To think I am missing something

[monkeymamma]

Bought Annabel Karmel recipes as everyone seems to rave about them. For the life of me I cannot follow them to save myself. They all seem incredibly fiddly (more so than anything I make for me and DH). But I am desperate as ds2, like his brother before him, hates and despises anything I make myself (eg mushed veg and meat or even just mushed veg).
I'm making her one pot chicken now and just burned the onions before I'd even begun. No more onions in the house so I've picked off the blackest bits and forged ahead with the recipe. It doesn't look very appetising though.

I am not a great cook but muddle though (am sahp) with spag Bol, risotto etc.

I really want to not be a shit mum and raise ds on Ella's kitchen but it's so, so hard.

Secretly quite pissed off when people say 'oh we just give the baby what we eat'; as ds2 is still waking at 2hour intervals through the night (as he has done, apart from the dark days when he woke hourly, fr the last 9 months) and I am exhausted, ready meals and takeaways are getting us through :-(

I cannot do blw as the mess makes me freak out and also ds is a huge lad (99th centile) so chewing/sucking on the odd bit he is able to hold just won't fill his boots I'm afraid :-(

Have you tried this one? It's pretty sweet so my two adored it.
www.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/chicken-puree

I ended up using a slow cooker and batch cooling slimming world meals (as they have loads of veg hidden in them) - chilli, bolognese, chicken casserole ect. Then would just use a hand blender and whizz some down and freeze. You can freeze down the rest in tuuppleware

Well I mushed the semi burned pur??e and he actually ate some of it!!! So there are now six more portions of guilt-free food in the freezer. I really, really appreciate all the comments here (especially EatShitDerek's and all the others reminding me that not being perfect doesn't make me shit... Why does parenthood turn me into a crazy perfectionist?...). I genuinely thought I'd be flamed but you have been a lovely supportive lot! Thanks for all the recipe ideas too (I had no idea there's an Ella's Kitchen cookbook... Will be purchasing this). In the short term I'm going to take Chaz's brilliant advice and sit down with a cuppa :-)

just buy the jars. Noone will know or give a shit six months from now

Pouches are absolutely fine, decent food for babies (and me, I love a bit of apple pur??e as a snack).

I suppose it's easy enough for me to say because I'm a confident cook, but the time you're wasting struggling with Annabellend Smarm-face recipes you could be batch cooking good, wholesome simple meals for the whole family. Bologneses, cottage pies, pasta sauces. Just use salt free stock cubes and plenty of herbs and spices to boost flavour.

It's a myth that babies only like bland food. I weaned mine on mild Thai curries, sauces full of smoked paprika and the like. There's no way I could have stomached the bland slop AK passes off as food and I didn't want the DC getting used to it then struggling to transition to what we eat as a family.

Can I recommend you get a slow cooker? Chuck raw ingredients in of a morning. Lovely dinner to eat at 6pm. Very baby friendly.

Whatever you an do to get through the day! I feed a mix of pouches and home made stuff. Sometimes he really doesn't like what I make him but he will always wolf down a pouch. I know what you mean about the AK recipes - some are a lot more effort than I would bother for me and DH but I try and make up batches and freeze, then think about the effort spread over all those meals. PITA at the time though!

OH and I tend to eat a lot of rich food or stuff that isn't really suitable for DS so I don't do the he eats what we eat thing yet.

Does your DH like to cook? Mine used to batch-cook food for the babies at weekends and still does the odd bit now they are older, to stash away in pots in the freezer for during the week.

My DH is a "feeder" so it was a win/win, I could give them home-cooked food in addition to lots of Ella's packets and he could get the buzz from feeding and nurturing our DCs.

Could that work for you?

I gave up and went for the packets otherwise, because the frustration of cooking something that got thrown on the floor or smeared on the wall was all-consuming.

They also ate a lot of scrambled eggs and baked beans with toast fingers...

Mashed banana and avocado, eaten cold so minutes to make Sounds foul to me but I've seen a few toddlers wolf it down now.

Obv can't "batch cook " it though as it goes brown pretty quickly.

Never used jars with mine but have had plenty of "fish finger" dinners over they years ie dinners that are just stuck in the oven and some frozen veg alongside

Why don't you just spoon feed child what you eat if you don't want to do BLW? Spag bol, risotto etc can be spoon fed?

Ps I have both the AK book and the BLW recipe book and have never made a recipe from either. To much faff.. I just make what we eat but go easy on salt and spice (don't use much salt anyway)

Here are two of my quick cheat instant(ish) meals

Pureed strawberries mixed with ricotta
Sweet potato baked in its skin in the microwave mashed and mixed with some cream cheese or tuna or shreaded chicken.

We also used to blitz family meals that had been cooked without salt. Not to mention the time DH pureed up some of our thai prawn curry by mistake and fed it to DS1 (no DH I meant the other bowl in the fridge!)

Annabel Karmel apparently had a full time nanny when hers were young enough to have the fiddly recipes she produces. Once I knew that I felt much better.

I think Ella's pouches are fine. You shouldn't feel bad about feeding that.

www.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/easy-one-pot-chicken

Is this the recipe you're using? It doesn't seem all that challenging. I'd still buy the pouches, mind, I'm just not seeing it as "fiddly."