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Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Yes we know. That’s what it feels like preparing multiple meals every day from scratch. Luckily, you’ve discovered Babylicious and Kiddylicious, so you can put your cauldron away and relax! This month we’ve given you some Halloween ideas on how to celebrate all things goulish. And speaking of scary things, we take a look at the science behind making baby food safe – we also have a checklist of three questions that you should ask before you buy frozen babyfood. You can win some fabulous toys to keep your little ones entertained indoors as the days get colder. Plus we’re giving away free baby signing DVDs to help you communicate better with your baby.
Best wishes,
Sally Preston
A busy mum making meals for other busy mums
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Our news: New doors open – we’re in the Co-op
Although it’s only a 5 store trial, the Co-op will be featuring our Babylicious and Kiddylicious meals from October at the following stores: Hexham, Chester-le-Street, Falkirk, Bristol and Nottingham. Please support us if you live in those areas and hopefully we’ll soon be stocked in Co-ops around the country.
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Our news: The Baby Show – are you ready to go shopping?
Yes folks, it’s almost that time of year again. Time to get your comfy shoes on, your wallet filled and your large tote bags emptied. The Baby Show will be held from 20 – 22 October at Earl’s Court and once again, we’ll be there hosting our Babylicious Café. Bring your baby along for a free Babylicious meal. No need to lug around food and feeding equipment – we provide it all. Just pop in when your little one is hungry, seat them in one of our high chairs and choose a meal from our extremely tasty, nutritious range. We’ll heat it for you, provide the bowl and spoon…and clear away any mess. And you get to relax before the next bout of shopping.
If you have a hungry toddler with you, you can buy one of our scrumptious Kiddylicious meals for only £1. You can also stock up on all our products - buy single packs of Babylicious food for £1 and double packs for £2 – almost half price. We’ll keep them bagged and labelled for you in our freezer, ready for you to collect once you’re ready to leave. We’ll also be running a show competition in which you can win 6 months worth of free Babylicious or Kiddylicious meals. Simply pick up your entry form on our stand.
To win a free ticket to the Baby Show, simply send us a yummy winter recipe for your baby or toddler. We’ll pick the five most scrumptious sounding recipes and if yours is one of them, you’ll be getting a Baby Show ticket sent your way – plus we’ll feature your recipe in one of our future newsletters.
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Our news: We’ve teamed up with Netmums
Now some great news! If you haven’t discovered it yet, go check out www.netmums.com. It’s a great website for mums looking to make friends in their area, find out about local activities and playgroups, local childcare options and much more. Babylicious Ltd has just become the official sponsor of the Netmums weaning pages. Every month we’ll be adding more information and recipes about weaning including features on allergies and vegetarian babies. So go take a look...and who knows, you might even make some new friends while you’re there.
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Our friends: www.tinytalk.co.uk
If your little one is ready to start solids, he’s probably also ready to let you know that he’s hungry. But instead of just relying on a loud wail to let you know that he wants some food, why not train him in baby signing? TinyTalk run the UK’s favourite baby signing classes, helping babies to communicate before they can talk. Founded in 2002 by Katie Mayne, mum of two, primary school teacher and teacher of the deaf, TinyTalk has grown to nearly 300 classes a week across the UK. The classes – suitable for babies aged 0 to 2 - teach a number of baby signs for everyday words and phrases so that you can communicate with your child through signing. Your child will also get to enjoy songs and nursery rhymes, and you get to chat to other parents over coffee and biscuits. They have a great ‘drop in’ policy making it easy to attend without prior planning. If you’re looking for a new job, you could consider becoming a TinyTalk teacher. To find out more, go to www.tinytalk.co.uk
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Hot topic: Scary science – what it takes to make delicious and SAFE baby food
Babylicious isn’t alone in making frozen baby food. Many other people do too. But some of these businesses are run by people who have very limited experience with food. It’s one thing to make food for your own children, quite another to make it in bulk for thousands of others.
The expert Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF) issued guidelines on how commercially prepared chilled or frozen baby foods should be made. These guidelines are expected to become law within the next 12 months – and Babylicious is actively campaigning that they are!
Here are the guidelines in a nutshell:
- Commercially prepared chilled or frozen food must be cooked at a minimum of 95°C and be held at that temperature for ten minutes to kill any organisms. (Food scientists are most concerned about the risk of infantile botulism, which is a baddy!) The food should then be ‘hot deposited’ into containers and then either blast chilled or frozen immediately.
- Raw and cooked foods should always be kept in separate areas to eliminate contamination.
Most baby food manufacturers follow these guidelines. However, a few small ‘cottage industry’ baby food makers don’t. They simply steam the food, which doesn’t reach the minimum temperature requirement to kill live bacteria, and then leave it to cool naturally. This process is 100% fine when making food at home for your own children as the batch sizes are relatively small. However, given that these are big batches of food, this cooling method takes too long and increases the chance of bacteria growing.
It’s also important to segregate the kitchen into raw and cooked food areas, to avoid the risk of contamination. What makes the situation worse, is that many of these small companies are certified as organic. Some consumers believe that if something is organic, it is 100% safe. This is simply not true. Organic food prepared in an unsafe manner will still pose health risks.
Babylicious meets all the recommendations (in fact we were actively involved in setting them with the experts): foods are cooked up to 95°C and held at that temperature for 10 minutes. This kills the live organisms but still retains the nutrients in the food. The cooked food is moved to a highly sterile ‘hot food’ section where it is placed directly into containers and Snap-frozen™. Our products go from 95°C to -18°C in 90 minutes – that’s quick!
Our founder and MD, Sally Preston, is an experienced food scientist with 20 years experience in the ready meal industry – at Babylicious we know what we are doing and we do it well so you can buy with confidence.
Our advice: check
- how the food is cooked
- whether raw and cooked foods are kept separate in preparation
- how long it takes to freeze the food
to be sure that what you’re feeding your baby is safe.
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Something to smile about: Trick or treat – sinking your teeth into Halloween
Ah yes. Halloween. Another occasion for you to put your costume-making skills to the test and for your children to spiral into a sugar-induced frenzy after demolishing the contents of a trick or treat bag. Let’s give a big hand to those ancient Celts who decided to celebrate the return of the dead on the last day of October – bet they didn’t imagine it would result in thousands of children eating too many sweets and wearing tacky orange and black outfits. But hey ho. Let’s get into the spirit of all things goulish.
If you plan on holding a Halloween party for your children this year, here are some food suggestions:
- The more revolting the name of the food, the better it tastes apparently. How about Simple Pimples or Chocolate Blood Cake or Worm Burgers? Stomach turning yet? Check out these American sites for some truly revolting recipes:
www.halloweenishere.com/recipes.html
www.familymanagement.com/holidays/halloween/food.drink.html
www.childfun.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=277
- Try to temper all the sugar with some unsugary treats – like bags of nuts, apples, bags of popcorn, savoury biscuits (like cheese straws that you can make to look like witches fingers by sticking an almond on the end of it using a blob of cream cheese as the ‘glue’) or non-food related things like halloween stickers or pencils
- Remember, pumpkin and apples are two essential ingredients when making Halloween Fare. So why not try this recipe that combines both. It’s healthy for kids, suitable from 6 months and will warm them up after trick or treating:
Jack-o-lantern soup
Ingredients
25g butter
1 large onion, chopped
1kg pumpkin, peeled and roughly chopped into even-sized chunks (carve this up carefully and save the pumpkin shell to use for serving)
450g sweet potatoes, roughly chopped into even-sized chunks
2 tsp ground coriander (optional)
1.5 litres vegetable stock
freshly ground pepper
Method
1. In a large saucepan, heat the butter. Once melted, add the onion and cook for 5 minutes.
2. Add in the pumpkin, sweet potato and coriander, if using, mix well and fry for 1 minute.
3. Add the stock and season with freshly ground pepper.
4. Bring to the boil and simmer for approximately 15 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
5. Transfer the soup to a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Serve in the scooped-out pumpkin shell
Useful Halloween resources
This BBC site has a great Halloween menu:
www.bbc.co.uk/food/news_and_events/events_halloween.shtml
If you want to be a show-off with your knowledge of the origins of Halloween, read up on it here www.history.com/minisites/halloween/viewPage?pageId=713
If you want to go all out on decorations, accessories and costumes, take a look at www.partybox.co.uk
And if you can’t be bothered with doing it all yourself, leave it to the experts. Try www.lesenfantsparties.co.uk who’ll organise everything from décor to costumes to food and entertainment for you.
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Competition: Win Three Fantastic First Puzzles From Tish Tash Toys plus Baby Signing DVDS from TinyTalk
Tish Tash Toys is a family business run by parents of two Sharon and Daniel Pavey. They sell toys online and by mail order catalogue. They have a leaning towards more traditional, colourful wooden toys like classic fire engines, doll's houses and pirate ships but they also sell party bag toys and great stocking fillers from just 99p! They have just begun working with the national anti-bullying charity Kidscape, helping them to raise funds and awareness and have a special wooden dragonfly whistle keyring on sale with all profits going to the Kidscape charity. Tish Tash Toys is now recruiting agents nationwide to sell toys and gifts using their new catalogue or at toy parties, coffee mornings and playgroups. If you would like to order the catalogue, buy a Kidscape charity keyring (for £1) or find out more about becoming an agent, see their website www.tishtashtoys.com
You could win three fabulous wooden puzzles (suitable from 12 months+) from Tish Tash Toys or a one of five ‘Let’s Talk’ baby signing DVDs from TinyTalk plus some Babylicious food vouchers by simply sending us the name of a friend who you think would appreciate getting this newsletter. Click here for the entry form.
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Feedback
Congratulations to the following five lucky people who won the ‘Stay put weaning bowl with matching cutlery’ from Truly Madly Baby (www.trulymadlybaby.co.uk), simply for letting a friend know about us:
- Helen Gardner
- Annabelle Otterburn
- Rosaria Winstone
- Sally Carpenter
- Lisa Merrylees
Hope mealtimes in your house are less messy now!
We’re still receiving great feedback from so many of you – and we like to share, so here are some more recent comments we’ve received:
You have no idea how much I wish I'd discovered you earlier!!! I'm a single mum of a one year old little boy who eats me out of house and home already! I don't have a lot of time and the time I do have I don't want to be stood at the cooker with my son climbing up my leg! Your products are fantastic, far far far superior to any other toddler ready meals. I can't believe how much like real food they are! I wish my Tesco stocked a wider range of your products and I'm a complete Kiddylicious convert! Thank you thank you thank you for helping us and creating healthy, quick and tasty food for my little boy! You guys are fab! Gemma :)
Gemma Whitworth, Barnsley
I would just like to say how refreshing it is to find a food for my child that he actually enjoys and is full of goodness, instead of just sweet things like he normally will only eat, Babylicious has turned meal times around in our house.
Many Thanks. Danny.
Danny Peare, Bristol
Please send us any comments or questions you may have!
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