Jottage from Lancaster - Carrot Cake

Yesterday was cold - cold and a bit cloudy. Just the day to sit by the fire watching daytime TV and not doing much at all. Suddenly I had this thought that I had some carrots that needed eating up. And some eggs with a 'sell by' date a few days ago and a 'use by' date imminent. What made me put the 2 together and come up with carrot cake I don't know, but a River Cottage Everyday 'Treat' felt just right so I padded off away from the fire into the kitchen to seek out the recipe and make it.


I whisked up my just-in-date eggs with granulated sugar, as I didn't have caster. Then I added the oil and made this gorgeous frothy pale yellow concoction. Next I had to find the flour and to my dismay I hardly had any white self raising flour - least of all wholemeal. So I used the rest of the white and added some organic wholemeal plain flour and a couple of teaspoons of baking powder (out of date by some 2 or maybe 3 years...). So far so good. I had this thing that carrot cake should by spicy so I gaily sprinkled in plenty of mixed spice. Then I grated up the 3 carrots that had been languishing in the fridge and threw the lot into the oven and went off to watch an episode of Spooks that we had on DVD. The cake and Spooks ended at about the same time. Just perfect...



This episode made me think about the difference between home made and shop bought cakes. I'm sure that if I made this cake again it would be subtly, in not totally, different. And this one is interesting to eat. When it's cooked you pour melted honey on it, rather like a lemon drizzle cake, and this leaves it with a glazed and slightly sweet top. The cake itself isn't very sweet but is moist but with this little kick from the sweetness and slight crunchiness on the top. So every mouthful is unlike the last one. Shop bought cakes tend to be uniform and everyone you buy is just like the last one. You may love it once, twice, even three times, but then it gets just too samey. 


This is a really easy cake to make - I don't think it can fail, even with the wrong sugar, the wrong flour a few changes to the ingredients and some sadly not too fresh eggs and carrots. Only when I glanced at the recipe to find out how long it would take to cook did I notice that it was a cake for 12-14 servings. Whoops - there are only 2 of us!

Jottings from Lancaster - Pheasant and Chorizo, birthday celebrations

It's my sister Gwenda's birthday today and she and her husband are over from Germany for a short stay during which she turns 57. OK, she isn't really 57 but that's near enough, particularly as I conveniently have those wax candle numbers left over from my 57th birthday which will do nicely on top of Hugh's little black cake and which is looking very chocolately and ready to eat later for tea time along with a glass of Prosecco.

We thought of going out to lunch and tossed about a few ideas ranging from the tried and trusted Lunesdale Arms (quite near and not too expensive) to the Inn at Whitewell which is altogether a bit posher, further away and more pricey. Eventually we decided to stay in and I would cook. It would be hard to think of what to make from a book which is for everyday cooking since a celebration meal usually entails a book that is dedicated to entertaining, but Hugh evidently thinks we could all be eating pheasant a couple of times a month and we all decided that it was worth a try. 


I haven't cooked pheasant before and Hansotto, who is my brother in law had some doubts about how it would work with butter beans and chorizo. He is a superb cook himself, as is Gwenda, so I had a lot to live up to. Normally I would have defaulted to roast lamb or something that I had cooked up enough to be confident with, but knowing and trusting the Everyday recipes I was keen to have a go at this one. For a start I got muddled up with lots of pans frying onions and pheasant and realising I hadn't used a big enough dish to cook the pheasants in the oven and I had to find increasingly bigger dishes out of the cupboard until I ended up the biggest one I had - which would do just nicely. Once I had sorted out all the pots and pans I put it into the oven and forgot about it for 2 hours as instructed. 


I had decided to do parsnip, carrot and potato mash, knowing that Gwenda likes parsnips. I would normally have done roast potatoes but somehow reading the mash recipe I felt that it was better to make that. It took some preparation and as I had to cook the potatoes and the carrots/parsnips separately it involved more saucepans - more washing up. But although it was a bit of a faff to make, having to whizz up the veggies and mashing the potatoes, it was well worth the extra bit of effort.


After 2 hours everything was ready and if I had had my wits about me I would have taken a photo BEFORE we ate all of it. As it is this is the best I can do...

Remains of a pheasant.

This is what was left on the plates (after 2nds all round)...

Carrot, parsnip and potato mash...

Satisfied brother-in-law...

All in all it was a very successful celebration lunch.  This is the birthday girl afterwards in some kind of ecstatic moment after eating the rich and tasty juices...???

Jottage from Cambridge - Polenta and How Much Does it Cost to Feed a Baby?

I have managed to get through the first thirty-four years of my life without using polenta, or indeed knowing what it is. Yet when I typed ‘polenta’ into the recipe finder on Epicurious, 173 recipes were returned, including a dazzling array of cheesecakes, stews and lasagnes. Thanks to Hugh I now have a large packet of the bright yellow stuff sitting in my cupboard, having used it to make the polenta chips (Baby & Toddler Cookbook) for Tristan. Polenta is ever such a funny thing. Made from yellow cornmeal it quickly thickens up into a grainy paste if you add a splash of water. I don’t find the taste particularly pleasant, and most of Tristan’s chips ended up on the floor – though the quantity of leftovers is by no means a measure of how much Tristan likes or dislikes something. More about that later.


Polenta is considered ‘peasant food’; perhaps less so now though as again I had to go to Arjuna to get a packet as it wasn’t stocked in the supermarket. It’s pretty cheap though (see photo) which leads me on to the next section of this post about the cost of feeding a baby.

All you really need in the first week of weaning is a carrot and a packet of baby rice (£1.64). In the next week you might introduce apples and pears, but the baby isn’t really going to eat anything which might break the bank. Within a couple of months though, when the baby is on three meals a day, the costs start rising and tins of sardines and mackerel, as well as unsalted butter, whole milk and yogurt (I have just acquired a yogurt maker – more on this coming soon), quickly become staples. However, although there are a few more packets in our larder (along with polenta, we now always have  Weetabix, porridge, baby pasta, and peanut butter, as well as the above), Tristan generally eats our leftovers. This, of course, saves time and money and means that I only really need to think about what to give him on toast for lunch as the other meals are covered. However, what if I had succumbed to all the brightly coloured pots and pouches which even the dinkiest Tesco and Sainsbury’s stock? Even Annabel Karmel who, judging from her Complete Baby & Toddler Meal Planner appears to encourage home cooking, has her own range of baby meals at £2.29 a pop. Heinz probably rule the school though with a range strangely called ‘Mums Own’, even though all Mum has done is open up her purse and gotten a few Clubcard points.  So imagine a typical day as below:


Breakfast: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe, Apple & Banana Breakfast 128g = 65p
Lunch: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe, Cheesy Tomato Pasta Stars 200g = 62p
Dinner: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe Vegetable Hot Pot with Chicken 250g = 84p + Heinz Egg Custard Dessert, 128g = £0.42
Total: £2.53


So each week you could be spending nearly £18 on baby food. (n.b. Sainsbury’s prices in November 2011)


Now, I don’t know anyone who actually feeds their little ones Heinz pots for every meal, but I bet some do. If you choose to be organic and buy the Ella’s Kitchen range or anything branded Plum you would be even poorer - in some stores each pouch costs £1 or more. These meals do serve a purpose though and, when you’re out and about, it’s really handy having a nutritious meal on hand (I know one baby who will only eat Hipp Porridge though which must be quite frustrating!) and I did have a variety of Ella’s Kitchen meals when we holidayed in Cornwall. In fact, in these days of baby-led, there’s a bit of a fear of being judged with a baby ready meal. In the café at Cambridge’s Botanical Gardens last weekend I had a box packed with peanut butter on toast cut into fingers, a banana and a pouch. I noticed the woman sitting across from us was trying to give her little girl of approximately the same age a few pieces of bread, and slices of cucumber. She also had spoons filled with some concoction laid out on the table for her daughter to pick up and put in her mouth. As Tristan didn’t seem to have eaten many of his peanut buttered fingers and the café floor was looking worse for wear, I contemplated opening my pouch of Ella’s Kitchen butternut squash, carrots, apples and prunes, but feared disapproving looks. I enviously looked at the other woman, though her daughter wasn’t making progress either and, as I was leaving, I noticed her getting out a little pot of Heinz baby food from her bag! That made me feel much better. So not only, in these austere times, can people still afford expensive baby food, but it also seems that many people are willing to follow Rapley up to a point and then succumb to puree which, if it comes from a pouch, has the texture and gloss of Pantene Pro-V, though hopefully tastes nicer.

Jottage from Lancaster - Fried Fish Fillets with Herbs and Lemon

Fried Fish with Herbs and Lemon

I had the rainbow trout I had bought from the worst Sainsburys in the world - Morecambe - and it really needed eating. I decided to have a shot at the Fried Fish Fillets with Herbs and Lemon. I had remembered to buy capers at last and so the vital ingredients were all to hand - I even had the right herbs and a lemon. I decided to roast some carrots, baby potatoes and parsnips with it - making a nice veggie accompaniment. Hugh has had a big influence on me this - I rarely use only one vegetable and more often than not, potato takes a back seat. However this wasn't an unqualified success. I should have added some nice green veggies like leek or cabbage, which would have gone better, I think. And the herbs and lemon mix was very lemony. I'm not sure it was the best thing to have with the Rainbow Trout - it seemed to need thick fish to take up the real lemoniness of the juices. But even with these reservations it was very nice and I am pleased with myself for cooking fish twice in 2 days. I should have cooked the trout in foil and the haddock with the lemon and herbs and a more experienced fish cook would probably know that. I'm planning to buy more fish on Saturday and will try this again.

Jottage from Cambridge - Soggy Weetabix or How to Start Weaning

The word ‘weaning’ in the context of babies is incredibly annoying. It seems to imply that they’re coming off something, so you could easily assume that, sometime between four and six months, you should stop feeding them milk, and exclusively offer solid food. Nothing could be further from the truth. Milk remains the most important source of

nourishment for babies until they’re at least a year old, and probably even beyond. So, when Tristan was five months old and I decided to start weaning I didn’t confine my feeding bras to the back of the wardrobe, but rather thought more carefully about the best time to
give Tristan milk feeds so that he was hungry enough to eat three meals a day too.
If you haven’t waited until the baby is six months old then you’re bound to start them off on baby rice and pureed carrot or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, both mixed together. There was quite a build-up of excitement to giving Tristan his first meal, and my husband and I both eagerly awaited his reaction as we launched the
Tommy Tippee spoon into his mouth. When I put the first spoonful of carrot in his mouth he gave me a terrified look, certain that this orange coloured mush was going to poison him. However, somehow the second spoonful wasn’t quite as bad as the first, and an ice cube sized portion of carrot was demolished within a few minutes. Of course the same meal took much longer the next day, but that’s just how weaning goes. Some days your baby’s inner Popeye comes out and he can’t get enough spinach, and then you’re worried that he’ll only ever eat mangos which are a particular shade of yellow. 

Overall my experience has been very positive though and Tristan, so long as he’s not too tired (note that overtiredness is the reason why most babies start yelling and arching their backs at the first sight of a spoon) eats pretty much everything, with the exception of lentils which, quite understandably, he absolutely loathes. The ice cube trays so beloved of Karmel and co. have now been replaced with little pots
(note that all the mummys in the know get their Tupperware from Poundland), and generally Tristan eats good sized portions. Within a few days I had moved on from carrots to butternut squash soup (with
extra cumin to give it a nice warm flavour), and really any combination of the following: spinach, potato, sweet corn, courgettes, baked beans, peas, and peppers, mixed up with meat or fish. So, now at
just over seven months, a typical day looks like the following:
7am: milk
8am Breakfast: Bowl of porridge mixed with grated apple or mashed up
banana, or Weetabix with milk. For us breakfast is always the easiest
meal, mainly because Tristan adores porridge. Weetabix, which I used
to dread having to eat as a child, I now consider one of the greatest
inventions of the last century.
10am: milk
11.30 Lunch: I generally do baby-led at lunchtime which is usually
something on toast, such as cheese and apple, (see Baby & Toddler
Cookbook p.175) sardines, cream cheese or baked beans. Unless you
weigh the food before and after your baby has spent time with it
(Hugh’s advice is that meals should last no longer than half an hour
which I think is just about right) it’s impossible to know how much
they’ve eaten, and indeed it’s incredible where you find half-eaten
bits of bread. Therefore I often give Tristan banana mixed with
full-fat natural or Greek yogurt afterwards just to make sure that
he’s eaten enough.
4pm milk
5pm Teatime:  I used to make a special meal for Tristan, but now I try
and give him the leftovers of whatever my husband and I have eaten the
night before. The only real no-no for babies (besides honey which is
the latest fad thing to avoid as it’s been associated with botulism,
and certain types of fish which contain lots of mercury) is salt
(sugar too isn’t allowed). Low-salt stock cubes are the answer (I
apologise Hugh but, however much time I might have to spare, I will
never bring myself to make my own stock), and unsalted butter. So
Tristan happily eats minced beef, risotto and any kind of meat stew
for his dinner. If the latter is a bit watery, which it often is after
a spell in the freezer, I add baby rice or baby pasta to thicken it
up.
7pm milk

Despite eating all this food and, since you’re no doubt wondering, I’ll tell you that Tristan still doesn’t sleep through the night, but demands a couple of night feeds, usually around 11pm and 3am. However,
although I moan all the time about the fact that my baby still isn’t sleeping through, there is something quite nice about touching base with Tristan during the night. We snuggle up together while everyone else is sleeping and think about all the lovely things we’re going to eat in the days ahead.