Easy Peasy - I will follow up last week's sensational meditation on light bulb changing with another useful house person's story - this time, about a recipe.
No ordinary recipe
A recipe for a magical person.
Anabel Karmel was recommended to me when my young fella was just a sprout, when we were just beginning our journey into food. "She makes it easy" I was told, by another fellow goddess of things in homes, "she plans out every day what you should give the baby - you don't have to think at all" Now if you know me, or if you've been reading my blog of late - you may have noticed that thinking is something I have become particularly averse to since the great adventure of parenthood began... So I was all for it.
I am a freezer filler of a mother. Making up for the guilt of not being at home all day every day to nourish my child with cuddles and hugs, I, instead choose to shun all processed food (despite it & it's industry providing me with a livelihood for the last however long people have been paying me to show up places and talk seriously with a look of concern) - and cook regularly in the home, for my darling, so I can fill the freezer full of love.
Now, Danger is no fussy eater, and for the first 5 or 6 months of "solids" (which were far from solid on the way in or out i can tell you) he didn't mind getting the same ice cube shapes of butternut squash, parsnip, carrot etc, that Anabel recommended. She did recommend plenty of other stuff too, but they didn't say suitable for freezing on them - ipso facto...
However, of late, he seems to be getting a little, fatigued, with lasagne 5 times a week, interspersed with ckn stew, ckn balls, fish curry, and fish & tomato stuff.
So back to Anabel I went, to open up the chapter on 2 - 3 year olds - She had a lovely looking recipe for fish balls.
She is a big lying liar though.... or else she is writing for wonder woman, or else there was a typo and a 0 missing... because it was wrote there that in 5 minutes one could - grate some carrot, make breadcrumbs, beat an egg, finely chop some onions, chop up the fish mix, and all sorts of other things (each of which actually easily take me 10 mins to do), then roll the mixture up into cherry tomato sized pieces. 5 minutes preparation time. With a straight face she said that - obviously not including the time you need to clean the fishy mess off your hands either.
Either she is trying to make me feel like a loser or I am just not as good a cook as I thought (and yes, a good cook in my book is a fast one)
Danger enjoyed the stupid things in the end anyway - I didn't get to try them, since they had far too much effort gone in for me to waste one on myself!!!
(you could have prepared fish balls in the time taken to read this by the way)
5 comments:
I hope for your sake your child doesn't develop an absolute love for these fishballs and start demanding them. Your story reminded me of my reaction to reading Martha Stewart's magazine for the first (and last) time. I received it as a gift and decided the gift giver was either sadistic or masochistic--or maybe both?
Cookery books - pah! I spent quite some time trying to get my daughter to eat "interesting" things when really all she has ever wanted to eat is toast. I could have saved all that time and just put everything on toast/in a sandwich. Now maybe we should come up with a "simple meals for kids" book along those lines (unless someone's already done it...).
x
Howling - if he does he can make them himself (he'll have to wait till he grows up a bit, obviously, but I don't think they're on my list for quite some time)
Rachel - that sounds great, and the variety of things we could include would be unending... imagine the glossy photography!!! Of course Danger just wants butter when you're talking simplicity, refuses to contemplate a piece of bread without it and then just licks the butter off - I'sa proud mammy.
Hi there, don't feel guilty! my kids are 14 and 11 now and have no recollection of all the absences I felt so guilty about.I also tried Anabel's recipes for son number 1 but was too busy to open the book for son number 2, he has turned out fine, in fact they are nearly the same height and both are just as smart, musical and play lots of sport. In the end, I just gave them mushed/chopped up versions of what we were eating, which meant we all ate better. Go easy on yourself, at some point they all go thru a stage of eating nothing but pasta anyway x
Anon, thanks - that's lovely to hear, and I would completely have followed your advice, it's just that Pizza is quite tricky to mush, I guess maybe if I soaked it in beer first....
;-)
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