Back to basics

It’s been a tough week food-wise here at Chez Mama! Doesn’t matter what we serve up – even pizza that he made himself is refused by Little Man. Yesterday, I decided to dig out the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook and follow a few recipes for decent finger foods, in the hopes that even if he wouldn’t eat a full dinner for me, Little Man might eat some finger foods. I was all set to make our old favourite Tuna Croquettes, when I discovered we were missing one minor ingredient – tuna! I decided to make do with whatever we had in the presses instead, which turned out to be tinned sardines in tomato sauce. Bad idea. Sardines don’t flake in the same way that tuna does to give the croquettes a nice texture, and the tomato sauce just didn’t work at all. “Yuch!” said Little Man. Fair enough – I agreed!

Not one to give up that easily, I took another look in the presses to see what we had, and found a tin of chickpeas that I didn’t remember buying. Don’t worry – they were still in date. So, following the recipe for Chickpea Patties in the Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook, I threw the chickpeas in the blender, together with some onion, garlic, lemon juice, and spices and blitzed the whole mixture.

Then I added some flour, and rolled the mixture into balls, before putting them in the fridge to set. About an hour later, I fried them up in a little bit of oil.

I have to admit, they looked and smelled delicious once they were fried. Of course you can guess what happened next. “I no like chick pea.” 

“That’s it,” I thought, “No more of this – he eats it or he doesn’t. And if he gets hungry enough he’ll eat.” I don’t know why this phase of not eating has been bugging me this week. This happens every now and again – Little Man doesn’t eat for three or four days, and then he eats all around him. Just seems to be the way his system works.

So this evening, dinner was a zero-effort affair. Sausage, mash, beans, and carrots. You can guess what happened. Little Man cleared his plate, and ate all of Charlie’s carrots too. I was calculating afterwards – I think he polished off three whole carrots all by himself.

Toddlers, eh?