Terrible Cook

[Rose1999]

How do I feed my 12 month old correctly when I just cannot cook?

I’m in my 30’s, so no excuse, and I’m an awful cook. I’ve never ever enjoyed it, so actively avoided it my whole life. It causes me a LOT of stress and anxiety.

However, I now have a baby and I don’t want her to eat rubbish. But I’m totally stuck. I ordered Hello Fresh, hoping it would be a good start. But I even failed with a simple recipe and have no dinner as a result (my daughter had her 12 month pouch earlier).

I hate myself right now. I feel like a terrible terrible mother and I don’t know how to make it right 😞

Is there any cooking classes in your local area you could maybe attend? ❤️

Maybe hello fresh is over complicating it a bit. Cook some chicken in the oven and boil some veg, you can’t be bad at that. Next boil veg with a different protein and keep working at it. Simple recipes

How do you fail? What ways? Technique, distraction, ingredients?
What meals can you cook reliably well?

You can definitely learn! Where is it you usually go wrong? Is it some steps being skipped / ignored? Just a misunderstanding of cooking techniques? Being distracted?

Everyone starts somewhere! You can find some simply quick cooking videos on YouTube, depending where you struggle.

I've not looked into lessons, but I know they'd cause me so much anxiety 😥

I've done very basic things but I never make anything from scratch. So using lasagne sauces etc. That's not what my baby should be eating though. I really feel so crap about this 😞

What’s wrong with a jar of sauce? You can buy low sugar ones and add protein and veg. That’s not eating shit

Aww have a look into the lessons, I'm sure it won't be as bad as you're thinking - you might actually have fun!

I'm a chef myself and a goal I have for the future is to be able to provide free cooking lessons to people locally who want to learn, as everyone should feel confident cooking❤️

Also there's absolutely nothing wrong with using jar sauces to feed your baby if you're not confident making sauce from scratch (a lot of people that I know can't make sauce) - boil some pasta or rice, grab some mixed veggies and add them in, then add your sauce. There's one easy meal sorted :)

Have a look on your local health board website. Our local health board runs 8 week, I think it is, healthy cooking classes.
How about asking the health visitor. If you're in a Flying Start area they may well have them.
It's why I loved Home Start so much, when people who'd had kids themselves, maybe retirees etc would help new parents with things just like this but alas fecking government cuts put pay to that.

Let's start with the basics (and apologies for asking, but it is important):

Do you own (it doesn't matter if you don't own all of these, but it just gives us a clue how to advise)
Frying pan
Saucepan
Oven and hob
Microwave
Salt, pepper and a a few dried herbs or spices (name them, even if they are out of date)

It isn't a disaster that you are feeding your child pouches/tinned/jarred food for now.

Become an unstressed parent, ready to laugh at culinary hiccups.

Can you scramble eggs and bake spuds?

I was a terrible cook (my husband often says he didn’t marry me for my cooking) and pre weaning my first we lived off ‘plate of brown’ mostly (beige meals - chicken nuggs, chips etc) haha. The good news is weaning babes are not super fussy they are so excited by food they’ll give anything a go. My best advice is to just start. There will be some disasters, learning, great meals, changes. Enjoy your cooking journey while your child eats it! 5 years on I love to cook and am pretty experimental and successful! Husband says he can’t quite believe it my food is so good! On the other hand child has become so fussy he wishes he could have chicken nuggs and chips every night! 😂😂

I hate making food that has sides/creates a lot of dishes/takes hours/is complicated too. I make the same foods on rotation that dont contain many ingredients favourites are omelette in a small frying pan so it doesn't spread out, fish pie or mince and mash

thats because you sadly brought him up on it when he was weaning

I do have all those things, although I only have a mini oven as mine packed in. I do have air fryers and a slow cooker.

I think my little one has an egg intolerance so I can't feed egg for now

You can start with a few simple things, surely?
Cheese on toast, beans, scrambled eggs,pasta shapes, steamed veg

There are lots of healthy meals that can be put together without cooking. So raw sticks of pepper, cucumber, carrots, tomatoes, celery. Chicken can be bought cooked. Then for carbs bread is good or pasta is easy to boil.
For snacks fruit, yoghurt and raw veggies dipped in something like hummus or peanut butter are great.
We have an obsession with ‘hot meals’ but actually as long as the plate is balanced with meat/eggs/fish/cheese plants and carbs you are golden.
If you want to learn to cook start with basics. If you can boil pasta and stir in a jar of sauce that is a start. Next learn to boil different veggies, learn the timings etc.
I would recommend picking one thing each week to cook and then cooking it regularly till it becomes easy. Perhaps hard boiling an egg for example. YouTube should be helpful with this.
I think it is quite common for becoming a parent to change your priorities and make you realise things you didn’t previously think important actually are. Good luck.

Take a look at Life With My Rainbow, she gives lots of ideas for toddler suitable food and getting new flavours and textures into meals. Do you have a slow cooker? The batch lady also has some good recipes, a lot of which can be prepped in advance taking some stress out of it and then just put in a slow cooker to let it do its thing.

Once you feel a bit more confident I would definitely look into batch cooking, then you only need to cook once and have loads of meals ready in the fridge/freezer.

An easy thing my baby likes is a tray of roasted veg (peppers, courgettes, aubergine, onion) whizzed up with a tin of tinned tomatoes and some dried basil. That makes maybe 8 portions of healthy pasta sauce which goes in the freezer.

I also roast a whole butternut squash with a red pepper, and mix that with milk and a bit of grated cheese and that makes a healthy macaroni cheese sauce that again just goes in the freezer.

You will definitely get there, just take your time and please don't stress, the fact you care about this shows you are a brilliant mum!!

Is there anything particular you like meal wise? That could be a good place to start. It doesn't need to be complicated. Do you have anyone who could teach you the basics?

Lol I started cooking when he was weaning. He’s given home cooked meals every night and cooked breakfasts every morning as he hates cereal. His favourite food is prawns. Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t live off chicken nuggs and pizza if he had the choice

@Rose1999 Could you say what went wonky with your Hello Fresh? Maybe this will give some insight into how things go for you when cooking.

I have taught myself to cook and found it incredibly stressful at first, but when I realised that the stakes are just not that high and I could laugh at myself for mistakes, I relaxed into it and got better. Things like over/under salting, too much water, lumps, etc. - these are just part of the process of learning. It doesn’t mean you have an inherent inability to cook! You just need lots of practice.

Slow cooker will be your friend here, there's a lot of things you can make in it where you don't necessarily have to pre-fry or brown anything first, so you can just chop everything then throw it in without cooking. Things like sweet potato and butternut squash, sausage and lentil casserole, stew or curries with tinned chickpeas and lentils or chilli with tinned beans are all delicious and healthy and minimal effort. Rice pudding in the slow cooker is also easy and delicious.

If you can read you can cook.
Buy a simple recipe book for children and follow the instructions

No @Tryingtohelp12 clearly states they started cooking different things when the child was weaning and it didn't matter at first if there was some disasters as newly weaned kids aren't fussy, that often starts later.

But obviously @catphone you couldn't wait to take a light-hearted/positive story and try to make the poster feel bad. Slow clap for you, I guess.

I’m not the one that brought up a child on nuggets and other shite nor am I responsible for that child still eating like crap because of it. bad parenting choices slow clap. And that parent feeling bad is not the problem here. That child’s health matters and it’s sad you think it doesn’t

Get a really good breakfast down them with as many ‘extras’ as you can to up nutrition e.g.
-Greek yoghurt with berries or banana or grated apple, add a little nut butter or sunflower or pumpkin seed butter, you could also add ground almonds or ground other nuts like walnuts. You can buy milled mixed seeds - Aldi have a good selection. You could also mix in some of the fruit pouch if your baby enjoys that.
—Toast fingers with cream cheese and raspberries, or peanut butter, mashed up avocado, or a little bit of scrambled egg - you can progress to eggy bread, or other kinds of cooked breakfast as you go on.
-Porridge - get the sachets if you feel more confident with that, but it’s really easy (and cheaper) to use the rolled oats, with milk and add different toppings to pack the nutrition in - as above really, different soft fruits or dried fruits, nut butter or ground almonds. My dd loves grated apple, grated carrot, a few sultanas, a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a bit of nut butter - we call it carrot cake porridge and sometimes we have it for an easy dinner too.

Lunches can be a repeat of a lot of the breakfast ideas, assuming you did a different breakfast -
-Beans on toast (you can get the low sugar ones but I’ve always preferred to get the organic normal ones and just not serve them as often)
-Mash up some butter beans with avocado and serve on toast, a cracker, wraps
-Decent quality shop bought hummus - check ingredients and go for the best one - with carrot and cucumber sticks, a few breadsticks, couple of cubes of cheese, a sliced apple
-Buy the most minimally processed wraps you can, spread with decent toppings, choose a few from hummus, cream cheese, grated carrot, grated cucumber, decent ham or cooked chicken; roll them up and slice into pinwheels, serve with extra veg sticks, cherry tomatoes or fruit
-Boil pasta, add frozen peas for last few mins, stir through some cream cheese and tomato purée. Or you could just drizzle the cooked pasta and peas with olive oil or mix in butter and top with grated cheese. Or mix cooked pasta with tinned tuna, sweetcorn and Greek yoghurt.
-Buy a bag of pre chopped vegetables for soup, boil in the pan with a low salt stock cube and a tablespoon or so of red lentils - often the pre chopped mixes come with some anyway, or they might have barley or other grains. Bring to boil and simmer for 20 mins or so (or follow instructions on pack), blitz with a stick blender. When DD was very little I’d often add a bit of couscous to hers whilst it was hot, leave it to cool down 5-6 mins or so and the couscous really thickened it up to make it easier for her.

Dinner
-Any of the above
-Jacket potatoes with different toppings
-Frozen fish fillets - brush a sheet of foil with some oil, put the fish on - you could squeeze some lemon over and any herbs - in oven or air fryer for about 20 mins but follow pack instructions - mash (could be the ready made to start with) and vegetables, frozen veg is fine
-Chicken breasts - you can slice in half and pan fry, or bake in the oven/ do in air fryer, they’re also really easy to do in a slow cooker and then you can use forks to kind of shred them and add to any wraps/ sandwiches/ pasta dishes etc
-Not always great for the budget but there are some good convenience options out there that will still have really good nutrients in them, we like the tilda kids micro rice packets, they have at least 1 portion of veg in, and then you can add a protein (chicken, sausage, some beans or chickpeas) and extra vegetables. Or you can get mixed grains and pulses in microwave sachets.
-Ready made mash often doesn’t have any nasties in it if you check the ingredients - get one made with different root veg for a bit or variety. or but the pre diced butternut squash and sweet potato - boil, drain and mash with butter and black pepper

I reckon if you did one or two of these each day you’d be doing pretty well and your DC would be getting lots of what they need, and hopefully you can build your confidence from there. But also - do you have a DP in the equation - can they not share some of the load?