BLW September: Days 1 and 2

So here is the first installment in a month of posts detailing our baby-led weaning menus.

Day 1

Breakfast: Fruit scones, with unsalted spreadable butter (Lurpak). 
The fruit scones were made on Friday evening to a basic recipe from the BLW cookbook which doesn't use eggs or sugar (just flour, butter, milk and baking powder). I added some of the blueberries we'd had in this week's organic box to make a sweet, breakfast scone. It made enough for 1 adult and 1 baby for 3 breakfasts (plus a couple of sample ones for Daddy!) They were scoffed!

Lunch: Houmous on pitta bread. 
The houmous was made for last week's lunches, but the recipe in the BLW cookbook makes a fair amount so there was some left over for Saturday. However, the baby wasn't remotely interested, so after about 10 minutes and most of the pitta on the floor we gave up and just had some apple from Daddy's sandwich instead.

Dinner: Pancakes.
Made to a standard recipe, with some more apple slices rolled inside.

Day 2

Breakfast: Yoghurt with pureed plum.
The yoghurt was Yeo Valley organic natural yoghurt and the plum puree was left over from the mincemeat I was making last night (plums with a little bit of orange juice). The puree was warmed slightly with some caster sugar added (our garden plums are quite tart). This provided great spoon practice and at least some of it went in her mouth and was swallowed, although an awful lot went down her chin too!

Lunch: Savoury flapjack. 
Made the day before, based on a BLW cookbook recipe, there are enough for 1 baby and 1 adult for 3 generous lunches. I did tinker with the recipe quantities and the cooking time and if making again, I'd make an effort to remove some of the excess water from the grated courgette by squeezing it in a tea towel before adding it to the mixture. The flapjacks were particularly yummy, so here's the recipe:

Cheese, carrot and courgette flapjack
300g porridge oats (not instant or jumbo oats)
100g carrot, grated
100g courgette, grated
250g mature cheddar
100g butter
2 eggs, beaten

Melt the butter in a large pan over a low heat. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. Spread out in a baking tin - a Swiss roll tin would be ideal, but I just used a standard baking tray - so that the mixture is about 1 or 2cm thick. Press down with the back of a spoon. Put in an oven, preheated to 180 C. The recipe said to allow 20 minutes for the flapjack to become golden brown, but because of the excess water from my vegetables, mine took more like 40 minutes to be cooked.

Dinner: Toad-in-the-hole, braised cabbage and runner beans. 
The cabbage is from the organic box and the runner beans are from the garden. The sausages for the Toad-in-the-hole come from our village butcher and are a Cumberland variety. We had our adult portions with some Bisto gravy. All of it was sampled, but the sausage and batter went down particularly well. Baby also had fun trying to pick up the tiny beans from inside the runner bean pod - she finally got one to her mouth, but then it stuck to her finger and she couldn't get it in, so she went back to the sausages!