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 😞

I would really recommend Jamie's Ministry of Food. It has recipes that actually work, with instructions that make sense. Start at the beginning of it and work your way through.

Often the difficulty with lots of recipes is that the recipe itself doesn't quite work. You can usually tell this in advance and adapt for it if you know how to cook, but you don't, you follow the instructions and then find yourself stuck with a very meh dish at best.

It would also be good to understand what went wrong with your hello fresh dinner as I do mainly find their recipes relatively reliable.

I could cook but my young children were unbelievably fussy and liked the opposite to each other. I went on a free family cooking course to give me a bit of confidence.
Thankfully kids now eat healthier as they've got older.

I'd buy a student cookbook and go from there.

Thank you to everyone who have given me support and ideas. I'll try not to beat myself up any more over this and start to be more proactive.

Thank you again ❤️

Have you tried What Mummy Makes, the weaning recipe book? The recipes are super quick and easy. This is one of her recipes which my kids love, you can't really mess it up -

rebeccawilson.com/recipe/hulk-mac-n-cheese/

The Delia book on learning to cook is excellent- it doesn’t assume any knowledge not even being able to boil an egg- and there are also videos on the website.