A birthday in pictures - taken by Stu

1. "Mummy - I got a trike"

2. The small boy chatting through his own naming ceremony

3. Making everyone cry. I made the bunting - with marvellous step by step instructions here

4. That cake, with that icing - made by Auntie Rach - he can have a kids cake next year when he gives a fig. You can get the recipe here.

5. Blowing out the candle

6. Mr Jones trying to lead the boy to the dark side....

7. The boy showing Daddy that babies don't do chocolate - they like strawberries

8. With Pops in the rain

9. Teddy at the after party

10. A little something to say thanks for coming

11. Having some down time watching the rain

Those granola bar/ flap jack thingies

You know the ones, the ones that were in the boys party goodie bag - it seems they were a bit of a hit. The recipe has been asked for. I will oblige - but do forgive me if they don't turn out quite the same because it's one of those a bit of this a bit of that recipes and it's different every time I make it. But the good news is it's always yummy and the boy always eats it.

You will need:
80g butter
140g maple syrup (if your baby is over one you could use honey. If you're being old school you could use golden syrup and sugar - but I went with maple syrup because I can convince myself that it's "natural, healthy sugar")
130g porridge oats (Sometimes a bit more if you've been heavy handed with the syrup)
35g dried dates soaked in boiled water for 5 minutes and then blitzed with enough water to form a sludgy, gooey paste
About 80g of dried fruit chopped up - try apricots, prunes, dates, raisins, cranberries, dried apple - whatever is in the cupboard.
A few tablespoons of a mixture of pumpkin and sunflower seeds
25g dessicated coconut

Melt the butter in a saucepan with the maple syrup, mix in the date paste. Mix up all the dry ingredients and stir into the saucepan. Try not to eat too much of it. Press into a baking tray (no need to grease it) and bake for 15 minutes at 180 or until golden on top. It will still be soft when you take it out of the oven but it will firm up as it cools. Once cool cut into bars making sure to break off lots of crumbly bits to eat yourself.

Surprisingly sweet muffins

Sugar is evil in the world of small people - although I am gradually coming around to the fact that at some point he is going to have to have sugar. In fact I know that my mother has already fed him a hefty portion of Victoria Sponge - her line of defense at my raised eye brows was: "what? I gave him a piece without any jam."

So, naughty grannies aside I do try to limit the small ones sugar intake and these muffins satisfy his sweet tooth without one single grain. They look a bit dubious and I wouldn't say they were particulary cake like - but they will even do for grown ups on days when the freezer is lacking Ben and Jerrys and a yogurt just won't do. The recipe is from the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook.

Preheat the oven to 180/350/Gas 4 and line a muffin tin with cases.

Mix together two eggs, 100ml sunflower oil, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Sift 225g wholemeal self raising flour into another bowl and add 2 medium carrots grated, 2 dessert apples peeled and grated, 100g dates (If you can only get dried ones - which is all I can get usually soak them first), 50g desiccated coconut, 50g finely chopped pecans or walnuts and half a teaspoon each of ground cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir briefly, then make a well in the centra and add the egg mixture - fold lightly (it'll be quite lumpy). Spoon into the muffin tin and bake for 15-25 minutes until golden and springy.

When cooled feed to small boys and any visiting small girls. They freeze well too. Marvllously good if you're worried about your child's iron intake and they refuse to eat meat or eggs because their egg content is beautifully disguised. Plus the carrots and apples add vitamin c for built in iron absorption - what's not to love?

Back to work in two weeks. Such is my fear of being trapped in an office again that I have already offered Ben Fogle my services in the Hebrides. Sod work, I'm moving us all to a crofters cottage with a couple of sheep, a log burner and Boden by carrier pigeon.

Croque Monsieur - warning - possible inflammatory content

If you are French, or have a fear of people fiddling with the classics then you may want to look away now....



This is my version of a Croque Monsieur - I wanted to get a bit of cordon bleu into the small boy. But a traditional Croque is somewhat lacking in vegetables so I tweaked it with the addition of some baby pasta sauce - that mothership of a sauce packed with any veg from the fridge blitzed with a tin of chopped tomatoes. In essence it's just a posh toastie, or perhaps a peasant version of a calzone?? To Rufus it's just yum.

Take two slices of bread - in France they'd probably be white. Butter one side. On the unbuttered side of one of your pieces of bread spread your baby pasta sauce, layer over some ham and then top with white/cheese sauce left over from making a lasagne/canneloni/cauliflower cheese. Squish the other piece of bread (butter side up) on top. Fry in a dry frying pan until lovely and crisp and toasty. Cut into chunks and listen to your baby go mmmmmmmmmm, mmmmmmmmmmm, mmmmmmmmmm until it's all gone. (I cut off the crusts - I pretend this is for Rufus, but really it's just because I want to eat them - I want my hair to be curly).

Pancake day

It's tomorrow - or today - depending on when you read this. I do love a good pancake. My nine year old self use to have them for breakfast everyday - about seven of them. I cooked them myself in an old cast iron pan. Mum was having none of that faffing every morning and has never understood why I couldn't just have toast or cereal like any normal child. But then - I've never been normal.

When I was about seven months pregnant I had pancakes for breakfast with sugar and lemon, I could just about keep them down. Master Jones loves a good pancake. He is most partial to the fluffy American version a la Jamie Oliver - see the recipe here, I can't be bothered to copy it today. We have them for breakfast every weekend, with bananas on them usually.

Because Rufus still isn't a fan of meat - no teeth still - which makes it hard to chew - I have to think of other ways to get iron into him. Eggs are a great source, as is green leafy veg. So I whipped up a batch of pancakes (the traditional English style ones - if you need a recipe I hear Delia's is good. I have been making my own version since I was nine - I don't measure anything so I'd be a useless source of pancake recipe)

Pancakes neatly stacked I sauted an onion and a little crushed garlic with a smidgen of grated nutmeg. Then I shoved several large handfuls of spinach into in the frying pan and let it wilt down. Then I chopped it very, very, very finely with a knife.

DO NOT under any circumstance miss the chopping step. I have first hand experience of long stringy bits of spinach. They get caught in the back of your throat when you're out for dinner with Mr Jones and his dad is a very nice Italian restaurant on Regents Park Road. You make loud, attention grabbing, gagging noises, gulp water in vain, and then end up ramming your entire hand down your gullet to remove the offending article while your boyfriend's dad looks on in utter horror at the sweaty retching mess that was moments before the "on her best behaviour and trying to make a good impression" girlfriend of his only son. Mortifying is not the word - no one should have to go through it. Moral of the tale - never order spinach based recipes on important occasions (or in my case - ever) and always, always finely chop it when you're cooking.

Anyway - chop up the spinach and squeeze out any extra juice. You can do this in a colander with the back of a wooden spoon. Then mix together with a tub of ricotta cheese and season with pepper (and salt if you're a grown up).

Spread a a good slathering over your pancakes and roll each one up into a tube. I offered Rufus these at this point and they were rejected outright. So in a "you will have iron in your diet" strop - I poured some homemade pasta sauce (crammed with additional blitzed up veg) into the base of a dish, stuck in the spinach and ricotta filled pancakes, poured over some more pasta sauce (you could use a jarred one) and finally some cheese sauce, then grated cheese on the top and baked it at 180 for 30 minutes. Et voila - Spinach and ricotta pancake bake - just in time for panacke day. He couldn't eat it fast enough and now looks like Popeye.

Sweet potato veggie cake thingys

He wasn't so much a fan of these - but I liked them. Chop up a pepper, courgette and an onion into similar sized chunks, drizzle with olive oil and roast until soft and sweet. Chop up with a knife into a chunky paste and then mix with left over sweet potato mash and a good handful of cheese. You can add an egg if you like to bind them a bit more, but I'd run out so I didn't bother. Shape into mini burgers and fry in a little olive oil until golden.

I think the reason he isn't a fan is that they are quite soft and therefore are a bit tricky to pick up - even when sliced into fingers - maybe next time I'll make them into little croquettes and roll them in breadcrumbs - in fact you do that - ignore the pattie/cake/burger idea. Meanwhile I'll have to try and coax him into eating the 500 I have left in the freezer.

Share and share alike

I am feeling uninspired kitchen wise today - can you help? What should I give the small boy for his dinner? Tried and tested recipes very welcome - especially those that are good for small people with no teeth. Do leave comments on the actual blog or on facebook - whatever suits you. I await with bated breath, wearing a pinny, with a wooden spoon in my hand....

Soup

It took me a while to come around to the idea that Rufus might actually eat soup. I wasn't about to give him a spoon and let him loose with a bowl on his own - I am not that stupid (most of the time). But then it occurred to me that I could dunk bits of bread into it for him and he could feed himself those, while I snuck the odd spoonful into his mouth while none of the baby led weaning police were looking. It worked quite well. He ate the whole bowlful. We started with butternut squash and have moved onto chicken.

Butternut squash soup - fry up a sliced onion, a sliced leek and a crushed garlic clove in olive oil. Peel and chunk up half a butternut squash, throw in a roughly chopped sweet potato if you happen to have peeled too many for sweet potato chips the night before like I had. Allow to soften for a bit and then add some homemade chicken stock and leave to bubble. Get distracted, then sprint back into the kitchen some 40 minutes later to discover that your soup is nicely reduced and just needs to be whizzed up in a blender - perfect.

Chicken soup - roast a chicken, eat all the best bits and then bung the rest in a large stock pot. Chop an onion into quarters, don't bother peeling it, do the same with a leek and a couple of carrots - add them all to the pot with a bay leaf, some thyme and parsley and some peppercorns. Cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Turn down to a simmer and leave to bubble for at least an hour and a half with the lid half on. Leave to cool (I left it over night). Strain off the liquid into another pan. Pick the meat off the chicken and drop into your stock along with the now very tender bits of carrot (you can slip the skins off now quite easily) and the insides of the onions. Blitz this up with a blender until smooth and creamy.

In another pan gently sweat down some sliced leeks, garlic and finely diced carrot in some butter and olive oil. When soft add a table spoon of plain flour and stir. After a minute or so add in the blitzed up chickeny stock and heat through until slightly thickened. You can toss in some peas too if you like. I tend to bag this up into portion sized batches and then put the peas in when I reheat it. I was suprised at how lovely this is - I'd say it could rival heinz and pee all over the New Covent Garden chicken soup that I ate a lot of when I was pregnant.

Things on toast

There are no pictures - we all know what toast looks like. The small boy is a fan of toast. He has wholegrain, we don't do white bread in this house, unless it's a baguette or perhaps a bit of sour dough. Anyway this week we've been creating toast toppers. We thought we'd share some favourites:

Sardines (I was surprised how quickly this was wolfed down) - simply mash a few bits of tinned sardine - in olive oil not brine or tomato sauce - with some finely chopped fresh tomatoes and a few basil leaves. Fabulous source of omega three fatty acids for creating genius children who can win scholarships to expensive local schools. And packed with calcium (although I did remove the scary looking back bone from the fishes - I couldn't face watching him eat spine)

Mashed avocado with a little chilli sauce and a spritz of lime. So gucamole then! More essential fats for brain building.

Salmon spread - a tin of salmon mixed with a tub of ricotta cheese, lemon zest and juice to taste, a grind of pepper and a spoonful of natural yogurt to cut the richness. It's gloriously pink and terribly stinky. I've frozen a load - hopefully it will be alright.

Houmous made from a tin of chickpeas whizzed up with two or three tablespoons of tahini - which incidentally you can buy in waitrose - after three shops I finally found it, it's in the pasta aisle on the bottom shelf on the left hand side underneath the curry sauces (lord knows why?!). A clove of garlic, a squeeze of lemon, a good slug of olive oil and some water - and a bit more olive oil and a bit more tahini. It's crying out for salt at this point, but of course I didn't add any.

Next week I think we'll try whizzed up roasted med veg - aubergines, peppers, red onions and courgettes drizzled with olive oil and roasted until sweet and yummy. Perhaps with a few basil leaves added in for good measure.

Oooh and we could do leek and cannelini bean mash - fry finely slices leeks in olive oil with garlic until soft and sticky. Drain and rinse a tin of cannelini beans and add to the pan. Fry to heat through then mash to combine and spread on any willing receptacle. When I was a lonely girl in London I used to make huge mounds of this and top it with a piece of cod that had been baked in the oven en papilotte (a posh way of saying in a tin foil/baking paper parcel) with some pesto - it's yum- bu Mr Jones finds it "too much". An extra drizzle of olive oil at the end never goes amiss.

Sometimes I worry that he eats too much bread, but it does seem to be a great way to get other things down him. He has become fickle about bananas - seems he's not a fan unless they are boardering on over ripe, just how I hate them.

Mini omelettes

These are perfect for the supremely lazy - you can make a batch and keep them in the fridge for a few days. They're great cold too. When they first come out of the oven they are all puffy and golden. Then, rather depressingly, they sink down to a flatter more omeletty shape as they cool. But thankfully this has no effect whatsoever on their flavour.

Ideal for babies, but if you don't have one and are the sort of person who likes to "give" parties and serve canapes alongside a carefully chosen cocktail or two (I used to try and give sophisticated parties like this - but Mr Jones and his friends always managed to turn them into drunken melees in which someone invariably ended up pegged to the washing line) - anyway - if you do like to hold a classy do then these would actually make simple canapes. You could even get all fancy and top with smoked salmon and creme fraiche and snip up a few chives - that would be ever so Nigella.

Anyway - grease a bun tin and pre-heat the oven to 180 (I pretty much cook everything at 180). A two egg mix will make you five or six mini omelettes - a four egg mix will obviously do double that - and all the maths inbetween I'll leave you to work out.

So whisk up your eggs and then stir in your filling. These were made with chopped up spinach which had been lightly wilted in a pan with some fried onion and garlic and a bit of grated nutmeg. Then I added some grated cheese.

But you can do anything - lightly sauted cougette and garlic with feta. Broccoli and cheddar, or broccoli and salmon, tomato and cheese, mushroom and parmesan, leek and cheddar.......

Mix your filling with your egg and then spoon into the waiting bun tin. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes or so or until puffed and golden. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes before carefully removing with a palate knife. They do stick a bit - at least in my tin they do. Butter seems to work better than olive oil for greasing for these.

Rufus had them for lunch. I sang this song to aid his digestion. If you're having a swanky cocktail party I might suggest a different soundtrack. I would like it noted that I DID NOT do the actions.

Quesadillas

Rufus loves these, I was quite surprised, I thought they might be a bit "sophisticated" for a baby palate, but no, he can't get enough. He evern ate them in John Lewis' cafe while people watching and being told not to judge others by their table manners (I fear I maybe rubbing off on him just a bit too much!)



Make up a batch of baby pasta sauce (detailed directions to come next time I make some but basically stick a whole load of finely chopped veg such as onions, carrots. courgettes, leeks and peppers in a pot and saute until soft, add garlic and tinned toms and whatever herbs you fancy and then blitz until smooth - a sneaky way to add in extra veg). Spread a tablespoonful over half of a wholewheat tortilla wrap. Grate over a whole bunch of cheese and fold in half. Pop in a dry frying pan on a medium heat and fry until the cheese melts and the wrap is on the way to crispy. Turn halfway through. I have also made these with blitzed up bolognaise to get meat into him and it went down a treat.

I cut it into fingers and top the fingers with gucamole. Just mash a quarter of an avocado in a small bowl. If you have a set of Nigella mixing bowls then the smallest one is perfect for this. I used to have a set of Nigella mixing bowls until Mr Jones broke the smallest one. But I'm not bitter about it. In case you were wondering it can't be replaced, they aren't sold individually, you have to buy a whole new set. I'd like to add that I was very brave on the fateful day - I didn't even cry. Anyway - mash your advocado in a small bowl and spritz on a little fresh lime juice. I add the merest smidgen of a dash of sweet chilli sauce to mine - but you can leave it out - and a bit of pepper.

Courgette and feta fritters

Now these are lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely. In the summer when Mr Jones and I had courgettes coming out of our ears these were a staple part of our diet. Perfect with a crisp green salad and a hunk of crusty bread. Or with pitta breads and houmous.

If you're a baby you tend to ignore the salad (lettuce makes you gag) and just go for the fritters - which is good because they're full of vitamins and calcium and are a good introduction to cheeses other than the humble (but actually quite heavenly) cheddar.

Rufus loves them - possibly because I went through a stage when pregnant when all I could stomach was pasta with lightly fried grated courgette.

The recipe is borrowed from Nigel Slater whose books I love to read, but whom I cannot stand to watch on television.

Grate two or three large courgettes into a colander. (In the grown up version sprinkle with salt and leave to stand for 30 minutes before squeezing out the juice - in the baby version, just squeeze out as much juice as you can now). Pat dry in kitchen paper.

Finely chop an onion and fry in a little olive oil until softened and starting to turn golden brown. You can add garlic here too if you like. Add the courgettes to the pan and fry gently until everything is lightly golden. Sprinkle over a heaped tablespoon of flour and about half a slab of crumbled feta cheese (or less or more - it's up to you). Season with pepper (should be salty enough if you've salted the courgettes and if you're making for babies you don't need the salt). Whisk an egg and gradually add it to make a stickyish mixture. You might not need it all. If it seems to sloppy just add a bit more flour.

Put some oil in a frying pan on a medium heat and when it's hot drop in dollop fulls of the mixture and fry on both sides for a few minutes until lightly browned. They are very fragile so take care when frying and turning. Leave to drain on kitchen paper. Lovely hot or cold.

Savoury flapjacks

I promised recipes - so here we go. Sorry for the delay - the boy is poorly still and I've had work to do. But now I'm done and he seems to be on the mend. We missed a get together with his bestest friends yesterday, but we dropped off some of these flapjacks so we weren't missed too much. They seem to have gone down a storm and I've had many requests for the recipe. It came from the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook - which on first glance appeared disappointing, but on second perusal appears a bit more promising.

Please note - I am no food photographer - and I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered to do a step by step - but it's fairly simple.

Preheat your oven to 180c/gas mark 4. Melt 100g butter in a saucepan. Take off the heat an add 300g porridge oats, 350g of cheese (I used cheddar) and two beaten eggs (don't forget these - I nearly did). At this point you can add in optional veggies for a lighter and slightly more nutritious flapjack. I added 300g of grated carrot, but you could do grated sweet potato, parsnip, courgette and the book even sugests red onion (but I think I'd be tempted to fry it off a bit first in olive oil to take some of the strength out of it and release the sweetness). Press the mixture into the greased tin using the back of a spoon (or your fingers, which I found easier), it should be about 1cmthick. Bake for 20 mins until golden brown. Leave to cool in the tin for five mnutes, then cut into slices and cool on a rack.

The oats in this mean that they're a bit more filling than your average flour based bake and add plenty of veggies and you have a good dose of anti-oxidant vitamins too. There's calcium from the cheese and protein from the eggs - so a pretty balanced little recipes really. And if you don't have a weaning baby on your hands they're still tasty - although if you're on a diet they're probably best avoided because all that cheese makes for a pretty hefty calorie intake.

Master Jones hasn't given an official verdict on these yet because he's been off his food for the last three days, poor little mite. But we're hoping to tempt him with one tomorrow - luckily they keep well in an air tight box.

The stew

Warning!

If you make this recipe your baby will end up looking like this

Rufus loves stew. As a rule I never used to eat them. Then it started snowing and I dug out the le creuset and felt the need for something warming. It is a Jamie Oliver recipe in truth - I find that a lot of his recipes can be adapted - just take out the salt and make the bits easy for small paws to grasp. In order not to be "done" for infringing copyright laws here is a link to Mr Oliver's website and a big plug for all of his books - they are marvellous. Other recipes will be all my own work - I promise. This is just Rufus' favourite - besides eggy bread (or French Toast if you're being all American and posh).

One quick word - I am happy to use wine in cooking for Rufus - the alcohol cooks off and that just leaves flavour. If you read the Daily Mail and would like to comment on this feel free. If you write for the Mail and would like to do an article on the state of motherhood today feel free to quote me as a lush.

Now to the stew - there is no pic for this - it looks like a stew. It tastes good. It's from the Jamie's Dinners book.

Beef Stew
• olive oil and a knob of butter for good measure
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped
• a handful of fresh sage leaves (I didn’t have sage so I used thyme instead and it worked well)
• 800g/1¾lb stewing steak or beef skirt, cut into 5cm/2 inch pieces
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper (can leave salt out)
• flour, to dust
• 2 parsnips, peeled and quartered
• 4 carrots, peeled and halved
• ½ a butternut squash, halved, deseeded and roughly diced
• 500g/1lb 2oz small potatoes
• 2 tablespoons tomato purée
• ½ a bottle of red wine
* 285ml/½ pint beef or vegetable stock (use baby stock if you are a true salt nazi)

Preheat the oven to 160ºC/300ºF/gas 2. Put a little oil and your knob of butter into an appropriately sized pot or casserole pan. Add your onion and all the sage leaves and fry for 3 or 4 minutes. Toss the meat in a little seasoned flour, then add it to the pan with all the vegetables, the tomato purée, wine and stock, and gently stir together. Season generously with freshly ground black pepper and just a little salt. Bring to the boil, place a lid on top, then cook in the preheated oven until the meat is tender. Sometimes this takes 3 hours, sometimes 4 – it depends on what cut of meat you’re using and how fresh it is. The only way to test is to mash up a piece of meat and if it falls apart easily it’s ready. Once it’s cooked, you can turn the oven down to about 110°C/225°F/gas ¼ and just hold it there until you’re ready to eat.

I left the veg fairly chunky and Rufus just helps himself to chunks of carrot etc – I always give him bits of beef too but he tends not to pick them up so I pop little bits in his mouth if he’s in the right mood. often he chews them for a while and then spits it out because I think even meat this tender is hard to keep chewing with no teeth. It’s great re heated too. I made the whole lot and froze half and it’s fine once frozen too.

The wonderful world of food

If you know of me at all you will no doubt be aware that I like a good meal. I do not under any circumstances understand people for whom food is mere fuel. To me food is the world's greatest pleasure. I firmly believe that I was put on this earth to eat. So it was not without excitement that I approached the whole weaning thing.

There are two schools of thought these days when it comes to introducing your baby to food. The traditional way with all the purees, Annabel Karmel books and a bit of mess; and the new fangled. hippyish, baby led weaning way - which involves no pureeing, letting your baby feed itself from a very wide range of "normal" food and a whole lot of mess.

Now, keen as I was to start Rufus on his life long journey of eating and hopefully enjoying food, I decided that despite the fact I could have started it all off at 17 weeks, the whole puree thing really wasn't up my alley. Who wants to eat pureed swede for a week with only a bit of pureed apple to spice things up? Certainly not me. Nope it was going to be baby led weaning all the way for me. So we waited until he was six months old and then went for it. (I will add that after much pressure from members of the older generation we did try purees at about 22 weeks but luckily Master Jones, clearly a gourmand from birth, was having none of it).

Anyway I had visions of myself in a pinny (indulge me in a bit of 50s housewife imagery if you will - see the perfectly coiffed hair, the impossibly slim waist, the big old American style fridge and the shiny faced children sat around a formica kitchen table) whipping up culinary master pieces for my son to scoff down with gusto. I saw the satisfied smile on my face as he's lean back at the end of each meal, let out a small, but satisfied burp and smile adoringly up at me as if to thank me for the tasty feast I'd set out before him.

I read the book - it all sounded good to me. Rufus would be eating our leftovers, nibbling morsels from my plate and would gradually introduce himself to a wide variety of foods ensure that he will never become a picky eater. So far, so marvellous.

We began tentatively with toast. It seemed a natural progression since he'd been trying to eat my breakfast for weeks. He squished it a bit, and then a bit harder until it crumbled into bits and made for the floor. A few bits got as far as being sucked - which was an improvement on the previous week when we'd given him a bit of apple to play with. He understood that it needed to go into his mouth - but hadn't quite worked out how to get it there. Instead he took him mouth to the apple and ended up bent over double gumming the apple that he held firmly in his lap - bless.

Sticks of roasted veg went down well, as did bits of poached pear and the odd slice of mango. But I couldn't help thinking that the floor was getting a better diet than he was.

The Health Visitor, she who was not concerned about his weight in the slightest, told me to go for it. To get as many calories into him as possible. She recommended that the only thing I spoon feed him should be porridge made with full fat cows milk. She sent me out for normal porridge oats, warning me off all forms of "baby food". I served this up for breakfast - the first spoonful was met with a wince, the second with a full on gag and the third with a flat refusal. Hmmmm not so good.

After a few days I worked out that he could handle chunks and chewing if they didn't come on a spoon. But anything that came his way travelling on a piece of cutlery had to be super smooth and bordering on liquid. So I sieved a banana and made up some baby porridge and it went down. I could hear the cries of the baby led weaning purists growing louder with every mouthful.

These days I can hear them tutting at every meal - because while he is utterly marvellous at feeding himself and has come on in leaps and bounds, he does tend to get bored/lazy before he's filled up his tummy. He starts off ramming food into his mouth at a pace. He usually has something in each hand and often tries to cram everything in at once. Then he gets tired and sits with his arms out to the sides twisting his hands at the wrists and making a funny groaning noise. And because he has been a skinny bean for so long and because I want him to be heading the right way on the weight charts for once I tend to help. Which I'm sure is very naughty - but I just break up piece of food into bite sized chunks and hold them in front of his face, if he opens his mouth I pop them in, if he doesn't open I don't. What is not baby led about that.

SO we are cooking without salt (a revelation for me - Miss Sodium 2010), we have resigned ourselves to the fact that the kitchen rug will at some point in the not so distant future need replacing, we have informed everyone that houmous/gucamole/toast/stew/fruit puree is indeed the new black and is all anyone with a small child will be wearing this autumn/winter - and probably spring/summer too. And of course we are in constant search of new recipes to tempt him with.

While the book suggests that your baby can at six months eat whatever you're eating we're not quite sure that he could manage a fajita, or would particularly like a Mauritian prawn curry, or steak and cannelini beans. Nor do we want to live on stew, pasta bake or homemade fish goujons. Plus Mr Jones and I are back on a healthy eating mission - and Master Jones needs full fat, not low fat - so I've ended up doing a fair bit of extra cooking - but at least it's not purees.

I love cooking for him and it's fun coming up with new baby friendly recipes. He doesn't love them all - meat usually brings forth a rage and broccoli isn't a big hit unless it's carefully disguised. I do like to share a good recipe, so the ones that are a success I shall post here - along with step by step pics if I have time.

The best news is that it's working - the little man is putting on chunk sharpish and I love blowing raspberries on his little pot belly.