Jottage from Cambridge – Season and Unseasonality

Food is not something I know much about. I have never been one of those people who buys fruit and vegetables in a particular season – I’ve even been known to eat Cadbury’s Cream eggs at least two months either side of Easter. So, when my mother gave me a copy of River Cottage Everyday I thought it would sit snugly with my other reasonably untouched cookery books. It still might be between Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith but for the fact that suddenly food has become much more important in our household. This is all down to ‘weaning’ – that very daunting process between your baby only consuming milk and them eyeing up the sweetie counter at the supermarket.


My sister assured me that weaning was great fun, and indeed I have loved every minute blending up bits of carrot, sweet potato, butternut squash and all the other amber coloured vegetables that Annabel Karmel (the guru of weaning) suggests you puree into a mush and feed your baby. However the market for blenders has no doubt been damaged irreparably by Gill Rapley. Rapley is synonymous with ‘baby led’ weaning - the latest fad of new mums who assemble with their Pumpkin Patch kids at the Cambridgeshire Childrens’ Centres. In fact the first question anyone asks now after that all important ‘is your baby sleeping through the night?’ is ‘are you doing baby-led’? Anyone who hasn’t heard of this latest phenomenon is looked at disdainfully, and an assumption is made that their baby will be an impossibly fussy eater who won’t be able to hold a spoon until their second birthday (Rapley claims). 


There are great assumptions made for ‘baby led’, and I was certain that Tristan would be the perfect candidate. However, owing to the fact that at five months he was still waking every couple of hours, I was advised to start weaning early to save my sanity. Because baby-led means that you only give your child solid food (you can give them soups, yogurts etc. but you never give them the instruction to open their mouth while you shove a spoon in, instead they take the spoon from you and feed themselves) – which they don’t have the ability to digest until they’re six months old – I began to puree instead. When Tristan hit six months I began to give him solid foods, although still relying on my blender, and very rarely having the courage to let him take the spoon for fear of the walls, carpet, furnishings etc. being forever porridge stained in our rented accommodation. 


My freezer is now full of little pots (I have become fairly obsessive about Tupperware recently) of lamb stew, minced beef mixed with baby pasta and salmon risotto. New inspiration came with the acquisition of the River Cottage Baby & Toddler Cookbook which sits beside River Cottage Everyday not on a dusty shelf, but within easy reach on the kitchen counter. I have got through a huge number of recipes already, and Tristan just as easily wolfs down the Chicken Curry (see p.223 of Everyday) as the Apple & Spelt Stars (see p.234 Baby & Toddler). So, food is now very important and the some of my trials and tribulations of feeding my baby son will be recorded in this blog. In addition I hope to tell our readers about the amazing food stores on Mill Road, a thriving shopping street to the east of the city centre.