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Beef and Vegetables: A recipe for babies to adults

I do not want my kids to adopt the same eating habits I had as a child. I was pretty much the worlds fussiest eater. I survived on: milk, macaroni and cheese, cheese pizza, turkey hot dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (on processed white bread), McNuggets, and of course, junk food (as if the other stuff wasn’t junk food…). Seriously, I’m not even joking. That is what I ate. All. The. Time.

Even when we went out for dinner, my parents would have to go through the drive through of McDonald’s to get my my nugget happy meal. Then we’d take my bright red box with yellow arch handles into the restaurant with us. I’d eat that, they’d eat the restaurant food. How embarrassing. For them. I was little, I didn’t care.

Hannah is proving to be a lot like I was when I was little. Sigh. Not as bad, by any means, but still picky and it’s hard to get her to try anything. She doesn’t like meat, except hot dogs (hmmm….sound familiar?), and the occasional chicken nugget. But, she does like vegetables (especially from the garden), fruit, and nuts, so she’s not doing too bad.

Daniel, he’ll eat pretty much anything. I’ve been giving him Rafferty’s Garden flavours of the world so he gets used to all different tastes and hopefully won’t turn out to be a horrible eater like I was.

I don’t know how to cook meat. I don’t like red meat. I think it tastes disgusting. But I still want my kids to eat it because I know it’s full of protein, vitamins, and iron. Aaron loves meat. Occasionally I attempt to cook it for him, but it always ends badly. Think chewing on a bit of car tire. Yeah, pretty much like that.

But, I’ve been asked to test some meat recipes that can feed the whole family (except me of course, because I don’t like it!), so I gave it another go. You can easily adapt the finished dish into puree, lumpy, finger food, and/or toddler fare. Awesome. That is just the sort of thing I need since I don’t have a lot of time cook. Well, I would, except that when I am in the kitchen, Daniel is not impressed. He stands up holding onto the baby gate, shakes the daylights out of it, and screams bloody murder whilst yelling “MUM, MUM-MUM, MUM!” So yeah, quick, easy recipes to feed the whole family would be a welcome change.

This is the fist recipe I tried (more to follow in the weeks to come). You can find the entire eBrochure, which is full of information and recipes for the whole family at The Main Meal. Keep reading below to find out how I went with the recipe.

When I glanced at the recipe, I saw that it said “prep time 15 mins, cooking time 8 mins.” Awesome. Quick, easy meal. But then, as I got everything out to start cooking, I realised they did not include the pumpkin in those times. You need the pumpkin to add to the blender to make it baby food, but it’s not actually included in the recipe. Kind of annoying.

That made my whole schedule a bit off, as the pumpkin takes longer to cook then the other stuff, but I continued with it anyway. I decided to roast the pumpkin, and also added some carrot in there as well since roasted carrot is so darn delicious. You could also cut them into small pieces and boil them instead (that would be faster and more easily mushed).

I thought I had skewers, but I didn’t. Sigh. So, I decided to just stir fry everything instead. I used red capsicum because that’s what I had in the fridge, and cut up a regular tomato instead of the cherry ones. It’s all about using what you have!

If it weren’t for the pumpkin, the prep and cook time is accurate, and it’s pretty darn easy to make too.

To make it Daniel (8 months old) friendly, I followed these instructions:

Daniel absolutely loved it. Scarfed it down like there was no tomorrow.

For Hannah, I followed these instructions. Minus the skewer, since I didn’t have any:

Much to my dismay, I have never gotten Hannah to try beef. Ever. Except for salami sticks. For some strange reason she loves those. Usually, she looks at it, turns her nose up, and declares she doesn’t like it. Yeah, before she even tries it (just like I did when I was little…Sorry Mom and Dad, now I know just how annoying that is!). So I didn’t really have high hopes.

But she did try it. She grabbed a piece of that meat and took a very decent sized bite, tearing the bit in her mouth from the bit in her hand with her teeth like a seasoned meat eater. And then she chewed. And swallowed. She didn’t even spit it out! I was flabbergasted!

“Do you like it?” I asked her.

“Yeah, it’s good!” She told me.

She didn’t eat any more of the meat, but she tried it. And that’s major progress, so that’s good enough for me!

As for Aaron? He liked it too. I think that’s the first beef thing I’ve made that he’s actually liked. It wasn’t like chewing a tire, and he ate it all. “It’s actually good.” He told me. Um…thanks.

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