I know. It seems unlikely, doesn't it? I mean, Gillian Mc Keith and all that...

So you're just going to have to trust me. It is lovely. Nicer than rice, even. And blah blah blah nutrutionally complete or something and fairly protein-y for a carb. Oh I don't know. Google it, that's what I did.

Anyway, if you'd like to know how to cook it, listen up. Do not assume that the pack instructions will be correct, first of all. I'd actually bought a packet years ago and the instructions were to put the dry grains into a pan with some oil and 'toast' them for a few minutes before adding water and simmering. Wrong. And very much the reason why I didn't eat the stuff for two years. It was like eating spongy, bitter grit.

However, if you rinse, rinse, rinse the stuff before you boil it, that takes away that weird bitterness. You just cook it like rice, which is to say if you're me you toy with the idea of using the absorption method then lose your nerve, toss more water in and then tip it into a sieve.

We have it in place of rice now, it's deliciously nubbly and nutty. And so cute, with it's little ammonite curl. Hard to explain that, actually, but you'll like it. It's good for spoons as it doesn't fall off too easily, unlike rice or couscous, and is scoopable with tiny hands I presume.

We get the Suma Organic stuff at the greengrocers which costs about £1.50, but I noticed that the same amount costs more than twice as much in Sainsbury's so be aware that the price varies wildly.

It does make you a bit farty, though, we think, but it's a small price to pay when the suggestion of having it for dinner is enough to have your child shouting 'Keen-wah NOW, Mummy' while you're preparing it. (Not to mention all that nutritional stuff you're going to Google for as well, of course. Pace Gillian.)

Further to Morv's note about tortilla wraps being useful while on the move, might I add that Babybear enjoyed her first chapati last night and loved it. We've also been giving her tortilla wraps, and it's interesting to note that both Boomer and Babybear have the same approach ie folding the strips of bread up, winding any spare bits around their fists and jamming it into their mouths.



Actually, I particularly like the tortilla wraps because they keep well. If you are un petit peu anal (and I've had my moments, ladies) you can unwrap the whole pack and place grease proof paper or similar between the layers and then loosely freeze them so you can take them out individually. Some people like them unheated but personally I think they taste raw and deeply yuck unless they are flung onto a gas burner for thirty seconds or so each side (if that - depends on the burner, obviously) to lightly toast them.

For comedy value alone, I'd have to give cottage cheese a well-deserved A+. It's the single most amusing foodstuff she's ever consumed, and, well, it's certainly answered any questions we might have had about her pincer grip... she hasn't got one.

Oh, and by the way I am about to go through and change the baby's name again... it's going to be Babybear now, as my husband actually pointed out that we call her that more often than Babybird... sorry for any confusion, it is the same child I promise...

Anyway, I wasn't 100% what to do with the cottage cheese but inspired by Corriedale's insistence that her talented child eats it by the fistful  I plonked some on the highchair table.

The chubby paw went out to grab it as quick as you like, but of course it had mostly squished out through her fingers by the time she brought her hand to her mouth. This led to her chasing the little gobbets of cheese around her hand, up her arm, into her sleeve, and round and round her wrist. You gotta give her points for persistence...

We later tried it on a spoon, not too much, we really just dipped it into the pot, and the baby grabbed it and smushed it lovingly into her general cranio-facial area, occasionally pausing to chew on the spoon.

So thanks, Corriedale, Babybear loved the cottage cheese and it's now firmly on our regular shopping list. Oh, yeah, and thanks for warning me that she would require a full bath, hair wash and change of clothes afterwards...

Post Script
Since the advent of the pincer grip we are really making some progress with this, as Babybear has suddenly grasped the point of the spoons that I occasionally litter her high chair tray with. Where previously she has been utilising them as chew toys, drum sticks and impromptu eye gougers, she can now hold onto them properly round the handle (I've got some shaped Tommee Tippee ones) and feed herself without too much mess. We operate two spoons at a time, so I'm not shovelling anything into her mouth I promise. Anyway, it's made cottage cheese a much less messy prospect, whihc can only be a good thing.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a pincer grip. (Applause, applause...)

Don't know where it came from, but as of yesterday all Babybear does is stick her index finger into things (including her water glass, where any Stinkerbell-inspired progress is now going backwards) and catch things with her thumb. Oooh so very cute.

I've been looking for some time for an addition to our 'always in the buggy bag' staples of rice cakes and water, and now we have 'em. I had thought it best to avoid sultanas because of the choking hazard thing but now I can adopt the 'if she can pick it up, she can eat it' approach with a fearless heart. What I do is squash the sultanas as I give them to her so that as least I know that the skin is broken. It's heart-meltingly sweet to see her laboriously picking them up from her highchair tray, and heart-soaringly joyful to be able to hand her a sultana and head off a gurning episode in Sainsbury's. Hu-zzah.

I think might have cracked the grapes/choking thing...

I've been trying to choose bigger ones, obviously, then washing and cutting them in half before giving them tho Babybear. But they still seemed like solid little suckers just waiting to get trapped in a tiny trachea...

However, and forgive me if this seems terribly obvious, if you kind of pop the grape flesh outwards with your thumb before handing it over it is much easier for them to suck and chew.

Also, I have been making sure that there is a tear at the top of the skin of the grape half (I rip it with my fingers) so that it comes apart more easily for her and hopefully diminishes the risk of it getting caught in her throat. It seems to have worked, yesterday she ate about 15 grapes. Made for a very interesting nappy this morning.

Having said all that, if your baby is brand-new to Baby Led Weaning I would wait until they had got the hang of things before giving them halved grapes to hold themselves. I used to hold onto them between my thumb and forefinger when we first started. You can't be too careful and all that...

Post Script.
Yeah, you can go to the trouble of making a tear in the top of your grape half if you wish... but why not do the more obvious thing and cut it when you cut the damn thing in half? So, you know, make a cross in the top of your grape and half down it. Clearly I am an idiot, it has taken me two months to work this out....

Okay, perhaps the bravado is misplaced, it's really just potato wedgie things that my delightful husband cooks but they really are delicious.

He gets some King Edwards or some other good chip potato and cuts them into wedges then gets a bowl with a small amount of olive oil (say, 1 dessertspoon) and a splash of soy sauce (1 teaspoon) and tips the potatoes in and rubs them with the mixture.

Then onto a wire rack in your roasting dish for about, say 40 mins (start prodding after half an hour). If you don't have a wire rack then you'll need to turn them halfway, although really it's best with the rack as the air circulates all around and they go crispy. Delia says to use a baking tray but she is wrong.

Obviously, the soy sauce is salty so it should technically be left off, but I always have to run them under the tap to cool them down for Babybear anyway so I guess it's washed off. Anyway, you'll see when/if you make them that the vast majority of the oil and soy get left in the bowl. By the way, we think organic potatoes taste better so that's what we use. (Get us...)

And sometimes, dammit, if we are out in a restaurant and I know that their food is of good quality and that their chips will arrive unsalted... then I give Babybear a chip. And she loves it.

Oh god, it's probably ALL salt, but we were all eating it at the time. And it was Loch Fyne stuff, nothing but the best and all that, but I happen to know that it is sprinkled with salt overnight to get some of the water out of the fish before being smoked, which can't be good news. Honestly, the remainder of the pack is in the fridge right now and I am scared to look.

Anyway, we dumped some on her highchair tray and Babybear was initially a bit sniffy about it, preferring to concentrate on the earthier delights of the spinach. It is quite a strange texture, I suppose.

Nevertheless, she did return to it and positively slurped it down in the end, while her father and I discussed if she would grow up with a brain jam packed with fish oils but knackered kidneys.



It's possibly controversial, and please feel free to beat me up about it, but I am going to try to relax about the salt thing. My great-grandmother apparently told my  mother that all babies need to have a few grains of salt added to everything they eat, as it enriches the taste buds. Plainly ludicrous, but she must have done it to my grandma's food and probably my mother's and neither of them is on dialysis. Give me another two days and I'll start panicking about it again, I'm sure.

Anyway, if you are so inclined, read the ingredients label on your smoked salmon before giving it to your baby. If they like it, great, at least you'll know the whole family will eat if you are invited to a Scottish wedding. The only problem is that you will have to be able to  give them a good wash afterwards. It is very peculiar indeed to have your baby smell strongly of smoked fish, let me tell you.

But only my next-door neighbours' organically-grown, hand woven Little Gems, dressed in avocado oil and lemon juice, if you please. She will lift these out of the salad bowl at home, but try and give her some chopped-up iceberg from a cafe salad and it's a straight no. Good girl, we're very proud...

Not the most obvious of finger foods but luckily the Husband is an adventurous type (especially when faced with an empty fridge) and so he steamed Babybear some spinach for a couple of minutes then wrung it out a bit and plonked it in a pile on her highchair tray.

 

Surprisingly, she found it incredibly easy to eat. Her technique largely relies upon jamming as much of the green stuff as possible into her mouth and then pulling out what cannot be immediately downed in one bite before pushing the rest back in. It's grimly fascinating, not to mention hugely convenient as there are few vegetables her parents enjoy more than spinach done with a wee bit of garlic, lemon juice and olive oil...  

Boomer loooves nectarines and so do I so it’s grand. I started by giving slices of necatarines to Boomer (roughly a eighth but sometimes a quarter if the fruit was quite small) . At first I would hold the piece and she would suck of the flesh – this was when she was about 5 ½ months. By about 6 mths I could leave pieces on her high chair and dance away to do other exciting mummy tasks – while obviously never leaving my child unattended.

 

Now Boomer is 7 and a wee bitty mths and she can hold a eat a nectarine by herself. I often take a wee bite out of it to get her started – not because I want it myself of course.

 

She is also teething at the moment and I think she actually quite enjoys chomping the stone was she has demolished the nectarine. I do take the stone away fairly quickly though as it’s kinda chokey chokey gullet sized.

How utterly bourgeois can you get? Sushi, by god... in my day we thought Findus Crispy Pancakes were exotic.

But really, she thought it was delicious. It was just M&S's little pepper round ones, while I scarfed down the fishy offerings, but she definitely enjoyed squashing the rice out of the seaweed and eating it. She had a good bash at the seaweed as well, to be fair, but in the end it defeated her and she pulled it back out of her mouth in an inky green ribbon. And millions of Japanese children can't be wrong...

She HATED them! I was thrilled. Flat-out refused to put the revolting, slippy, sour, ultra-tannic substance in her mouth. The Husband, who has been known to enjoy a Victoria plum in his time, proposed that I might be projecting my dislike for this most pointless of fruit onto the baby but I couldn't hear him properly because I was clapping and whooping too much.

He later gave me a telling-off for encouraging my daughter to inherit my prejudices. But that's what children are for, is it not?