Nanny - Cant cook, wont cook!!

[ziopin]

Hi

Have recently employed a lovely new nanny. She has fitted in really well with our frantic family life and the kids love her. Only one problem, she's not the best cook in the world!

Our old nanny would always cook a cooked lunch for the babies which would always include at least 2 veg, and they would always snack on at least 2 pieces of fruit a day too! (I know a real Mary Poppins!!)

Our new nanny prefers to treatthem to sausage rolls or pasties bought from the bakery & crisps. They also get to drink Coke!! She has enforced the fruit though, but I want her to be a bit more hands on with preparing good healthly meals for them (am frightened they will prefer this junk food!!)

What should I do?

er tell ehr not to
?

My approach would be - in fact has been - buy a good kids cook book, point it out to her in a general way "I got this coz I fancied trying a few different things for the kids..." then you could try a variety of approaches: "is there anything from that book you fancy doing next week...just let me know and I'll get the ingredients..." or "I bought the ingredients for...I wondered if you could do it one day this week...and there's some cold chicken left over from the weekend...could you do it with rice and veg for them...." or if you feel you need to really spell it out "could you try some of these meals, they need more veg...and can you keep crisps to a once a week treat..."

I'd ask her not to give them the coke, as well as twwtswah's suggestions

Tell her . She should know better . I prefer to give the healthy stuff as it keeps the kids on an even keel and not bouncing off the wall. Also if I feed them the healthy stuff it leaves the parents free to feed them the (rubbish lol) at weekends if they want to .And a definate NO to coke .

Just a thought go on www.nannyjob.co.uk (cant do links ) and ask them .

Makes sure your nanny knows your views regarding the food the children eat. While sausage rolls and coke can be good at parties, they are not really suitable in my opinion on a daily basis.

Bakery - nothing wrong with that, though far better to bake at home... it's not rocket science, and children love to help.

I recommend the following books:
The Dinner Lady - Jeanette Orrey ISBN:0-593-05429-6
The River Cottage Family Cookbook - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall ISBN: 0-340-82636-3

I also like a book of Nostalgic recipes from the 1940's and early 50's.
Feeding The Nation - Marguerite Patten OBE ISBN: 0-600-61472-7

Pick some of the easier recipies from these and ask nanny to follow them.
A simple one to start with is Pasta, Peas and Bacon (from The Dinner Lady), this really is easy and children eat it! Then get more adventurous and try Toad in the Hole - it is simple, but getting yorkshire pudding batter to rise is the challenge.

Cakes are easy to make... start with Muffins, as once mastered, you can try different flavourings: choc chip, cherry, apple, banana, blueberry to name but a few.

Corkflake Crunchies (cornflake cakes) and Krispie Cakes are also very easy to do, plus you can experiement with different types of ceral. Wheatabix sort of works!
Flapjacks are also easy, though I do still tend to overcook (burn) mine, so watch the timing!

Once those are mastered, your nanny can try making bread. I found a burger bun recipe on the web (from the US) that I found easy to make, alas can't locate a link for it right now. Bread rolls I find easier than loafs, so perhaps start with rolls. Also flat breads work quite well - see River Cottage Family Cookbook for flatbread recipe.

Plus, I find it's great to know how to:
Cook Rice
Make a basic white sauce

Rice, Sauce, Fish and Peas/Sweatcorn I find goes well - the children mix it all up into a gooey mess. It's lovely though, even works with tinned fish, though I find smoked fish is better.

I made it clear to our nanny at interview that nutricious cooking from scratch was an integral part of the job. She's not a great cook (don't think she's ever done this sort of cooking before) but she's been willing to have a go. They have their cooked meal at tea time (5pm) and this could be something she's fixed that day, our left overs from the night before or something out of the freezer (e.g. bolognaise sauce). A lot of what she prepares she freezes a portion or two from, and I try to do the same, so there's always something in the freezer. I don't tell her what to do, but did make very clear what we think is OK food (e.g. water or milk to drink). She rarely buys food except when stopping off in a cafe, and I don't keep in the house things I'd rather she didn't give them.

IIWY, I'd 'have a good chat' about this. BAN what you see as 'bad foods / drinks' (except at parties). Come up with a weekly menu with recipes from books (I like the two NannyNick has suggested) and with her cooking from scratch (rather than reheating) only 1-2 times per week, pref when the children are out / asleep if poss. Also give her a list of acceptable snacks (e.g. fruit / cheese / home-made cakes...) and deserts. Reinforce that if baking with the kids, results are not expected to be fab (it's the process for the children). Give your children fruit with their breakfast and tea if you are doing these. Get in veg that need minimal preparation and that you know your children will eat happily.

Hope that helps - I find cooking with the children around tricky, and manage best when it's something I'm familiar with preparing. Learning to cook for the first time whilst also managing small children must be tricky.

should add - I'm really impressed and pleased with how our nanny took to acheiving the types of food I'd always aimed for: she really took to heart my feelings on this. When I've taken my children to places they usually go to with her, the staff have commented "we know - they always have milk to drink and a banana snack". So thank you to her!

ziopin, can only suggest that you seek relatively healthy meals that are very easy to prepare. This is what I generally do. I leave frozen fish fingers and peas for one day, mince / salad to make spag bog for another day, eggs etc to make pancakes for another day. I make up the veg in the evenings. Also, I sometimes cook a stew in the evenings and leave it for her to heat up the next day.
I leave loads of fruit, and never have crisps or coke or sweets in stock in the house.
I would definitely ask her straight out, not to buy coke or pasties from the bakery, they are sooo unhealthy, I put on a couple of stone when I was eating them for my lunch!
My children's diet could be healthier, but this is a realistic solution for busy parents and a carer who is a novice cook.

ooooooooooooohhhhh..... I'd be having a serious talk with my nanny. Let's see if I can recall the eating rules off the top of my head:

Salmon once a week.
Eggs (w/ chopped spinach) twice a week.
At least one veg and one fruit every day.
No cookies/treats until after lunch has been eaten.
Dinner must contain a veg.
Whole meal bread / brown rice / not "manky white bread"
Nutrasweet is off limits (must read labels)
Juice, water, and milk are accceptable drinks.

I am the biggest Diet Coke addict there ever was, but if I caught my kids drinking coke I'd be very unhappy.

When our nanny started I gave her 'welcome pack' which had amongst other stuff, a list of 'stuff we like to eat', 'stuff we eat sometimes'ie. chips, 'stuff we never eat/drink ie. fizzy drinks, McD's

Also pointed out our 'easy veggie kids cook book' (left it out on kitchen counter rather than shelf).
And I fill freezer with packs of veg ready to be added to pasta/rice meals with no prep.

Agree with everyone else. You don't want them eating junk and drinking coke, so you need to say so explicitly. Think you like her so you don't want to be heavy handed but you have to begin the way you mean to continue I suppose.

Like Jura I think you need to set a weekly menu, she's a nanny not a cook, maybe hates cooking (I can sympathise with that) and is no good at it, so the simpler the better. Type up the recipes, slip them in folio covers and put them in a binder. If she can vary or do it better, great. Otherwise just make it idiot-proof for the beginning. Thinking along these lines:

Monday - vegetable soup with a loaf of brown bread; fruit salad; juice or water
Tuesday - spaghetti bolonaise; small pot of yoghurt with fruit
Wednesday - fish fingers, mashed potatoes, steamed peas; strawberries
Thursday - meatballs, rice, tomato sauce; caramel pudding
Friday - star shaped pasta in a tuna sauce; ice cream

That kind of very basic sort of thing. Even if she just has 3-4 weekly menus, it'll be varied enough for the kids to cope with. Maybe a couple of things frozen like lasagne or lamb stew that she just has to reheat. We don't have desserts usually, just fruit

I've always thought being a good nanny is knowing and caring about nutrition. The kids i look after are a delight to feed (i caught them young) . I cook from scratch but maybe once a week use something like organic sausages or fish fingers at a push.

I'm lucky i really enjoy cooking so don't see it as a chore but at the end of the day a nanny should be trying to feed the children healthy meals. I would buy her a very simple cook book that has the basics like a meat sauce for pasta, or if you have a griddle it's a easy to cook salmon or chicken. Roasted vegetables always go down well and are easy to prepare and pop in the oven and forget about which is good for me as i have 3 kids to look after. I always try to include a green veg at dinner and if i don't have much time we'll have salad or raw veg instead of cooking veg which is nice for variety and i don't overload on the carbs because we eat quite late and usually fruit and yoghurt for desert. Water or milk, they maybe have fruit juice once or twice a week. God i could go on i'm quite passionate about this subject as i can always see the change in behaviour when they eat different food which they do but just once in a while.

Tips: Don't add much to it!

Finely mince the meat
Finely chop onion
mix the two together
If adding breadcrumbs to make it go further, add a well beaten egg, to help it still be moist.
Shape, cover then put in fridge for a while (ideally an hour or so) prior to cooking.

Meatballs
--
these are really yummy thanks to the apple and not heavy (no breadcrumbs, egg etc) gleaned from somewhere and adapted but no idea now what the source was:

500g mincemeat (I use a half beef, half pork packet)
1 onion, chopped
1 chicken stock cube dissolved in 2 tbsp hot water
1 apple (peeled and grated) and then chopped a bit so balls don't fray and fall apart when you cook them
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
pinch of sugar
pepper
3 or 4 tablespoons of dried herbs (I always have dried parsley and chives at home but you can use fresh too of course)

Mix everything in a mixing bowl. Roll into little balls. Form a circle with your thumb and index finger - about that size. Roll in flour

Warm vegetable oil in a big pan or pot, fry over a high heat for about 3 minutes, turning over to fry all sides. Then lower the heat. Put the lid on and cook for about 12 minutes, turning.

They're nice hot or cold.

oops crossed wires. Sounds like I was criticising nanny's recipe but we just posted at the same time. Hadn't read hers first!

Thanks for all your messages ladies. Think I will have to genly tell her though, as yesterday she treated the kids to a starbucks!!

Love the meatball recipe will be trying that tonight, and have just bought a simple cookbook from amazon for her.

Have a lovley day all

Ziopin xx

As posted elsewhere, mine confessed to not knowing how to cook sausages last night (and couldn't work out from first principles given that I had left instructions on how to operate the grill and where to find the tin foil to put under the wire grid...). Working on how to teach her to cook from a distance