knight costume
How to put up a tent
Two days to go – today’s lecture is on how to put up a tent easily, effectively and with little stress.
1. Book into a preprepared one, ie a tipi, roundhouse, airstream trailer or yurt preferably with built in furniture and maid service (this is my personal preference, but husband won’t consider due to a. too expensive and b. it’s cheating) or Tangerine Fields, we can’t do this as we’re going with friends who are in Camping Plus and they won’t be allowed in the Tangerine Fields bit due to bouncers and as we’ll be swapping children and fighting over who gets to go home with the little ones and who goes to the silent disco – me, me, me, me, so that’s not an option.
2. Plead work and send your husband down the day before with the younger children to put the tent up. Arrive the next day with fresh food supplies when everything is up, unpacked, beds blown up, etc and remember to keep your mouth firmly shut to prevent comments like ‘oh, couldn’t you move it a foot that way?’ and ‘why didn’t put the tent up on the flat, closer to the car park, further away from the loos?’ etc as comments like these are highly likely to end your marriage, no matter how much wine you’ve brought!
3. Have a fall back position sorted – my friend Amanda has a flat in Swanage, very close to Lulworth, and she’s said that if it gets desperate we’re very welcome to come and crash at hers – maybe commuting is the way to go.
We’re going for option 2. on the basis that I promise to be very grateful.
In preparation for this Pete, my lovely husband, put the tent up on Sunday to make sure that he could still remember how to. Also, by doing it in our garden it is more challenging than putting it up in a field as there are two labradors to contend with in our garden and lots of screams of ‘who let the flipping dogs out into the garden’, ‘I thought I told you to keep the kitchen door shut’, ‘Sidney, Jasper, get out of the damn tent’, ‘Sidney, come back with the cross brace, it’s not a stick’. Humans are far easier to cope with, they don’t run off with the cross braces in their mouth thinking they’ve invented this brilliant new game when all the humans stand around laughing and being extremely unhelpful – sorry, Pete, it was funny.
Sunday night, tent up, air beds blown up – double one not blowing up, good job we tried this out, find spare only to remember that the reason we bought the new one is because the thingy that stops the air coming out went missing years ago and you have to sleep with your finger bunged in the air hole to keep it from deflating, hmmm. Can we get the sofa bed in the back of the car?
Shiny new cooker out of the box, oooh, very exciting, it’s massive, looks like the on you get when you do posh camping in France with those static tents that come with everything – apart from this will always stay clean as Pete hasn’t bought the gas canister to make it work – sweetheart, that’s why it was so light to carry.
Little uns think this is great and want to sleep over in the tent, ha ha, Pete pleads that he as to work the next day, I comment that he put the tent up so he should sleep in it with his children. Great idea, lovely night’s sleep in my bed. Children and Pete a little tired and cold in the morning after waking up at 5am when it got light. This was a good idea as now we know we have to bring more blankets too.
Best practice for further years camping – make husbands put tent up the weekend before and sleep in it to test whether the new sleeping bags are going to be warm enough. If they have no sleep and are very cold then you need to bring blankets – who needs tog ratings?
Guess what he’s doing tonight? Trying to get the tent down and packed up into the bag while stopping Sidney commandeering cross braces aka ‘helping’. This is going to be great spectator sport – I think I’ll try out the new plastic wine glasses and watch him while shouting gently encouragement such as ‘Sidney, leave it!’
Beverley is a food writer and broadcaster, she is the founder of Splat Cooking and her first book ’500 Baby and Toddler Foods’ is published by Apple press on 5 September 2011, her APP ‘Cupcakes, Muffins and Afternoon Tea’ will be available to download from the Apple Store from September.
Victoria has just tweeted an article about using breast milk to make ice cream. Views anyone?
I had this debate with my publisher over the adult version of the ice cream for toddlers in my new book coming out in September, 500 Baby and Toddler Foods. The recipe for children under 12 months recommends using breast or formula milk to make the ice cream. As the recipes are aimed at all the family eating together we discussed how this would go down, would the rest of the family eat ice cream made with breast milk? After much debate, we wussed out and suggested in the recipe that for the rest of the family the milk should be cows milk not breast milk.
In fact, what’s wrong with adults drinking breast milk – not straight from the breast though? Seriously, cows milk is designed for baby cows and we milk the cows to give the milk to our children and we drink it ourselves, we also drink goats and sheep milk. In Ancient Rome they used mare’s milk as they had a lot of horses around, in Tibet they drink yak’s milk. Humans make milk which is designed for baby humans but what’s wrong with adult humans drinking breast milk?
I think there are underlying connotations about it being thought of as slightly kinky, a little gross maybe. But surely that’s daft, it’s designed for us, it’s better suited for us and just look at the amount of people who have allergies to cows milk.
My thoughts on the book were to leave it in and wait for the letters, my publisher agreed with my argument but decided to be policially correct and change it, probably for the best, but it really is daft. Maybe we should just get over ourselves and stop being silly and drink breast milk. What do you think?
oooh this is really scary, I’ve just sent back my final editorial comments on my new book, 500 Baby and Toddler Foods, so that could be it, has the fat lady sung? I’m not sure, but it does feel a little odd not waiting for another chapter full of editorial comments to sort, or to translate into American-speak.
I didn’t really appreciate just how different a language American is to English, it could be Japanese really. Trying to translate all the measurements to cups – why can’t you lovely Americans use scales? Even is you do use scales then it’s back to old fashioned pounds and ounces. I’ve spent the past 10 years converting myself to grams. My brain hurts with this.
I must admit I did have a bit of a rant over email with my lovely American Editor, Cary, as she changed my wording of ‘how to check if the muffins are done by inserting a skewer into the centre, if it comes out clean then they are ready.’ to ‘check for “doneness”‘ is that a word? It’s the sort of word i’d pull my children up pdq, but is that an acceptable Americanism? I’m really not sure. Poor Cary, she had an earful for that one and my rant on the use of proper English, she won though after all she is American and ought to be able to speak the lingo.
Different types of sugar is another one, apparently you can’t get Demerara or Muscovado sugar in the US and raspberries are very hard to get hold of and extremely expensive, what else? Ah yes, the 6 email debate on what sort of oats to use for oatcakes. We use oatmeal, apparently oatmeal in America is our rolled oats. Anyway after lots of emails I gave up and changed the recipe to:
‘quick oats, place in a food processor and process to a powder’ it was either than or give up and take out the recipe, I refuse to give up.
The idea with these recipes is that they are all written to make life easy for a new Mum, no phaffing around, no measuring how much pepper, it’s either one pepper or half a pepper and making sufficient to either feed the family the same food or freeze the rest for another meal.
The other thing is – giant veg. Apparently they have massive butternut squash that make ours look like baby vegetables, these squash would win the big veg prize at every country fair so that was interesting trying to make butternut squash quantities easy to work out.
Scones – so cheesy scone pizza, scones don’t exist over the pond, they are called biscuits, biscuits are called cookies and they are soft, if they are hard it is assumed that they are stale and are thrown away, out went my Oat Crunchies recipes, home made Hob Nobs are obviously inedible. Crisps are Chips, boy that was confusing, homemade chicken nuggets with oven baked chips bashed up on the outside, hmm, not really the concept I was trying to get at.
Please don’t be offended if you are American reading this, I’m just trying to get the point across that we seem to speak the same language but really it’s very, very different. One thing I’m really impressed about, Americans call spring onions by the proper name, Scallions. We call them scallions in the North East and no one down South has a clue what I’m on about, that’s one part of the language I come together with the US – YES!
Turnips too, down South they’re called Swedes, sorry chaps, Swedes are people who live in Sweden and it’s really mean to call them vegetables. Turnips are the purple skinned orange fleshed root vegetable, I used to make turnip lanterns out of these at Halloween, pumpkins were foreign in North Yorkshire and i didn’t even see one until I moved to London, always thought they were an invention of Disney. Down here you guys refer to turnips as being the little miniature rot veg that are white and green on the outside with white flesh – these are called Snowballs. You can’t make turnip lanterns out of those, they are way too small.
So getting back to the point, I think the books done, just waiting to see the photos, very exciting, roll on August.
Anyone read the papers or listen to radio 4′s Today Programme this morning and hear the furore over the best age to wean your baby onto solids? I caught it in The Times. This debate has been going on for as long as I can remember and the advice changing constantly. It’s horribly confusing.
I’ve just written a book, 500 Meals for Babies and Toddlers, due to be published in August this year, this is one of the debates that has been raging between the US and UK publisher and myself.
The current thinking is that you should not give solid food to breast-fed babies until they are 6 months old. My argument is that all three of my children, now 9, 11 and 14 with no food allergies at all, started solids at 4 months old.
Why? They were all breastfed and by 13-14 weeks old they began waking up every hour demanding to be fed, this went on hourly during the day too. They finished a feed and looked around for what else could have to eat. They were hungry, very hungry, and after week of this and calling my health visitor in desperation (no sleep at night and no way of even getting out of the house during the day) she agreed that it was time to start solids. It no good having an exhausted Mum and for my mental health and the good of my babies she suggested I add a little baby rice to some expressed breast milk and give my baby a teaspoonful to get her started. Hmm baby rice, does anyone have a baby who likes this stuff?
My eldest, Big Girl, now 14, started waking up every hour at around this age, she hated baby rice with a vengeance and was extremely good at spitting it out and making raspberries at the same time. I sat on the floor with her in her chair, me eating a baked apple attempting to get some of the baby rice in her mouth rather than being fired back at me and she just wasn’t interested. However, she was interested in my baked apple and constantly leaned forward in her chair trying to grab my spoon, so I got a clean spoon and scooped some of the untouched soft apple onto a baby spoon and offered her it. That was it, she scoffed the lot and kept asking for more, at 14 years old she still loves baked apple.
It took a day or two to work but this was obviously the problem, my baby was hungry. It was either move to solids or give up breastfeeding and switch to formula. With my youngest, small boy, I gave in from pretty early on and gave him a bottle of formula at night so that my husband could feed him which meant that I got to have a little bit of social life, ie I could get down the gym and try to lose the baby weight. I wasn’t prepared to give up breast feeding at 13 weeks old, it was difficult to start with but breast feeding was fantastic at burning of the extra fat. I could eat what I wanted was thinner than I’d been for years, I wanted to breast feed until the children were 18 (not serious there, honest!), I stopped when they were 12 months old, then I had to stop eating too (!).
The comment in the news today is that the Government is under pressure to review research from the British Medical Journal that the existing policy of solely breast-feeding for the first 6 months could “leave babies more likely to suffer harmful iron deficiencies, food allergies and disease that causes food intolerance”. They suggest that babies should start solid food somewhere between 4 and 6 months.
At the end of the day we need to USE OUR COMMON SENSE, always speak to your GP, health visitor, pediatrician, or other health professional before moving your baby onto solids. You know your baby best so check for signs:
Baby must have good head control
Baby must be able to sit up in a high chair
Baby is hungrier than usual, demanding more feeds and reaching for your food
Baby is interested in the food you are eating
Baby can swallow thicker food without gagging
Introduce foods slowly, begin with a little rice cereal mixed to a thin puree with either breast milk or their regular formula milk, if baby doesn’t like rice cereal (mine hated it) then try stewed apple, pear, sweet potato or similar, well cooked and pureed and thinned down with a little breast or formula milk.
When my book comes out in August this is full of recipes and helpful information to get new Mums through the minefield of what to feed baby, toddler and the rest of the family. The last thing you want to do is to make up 2 or 3 different meals so my non-nonsense approach will hopefully help. There is no weighing out onions, peppers or chicken, I’ve tried to keep it as easy to follow as less phaffy as I can with suggestions as to how you can adapt the recipes to feed the whole family.
I’m also putting on some Mums to be or New Mums workshops based on the recipes and the ideas in the book later in the Spring so keep watching the Splat Cooking website for info and dates.