I am so excited, my first book comes out this year. I’ve been hard at work over Christmas writing the recipes for my new book ‘500 meals for babies and toddlers’ to be published by Quintet Publishing. It will be on the shelves in August this year and is full of no-nonsense, down to earth tips on how to feed your baby and toddler. No messing about with weighing onions and peppers, life is too short and I know that new Mums just don’t have time to phaff around with recipes, they need quick, easy, nutritious recipes that work.
This is exactly what they are going to get. Everything from baby’s first foods to how to encourage toddlers to help to cook.
Why am I qualified to write this? I have three children, now aged 8, 11 and 14, who I fed from scratch, my 11 year old totally refused to eat anything out of a jar – oh yes I tried, it’s always a good fall back, but no way would she eat it. She wanted to eat exactly the same as her big sister and her parents were eating.
My eldest spat out baby rice when I tried her on that at 4 months old. I was sitting on the floor next to her in her baby chair eating a baked apple, the baby rice came straight out at the same time as she tried to lean forward to get my apple. We shared – obviously keeping her to just the apple, she never liked baby rice.
So my philosophy is to feed babies and toddlers as close to the types of food the adults and the rest of the family is eating as possible – providing, of course, that they’re eating healthy and nutritious food. If they’re not then it’s a great excuse to try new recipes out and cut out the fat and sugar so you can all eat together.
I’ll be running some baby and toddler meals masterclasses at my cookery school shortly so please let me know if you’re interested in attending. In the meantime keep reading for updates on the launch date.
Gosh Beverley This sounds like such a great book. You must have worked so hard on it.. that’s allot of recipes! It sounds very exciting.
Hi Vanessa, yes it has been a lot of work, that’s what Christmas is for isn’t it? It’s also taken me back a lot as my youngest is now 8, and it’s scary that in 8 years how much has changed on what foods are recommended for babies. We went to Majorca on holiday when my eldest was 9 months old (she’s 14 now) an the only thing she would eat was this really spicy gazpacho from the local market. Now the recommendation is not to give tomatoes until children are 1 year old. She wouldn’t have eaten at thing at that rate.