Click here for the PA Newswires version, no doubt it will be picked up quickly.
Her little boy has died at 7 months’ gestation, I hope that she and the family will get the support that they need. When I think that my robust little two-year-old was born at just 4lbs 1oz at the same age, it is too awful, they were so close.
This looks like a reasonably non-allergenic one for people who want to do something other than switch on CBeebies first thing in the morning. (I will NOT hear a word said against Rastamouse, btw). It all looks messy and good-natured, and not too controlled. Haven’t looked at it all so don’t blame me if there is a ‘paint-your -own-monkey’s-backside-mask’ on there but the spaghetti paintings look like fun, don’t they?
Click here to see what the guid folk of the forum said about stock…
And here’s how I do it. For chicken, do substitute roast bones of whatever.
1. If you have an extractor fan in the kitchen, for God’s sake switch it on. Stock is lovely, of course it is, but has a tendency to turn the house into a chicken-y sauna if you forget about it.
2. I think Nigella does a whole bit where she SAVES UP the bones of her roast chickens and does a stock from about six of them at a time. That’s what it’s like to be married to a bazillionaire, folks. I grab whatever is left on people’s plates (sooked or not, we’re family) and, having taken what meat is left off the carcass, whack it into a soup pot with a couple of bay leaves, a carrot, onion, coupla bits of garlic, stick of celery and an onion. Whether or not I bother to peel any of these things will depend on my mood. If I have leek tops unused I’ll stick them in too, they’d only get chucked otherwise.
3. Just cover with cold water, and add some peppercorns. Eight, if you want to be exact, which I do not.
4. Simmer for, oh I dunno, 40 mins? Some people like to do it for yonks but their extractor fans must be better than mine.Do remember to switch it off, it is hell on wheels to get out of a pan if you forget.
5. Let it cool and pour through a colander into a tupperware. DO NOT, as I have done too many times, get distracted and pour the liquid down the sink, while treating the smushy veg and bones as if they were the Crown Jewels.
6. Some people will go on about skimming any blech-y bits off the liquid as it cooks, which would be nice if you can be bothered. I can’t. I stick the tub in the fridge to cool and take excess fat (yellowy, gloopy schmaltz) off the next day with a spoon, putting it into an old non-recyclable in the bin.
And then I make soup. Or risotto. Or pilaff… or… *goes all chicken-dreamy*
P.S. If you are asking about veggie stock, allow yourself a moment’s well-deserved smugness and simply follow the same recipe while ignoring all mention of chicken, bones, carcasses and blech.
Especially in light, I think, of the Andy Gray sexism thing. Of course it’s bad what he did, of course he should be sacked (and of COURSE he was going to be sacked the minute he took his boss to court). But what is it about the world that means that part of his colleague’s job description includes stripping down to a silver metallic bikini and stilettoes and posing like a hooker?
Have a look at this…
and yet, somehow it looks very, very familiar…
Must be Other People’s Sites I am thinking of.
PS no mention of Nazis.
PPS <excuses self on grounds of having invoked Godwin’s Law>
Great insight from a lady who doesn’t have any kids (and who NEVER takes her rings off while cooking – bleee!).
This, the opening paragraph of her Children’s section on her website. “Children can be fussy eaters but if you gradually introduce them to a wide range of foods they should become gourmets in the making. Here are some good options to start with..”
Delia’s good options? Five pages of cakes, pretty much.
I bet she’s a brilliant auntie.
She’s looking for the BMJ to put out another press release to the effect that the article from Mary Fewtrell et al was merely opinion, not fact.
here she is, do click, (despite the peculiar surname)
Now… let’s face it, it won’t get picked up in the same headline-busting way that the first piece did – if it even gets picked up at all – however it is a worthy effort I think insofar as when it comes up in the future we will all be able to link to it and say ‘look, here, worried breastfeeding lady, you are doing great, really, keep up the good work until the WHO tells us differently…’
Good luck.
and of course we all looked like that in those early days of breastfeeding. Much applause to Miranda Kerr (an Australian moggle apparently and the better half of former pixie heartthrob Orlando Bloom) for releasing this shot of her breastfeeding.
Just to keep everything up-to-date… there was once this paper, which was a small review published in the BMJ and basically just said ‘mmmm-kay we should have a look at this 6 months thing as it may not be right for everyone’. (Preach it to the choir, ladies and gentlemen).
And as we all know by now, this nothing-y paper from UCL has been distorted in the most extraordinary manner by the press. So let us return to the BMJ once more, on whose site there are now a number of replies from credible-sounding (bearing in mind this is emphatically not my field) scientific, medical and public health bods that call for, amongst other things, looking at other methods of retaining or increasing iron levels in our babies.
I like this woman. She seems clever, just look at the alphabetti spaghetti of letters after her name. Go Miriam! For the rest of what she wrote, and comments from other irritated academics, please press here.
“Rather than calling for truncation of exclusive breastfeeding, limiting its myriad of positive immediate health, child spacing and long- term health effects, let us instead call for 1) delayed cord clamping for iron stores, with iron supplements as needed in later infancy, 2) research on the impact of exclusive breastfeeding vs. expressed milk feeding on the health of both mothers and their children, and, most of all, 3) unbiased, informed, and mother-centered support – clinical, social and economic – so that women may make an unbiased, informed infant feeding choice, and succeed in six months of exclusive breastfeeding.
Sincerely,
Miriam H. Labbok, MD, MPH, FACPM, IBCLC, FABM
The Carolina Breastfeeding Institute (CGBI) Professor, and Director, CGBI Department of Maternal and Child Health Gillings School of Global Public Health The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7445”
AMEN, sister.
I remember back in the heady days of thinking about weaning my daughter no.1 I was utterly convinced by the six month line in the sand, in the way that only an idiot a first-timer can be. I had read it in a book, had I not?
My actual human child, however, had other ideas and a couple of weeks before this magic date she grabbed some soft fruit and started eating it. Immediately, I knew she was ready. Well, durrr. She was eating a peach, after all, what further proof did I need?
And so began the BLW journey/voyage/odyssey/thingybob that got us all here at this ludicrous hour on a Friday night.
Since then, my view on weaning has become more relaxed than ever, and it started off pretty flexy in the first place to be honest. A preemie second child who started noshing at 5 months corrected, also helped.
You can lead a child to food, but you cannot make them eat. It seems to me perfectly obvious that if they can do it, you should let them. (Unless they are strikingly precocious and trying to unwrap a packet of Jammy Dodgers at 16 weeks. Do intervene in that instance.)
This study seems to me eminently sensible on the subject. It looked at when 602 babies reached for food, found that 56% had done so before 6 months but 6% still hadn’t done so by 8 months (with the rest inbetween) and concluded that BLW is ‘is probably feasible for a majority of infants, but could lead to nutritional problems for infants who are relatively developmentally delayed’.
So look, if they’re not eating, and you are stressing, for god’s sake try them with a loaded spoon. Further more if they won’t self-feed at all and you are tearing your hair out, just feed ’em, if they like it. Honestly. Don’t over-think this stuff. It’s just food.There is no BLW heresy.
As the mother of two daughters there is a chance, God willing, that I will one day be a grandmother and let’s face it by then all my hard-won Noughties knowledge will have been thrown out of the window. My kids will probably feed their kids blue pills at four weeks old, because that will be the most up-to-date thinking.
And I will just have to suck that up and smile through what teeth I have left .
In the meantime, all we can do is ignore the weird media/academia politics, examine the evidence and be grateful that for BLWers, the decision as to when to wean is taken out of our hands by the chubby fists of our babies.