We had a large, pleasant room with a view over the English Channel and an extremely comfortable bed (which I could have spent more time in). We had two trips on a hovercraft and a go on the dodgems on Sandown Pier. But more than anything else, we had food.

I’m not kidding, this was a gourmet tour of the eastern parts of the IOW. The amount of food we ate could probably have fed us at home for a week.

On arrival in Ryde on Friday just before lunchtime, we decided that fish and chips were necessary. I suppose if I had thought it through, having pre-ordered two lunches and being aware that evening meals were also planned for the weekend, I would have suggested that alfalfa salad would be sufficient for the time being. Instead we dashed straight into the first sit-down chippy we saw and enjoyed an excellent meal. Bernard experienced scampi for the first time, and did not behave particularly well, having been up very early after a rather bad night.

We then took a taxi to the hotel, just south of Seaview. We booked high tea for the boy and then headed straight to the beach, where we spent the afternoon digging with shells, in the absence of a spade. The others arrived over the course of the afternoon, and we checked into our room and discovered how lovely it was. Bernard ate a mountain of spaghetti bolognese, but left the home-made ice cream for Pete to finish. He continued to behave badly pretty much until he was asleep, at which point I escaped to join the party in the restaurant, and was plied with wine. It was necessary.

Dinner at the restaurant was delicious. I had gazpacho, goat’s cheese risotto, and birthday cake. At the time, I felt deprived of a pudding; but I realise now that one less course, over the whole weekend, was a good thing.

A few hours of sleep followed, and then down for a cooked breakfast. Bernard ordered porridge and didn’t eat it; I ordered a full english and did.

It was a grey and damp morning, and the sea was reportedly too choppy for the planned boat trip to take place. Our taxis were summoned and we headed to Sandown for old-fashioned fun at the pier. The pier was your traditional seaside entertainment, from amusement arcade and mini golf to lewd jokey photo-cut-out thingies. Bernard played a racing game with Pete, squirted water at some fireman, went on his first dodgems, and trounced everyone at air hockey. (There is some rumour that the grown-ups let him win).

Lunch was in The Pond Cafe in Bonchurch, which we were informed was the best restaurant on the island. It was extremely small, so as a party of 13 we had pretty much all of it. Wisely, I seated Bernard by the door so we could get out once he got bored; at that point I had no inkling it would take around three hours for us to finish the four courses and wait for some lingerers to have coffee.

This whole weekend had been kept secret from Pete, it being his birthday treat, so I had pre-ordered lunches without consulting him. We therefore shared a carpaccio of beef with parmesan and rocket, and a large pile of peas and broad beans as a starter. This followed enormous bowls of warm olives and cashew nuts, inappropriately described as appetisers. They would have been enough on their own. One assumes, of course, that the portions in places like these are going to be tiny, but no. My main course was a large calf’s liver with vegetables, and then there was a cheeseboard. I liked the IOW soft cheese, but found the blue quite peppery. Yes, I really was still eating. Bernard had eaten a lot of olives and cashew nuts, and then all the salmon and none of the chips in his large children’s meal, and then got bored as predicted and gone off outside.

The home-going taxi paused to allow for the purchase of proper buckets and spades, and we spent the remainder of the afternoon making the aforementioned large sandcastle for the boss to sit in. Sadly Bernard and I did not witness any sitting, as it was time for high tea. You should know that the high tea cost £16.50 per child, and Bernard managed one sausage and a small lump of mash before demanding payment of his bribe of being allowed back to the beach to see the finished castle.

Our evening meal that night was at The Boathouse pub in Seaview, ten minutes down the road. I was uncomfortable being so far from the hotel, with a colleague’s parent minding the baby monitor. I was also uncomfortable because I had already eaten half a farmyard worth of food and it wasn’t all that long since I’d put away the last cracker of lunchtime. So we skipped the starter and opted for a salad. Ah, more goat’s cheese. An entire goat’s cheese and a load of pointless lettuce. I do really love goat’s cheese, though. It rained, and we strolled outside on the seafront, looking at the lights of Portsmouth. Bernard was sleeping peacefully when we got back to the hotel.

A grey morning dawned on Pete’s birthday, and Bernard was up bright and early as always. One advantage of a hotel room is being able to stick cBeebies on and get back into bed with my head under the pillow until a more civilised hour. We were finally prompted out of our bed by his grumbling for breakfast, and again we were first in the restaurant. I sensibly stuck to fruit and toast, and did I mention that the coffee was phenomenally strong? From breakfast we went directly to the beach and claimed the stream as our own. This activity filled the morning, culminating in a dash back to the hotel to clean up the children before the check-out deadline.

Taxis arrived to carry us to our final meal on the island: Pete’s birthday lunch event took place at The Seaview Hotel and Restaurant, which was an odd place with the appearance of a very ordinary hotel as you went in, but the further back you got, the smarter it became. We had a long table, possibly the first time the entire group sat down for a meal together, children an’ all. Bernard sat next to his new friend Jack, and they entertained themselves by drawing pictures and presenting them to other members of the party. I feasted on grilled mushroom with goat’s cheese, roast pork with an anomalous but pleasant yorkshire pudding, the ubiquitous cheeseboard, and birthday cake. Pete was given gifts. A taxi returned us to Ryde and the hovercraft, and we went home.

Out of the hat over here, we have pulled occasional old favourite chicken enchiladas, spring vegetable risotto with sheep’s cheese, and completely new: Nigel’s Indian bean stew with creamy coriander onions, slightly tweaked owing to lack of fresh coriander, and omitting the chilli, of course. This was emphatically rejected by the Small Boy, who only ate the naan bread and a large portion of rice pudding.

I’ve been given a dozen eggs by a friend who has hens. I should bake something.

This was very similar to the pork chops and cabbage deal that I mentioned a week or so ago, but without the cider or the creme fraiche, and therefore, of course, not as good. Personally I felt the success of the week was the spinach and mushroom lasagne (from Real Food).

Meanwhile, out in the tiny Rise blogosphere, Lisa bravely made a curry using a packet of spice mix, and Earthenwitch made a chocolate cake. I am not sure the two of you really get this project.

I really tried to stick to the recipe; however I wasn’t prepared to splash out on baby new potatoes when I have a veg drawer full of muddy old farmers market spuds; and also I didn’t have enough peas when I looked in the freezer, so it had sweetcorn in it too.

It was easy to make, certainly no harder than the sausage and lentil version; and it came out quite gooey and delicious. Pete and Bernard both enjoyed it, and it was all I could do to stop Pete from eating my lunch portion as well. If I make this again, I might completely replace the peas with sweetcorn, and I would certainly stick with the old spuds, which mushed beautifully into the sauce.

The recipe for this was emailed to me by Lisa, about two years ago. I had a glut of cabbage at the time. I reproduce it here in full, and she can tell you where she nicked it from:

Preheat oven to 170C. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 10 g butter until v hot then fry 6 slices chopped streaky bacon for a couple of mins. Add 4 thick pork chops and brown each side; transfer chops and bacon to a roasting tin. Add 1 small chopped onion and 2 sliced cloves garlic to the pan until softened then scatter over the chops. Bubble 310 ml cider in the pan for 2 mins, season, and pour over chops too. Cover roasting tin w foil and put in oven for 50 mins. Remove tin from oven (no!) and add 1 shredded savoy cabbage, mixing it into the juices and keeping the chops on top. Return tin to oven, uncovered, for 20-25 mins until the cabbage is tender. Put the chops on a warm plate white you stir 3 tbsp creme fraiche and 1 tbsp grainy mustard into the cabbage.

Apart from having to call Pete at work and demand that he buy cider on the way home, it was really easy to do and tasted delicious. Plus there were three cans of Scrumpy Jack left in the fridge.

It’s very simple. All you have to do is pledge to make one new dish each week (or something you haven’t made for absolutely ages), blog about it and leave me a comment so we can have a round-up.

Your new dish can be something someone else made previously – a cookalong, if you will.

Who wants to play?

I could blame general tiredness and lack of free time, but really, there is time to cook. There is less opportunity to shop, but surely that’s just a question of getting organised. I have more recipe books than is strictly necessary, considering I never open them.

I could blame my unsatisfactorily small kitchen, and the fact that when I do spend any time in there cooking, I usually have a child clinging to my knee or fiddling with the egg timer until it breaks. Since he was born, we have had three new kitchen timers.

I suspect it is pure laziness and some sort of lack of motivation. On the whole, we have a balanced diet; just not particularly varied. Should try harder.

Tomato Tart

Ingredients
Half a pack of chilled or frozen puff pastry. Or make your own, freak
Some tomatoes, sliced or halved according to how big they are
Other vegetables that are lying around and would go nicely in the tart, like red peppers
Pesto
Feta cheese (dolcelatte is also good)
Sliced olives (if you have some. If not, it’s unimportant)
Oregano

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees c.
2. Roll out the pastry until it’s the same size as your baking tray
3. Score about 1cm in from the edge all the way round
4. Spread the pesto over the inner rectangle, then scatter the cheese and olives over it
5. Lay out the tomatoes and any other veg nicely, so that they look pretty
6. Sprinkle oregano on top
7. Bake for 15 mins or so, having first checked the instructions on the packet to verify that this is the right sort of amount of time. Keep an eye on it anyway, and just take it out when it looks done.


Tart comes out of the oven

]]> http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/09/tomato-tart/feed/ 1 http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/07/my-experience-of-baby-led-weaning/ http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/07/my-experience-of-baby-led-weaning/#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:05:33 +0000 Karen http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/07/my-experience-of-baby-led-weaning/ Continue reading →]]> Now that we are advised to wait until around six months to start, our babies have better co-ordination and more mature stomachs than they did at four months, and so it is possible to skip the stage of aeroplaning mush into their mouths and then scraping it off their chins, and offer finger food right from the start. This is known as baby-led weaning (BLW), and the main principle is that the only person to put food in the baby’s mouth, is the baby himself.

I started weaning my son the traditional way, at 23 weeks, with great excitement and anticipation of him quickly becoming as much of a food-lover as I am. I did consider the baby-led weaning approach, but felt that it would not work for us, because I would be returning to work a month later, and therefore no longer had the opportunity to breastfeed on demand. As with most things, my son had a completely different agenda to me, and resolutely refused to contemplate the spoonfuls of delicious runny baby rice that I offered him. For a few days he had some interest in pear, carrot, and potato; but as soon as the novelty wore off, he closed his mouth, turned his head away, and cried; and that was his final say in the matter.

BLW puts the baby in charge of his own eating, on the basis that if parents offer a range of interesting, nutritious, and suitable food, then the baby can choose what he eats, and this allows him to move gently towards a solid diet. The goal is not to force your baby to eat, but to let him experience the tastes and textures of food at his own pace. It encourages the development of motor skills, and because the baby quickly moves on to eating the same food as the rest of the family, he also benefits from learning social skills at shared mealtimes, when he can participate in eating actively, rather than passively. As long as parents can relax and accept that it might take longer for the baby to consume significant quantities of food, this approach is more fun, less stressful, and much, much messier than traditional weaning on purees. At this stage, milk is still the most important source of nutrition, so it doesn’t really matter how much solid food baby eats, as long as he gets plenty of milk.

The BLW philosophy is to follow the child’s cues, and start when he indicates he is ready to try some solid food. First signs of readiness include losing the tongue-thrust mechanism (where anything put into the mouth is pushed back out again), having the ability to sit unsupported, and starting to develop a pincer grip with the thumb and forefinger. Our experience was that this tentative ability came on very quickly, when sufficiently motivated by such interesting items as peas and roast potatoes.

The first foods we offered were fruit, rice cakes, and steamed or roast chips of vegetables. We found that if you leave the peel on hard fruit like pears, the baby can pick them up more easily, and will suck the flesh and spit out the peel. Of course you should never leave your baby unattended while eating, but don’t be too alarmed by a little bit of gagging: this is a normal part of learning to manipulate food in the mouth, and is not the same as choking. We moved on to breadsticks and toast, pieces of cheese, and small lentil patties (an early favourite). Breakfast cereals were less successful in our case, but could work well with a different baby (my constantly teething son liked his food to be soft but still insisted on using his own hands, hence breakfast usually consisted of one weetabix with 2oz milk – perfect finger-mush). Later on we tried poached fish and chicken, and finally just shared our own meals with him.

He didn’t really start to eat well until he was nearly a year old, but mealtimes where I could relax and let him dictate how much he ate were always the most pleasant ones. He has always eaten better at the family table than on his own, and we have the attitude that there are no things he doesn’t like, just things he doesn’t like YET. Around 12 months he started trying to feed himself with a spoon, and over the past year he has progressed to a fork, and now likes to wave a (baby-friendly) knife around while he eats as well.

At two years old, my son has eaten (and likes) a far more varied diet than I remember as a youngster (or even in my twenties!), from olives to salsify. He also eats things that I don’t like much, like spinach (mixed with cream cheese and combined with pasta makes a good mushy, messy finger food) and fish.

There have been many ups and downs, especially when he is teething, poorly, or tired. Some days he eats more, and some days he eats less, and some days he has a healthy diet, and some days I let him have a sausage roll. I try to look at the bigger picture, and consider that overall he has a good diet and enjoys his food, which, looking back, is what I wanted in the first place.

BLW works well in a family where the parents feel able to relinquish control over what the baby eats. You decide what to offer, and he decides what to accept; there is no batch-cooking of mush, no counting spoonfuls, and no train-coming-through-the-tunnel-and-INTO-your-mouth! It is important to be able to top up with milk on demand, but at least that way you can be sure that the little tummy isn’t filling up with less-nutritious solid food, to the detriment of milk, which still provides the main source of calories and other nutrients that the baby needs to in order to grow.

Reference Originally published in local NCT newsletter

]]> http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/07/my-experience-of-baby-led-weaning/feed/ 1 http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/02/tosser/ http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/02/tosser/#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:05:14 +0000 Karen http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/02/tosser/ Continue reading →]]> My pancake mojo comes and goes, but this year, thanks to the marvellous little pan that Pete gave me for my birthday, the pancakes were a great success. I don’t remember last shrove tuesday, so this one counts as Bernard’s first – certainly the first one in which he has participated.

I made the batter when we got home from the childminder this evening (after a small incident in which he tried to put his cup on the side in the kitchen, and it fell down and gouged a chunk out of his face)^[1] and Bernard had his tea (fish pie followed by yoghurt) as usual. Then when Pete got home, we set up a small blue chair and a table in the kitchen so that the beebee^[2] could watch and join in.

Our production line consisted of me on pan duty, and Pete on filling duty. For some reason, Pete hates it when I flip pancakes, and keeps trying to encourage me to turn them with a spatula. Not a chance, I like flinging them up in the air and hoping to catch them before they do a double somersault. And guess what, Bernard likes it too. He was most impressed by the tricks his mama can do with a pancake.

He was also fairly impressed by his father’s lemon and sugar filling; less so by the ice cream. One new culinary experience per evening is plenty, in his opinion, and that weird cold stuff is, well, cold. Sweet, but cold. He managed to eat one and a half pancakes before getting bored and trying to drag us by the knees back into the sitting room to read him Jabberwocky for the umpteenth time.

For once, the baby had to wait. There were pancakes to be ate, and they were good ones.

1. not really, but judging by the howls you would think it had done major damage [↩]
2. Bernard’s word for baby [↩]
]]> http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/02/tosser/feed/ 2 http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/01/gourmet-kid/ http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/01/gourmet-kid/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:20:27 +0000 Karen http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/01/gourmet-kid/ Continue reading →]]> Remember the child who wouldn’t eat?

Bernard’s tea tonight consisted of a portion of spicy falafel bites, with oven-roasted beetroot, scorzonera and potato chips, served with a blob of coriander and chilli dipping sauce. This was followed by a bowl of yoghurt and a large banana, and accompanied by a small cup of milk. I gourmet kid you not.

]]> http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2008/01/gourmet-kid/feed/ 0 http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/12/all-casseroled-up/ http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/12/all-casseroled-up/#comments Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:57:04 +0000 Karen http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/12/all-casseroled-up/ Continue reading →]]> Alice’s baby is a couple of days overdue, and if she doesn’t pop tomorrow, then a c/section will be upon her. Pete and I feel terribly guilty for going away for Christmas, having promised to look after Stan and/or act as a birth partner (me, not Pete, for the latter), during The Event. So I have assuaged my guilt with casserole.



I spent a couple of hours this afternoon concocting a delicious chicken and shallot casserole, a rather runny spaghetti bolognese, and a vegetable chilli with very little chilli in (so it would be suitable for babies). I packed them into those microwavable containers that chinese takeaways come in, labelled them neatly, and will take them over tomorrow morning when we go for pre-christmas, pre-baby bacon sandwiches. I hope they will be pleased.



The six tubs on the left are Bernard-sized portions, which are in the freezer. We also had the veg chilli for tea, augmented with Jethros Green Chilli & Coriander Sauce, and hot jalapeno pepper sauce. Bernard ate some of his (unaugmented, of course), but has had little appetite today.

]]> http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/12/all-casseroled-up/feed/ 0 http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/11/parsnip-risotto/ http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/11/parsnip-risotto/#comments Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:36:21 +0000 Karen http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/11/parsnip-risotto/ Continue reading →]]> I know what you’re thinking. Parsnips? In a risotto? Surely not. The suggestion came with my veg box last week, along with five or six muddy parsnips. I do like parsnips, and have to say that they work best roasted or mashed into a sweet creamy pulp. But it’s always nice to try something different. I have, of course, fiddled with the recipe to improve it.
• 1.5 litres chicken stock
• 4 tbs butter
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic
• four or five muddy parsnips, washed, peeled and chopped quite small
• 1 tbs tomato puree
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 1 tsp dried sage
• 200g arborio rice
• some slices of smoked sausage, pepperoni or similar
• 6 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
• a glug of martini, sherry etc
• freshly grated parmesan

Boil the stock up in a small pan and let it sit over a low heat. In another pan, melt the butter and fry the onion and parsnips gently with the herbs and tomato puree for about ten minutes.

Add the rice and stir round for two minutes, then turn up the heat and pour in the booze. When it has all been absorbed, turn it back down and start adding the stock, a ladle at a time. Stir gently and keep adding until all the liquid is absorbed.

Throw in the sausage and the sun-dried tomato, and check that the rice is cooked in the centre. If not, add more hot water, and give it a few more minutes. Stir in the parmesan and serve.

]]> http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/11/parsnip-risotto/feed/ 3 http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/09/baby-bedouin-chicken/ http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/09/baby-bedouin-chicken/#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:29:25 +0000 Karen http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/09/baby-bedouin-chicken/ Continue reading →]]>

Pete, Bernard and I enjoyed this for our Sunday Dinner.

Ingredients

• 1 tbs sunflower oil
• 1 red onion, sliced
• 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp turmeric
• 4 chicken breasts/6 chicken thighs, cubed. Thighs have a higher iron content and more flavour. They are my meat-cut du jour.
• 1 low-salt vegetable stock cube
• 100g dried apricots, halved
• 25g pine nuts or flaked almonds
• 1 tsp wholegrain mustard
• 100g couscous & a knob of butter

Instructions

1. Soften the onion in the oil, then add the spices and chicken. Stir to make sure all the chicken is nicely coated.
2. Crumble the stock cube over the chicken, and pour on 400ml boiling water.
3. Add the remaining ingredients (except the couscous and butter), cover with lid, and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Remove lid and simmer for a further 20 minutes. Meanwhile melt the butter in a small saucepan and coat the couscous, before adding twice the couscous’ volume of water and turning off the heat.
5. Stir the couscous into the chicken, and serve.
]]> http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/09/baby-bedouin-chicken/feed/ 1 http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/07/muffin-doin/ http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/07/muffin-doin/#comments Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:18:20 +0000 Karen http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2007/07/muffin-doin/
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