Secret Mum Club with Sophiena - BONUS: Feeding The Kids

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

It's time to talk about feeding the kids! Our topic comes from listener Vick who asked the ladies how to get children to eat their veggies, and let me tell you... they do not disappoint! From sneaking them into a spag-bol to eating food with them, Sophiena and Emma have loads of nifty tricks to get your little ones eating their five a day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello! We're back boo! Bitches. The bitch is back. Safina Official. It's your girl! It's your girl! Safina Official! And your girl Emma Jones!

I'm just Emma. Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones! Anywho, this is The Secret Mum Club. I'm Safina. And I am Emma. And welcome to our bonus episode. I was waiting for Emma to say it with me, but she didn't. Sorry. Awkward. Welcome to our bonus episode.

Each week we're going to take a different topic and we're going to chat about it and share our thoughts. That's right, and it can be on anything. From playtime to childcare. From pregnancy to building a crib. Let's jump on in shall we i feel like that's a look up contestant number two come on down are you ready gladiators are you ready emma what is the topic of today the topic this week is feeding the kids oh this one was suggested by vick she's looking for cheap dinner and healthy dinner ideas and how to get them eating healthier i am the fucking master of

this yeah you really are master in disguise i mean you've built a whole career on it so tell us all your secrets and then i stopped doing it for a little while which you've been back on the recipes a little bit though i see you i see you girl um basically i just make batch cooked soup yeah i put loads of moldy old veg in there we're not don't have to be moldy ones that are going off also i'd buy all like the wonky veg like wonky carrots all the potatoes just buy a massive bag of those and then i just slow cook them celery in their courgette you can have anything anything anything i can do anything anything you can do i can do better i was going to say better but i was going to say as equals because no one's doing anything better here onions a lot just load it in batch cooker soup blitz it well hang on so you just put that in

with what stock cube water veggie stock cube or you can go for a flavoring yeah chicken or something yeah maybe not beef because that might be a little bit a bit strong yeah a bit weird beef with veggies um and then i just add the water stock cube cook it so it all goes soft so i do it all day you can do this with like butternut squash pumpkin the lot everything and blitz it all down once it's cooked how do you blitz it in a have you got a stick i i've got a brenda and i blitz they're good aren't they yeah completely smooth then i use that one to bind meat to make burgers so instead of using an egg i mix some of the soup mixture with the patty with the beef yeah to make the patty right then you've got veggies inside the beef also acts as a binder to keep it all

together the kids just think it's a burger. Genius. Also, even better, not only that, chuck a fucking baby bell in the middle. Oh. Or baby bells can be a little bit expensive.

Just a bit of cheddar. Cheddar or cheese string, bit of plastic cheese in the middle there. Even like the square triangles, cut them up, the squares into fours. Yeah.

Make a little pack, put that inside your burger. A little melt in the middle cheeseburger hello how do you cook those in your slow cooker um or in your air fryer i seal them in the frying pan and then into the air fryer or the oven because not everyone has one or i use then i use the soup mix for a base for pasta yeah to top over chicken yeah you can use it for anything have it over jacket potato do jacket potato with a bit of the mix and a bit of cheese on the top do you ever just eat the soup yeah and

then soup with a crusty roll yeah best way to hide the veggies i made a lovely broccoli one in the last week it's an amazing way so i have to do a lot of hidden veg stuff because it won't really they say when you're weaning like it's important to expose them to the pure like the whole vegetable so that they see it and they get used to eating it as well but to be honest if i present him with a bit of broccoli he's just like what fuck yeah don't give me that he's not going to touch it so i do a lot of hidden veg recipes and there's some really good ones i think um a website i use quite a lot is my fussy eater yes she's really good she's got um a hidden um veg curry that i do a lot of the time yes and last week i just did for the first time the hidden veg mac and cheese.

I do the carrot macaroni cheese. Yeah. Which was one of my first cooking videos to go viral. Oh, you said that. And it's so, so scrummy. And you can do it with squash or anything like that. Yeah. But I also use the soup to go into.

So I use the soup in the slow cooker to cook my chicken thighs and add a tin of tomatoes, add spinach in, and then I make up our own little curry with the base of the sauce yeah curry is one i do a lot because you can hide anything that's saucy you can kind of hide the vegetables in it yes um and i think to be honest as long as they're getting vegetables it doesn't really matter whether they're blended up and to be honest when i used to do it with the babies when they were little i used to give them like say the macaroni cheese with the the carrot macaroni cheese i used to give them like, say the macaroni cheese with the carrot macaroni cheese. I used to give them a carrot, like a carrot baton. So that when they ate that and then did this, because babies used to put things in their mouth,

they then knew the taste. It was similar. But they didn't eat it. No. But it was just the association. So like broccoli, if you're making a broccoli pasta, just leave one bit of broccoli to put down on the plate. They may never touch it. But also it's the flavor that's in their mouth what they're seeing is that little tree

yeah so it's not necessarily about whether they're going to eat it or just for them to visualize it visualize it because i do think joseph's been quite bad i basically i chicken out of this a little bit because i want him to eat well and eat as much as possible so i haven't really pushed it with the like we didn't really do the baby led weenie i didn't have him just munching on a raw bit of broccoli because i was like i'll give him what he likes and i'd rather him have more of it yes whereas i do know like his uh one of his best friends his best baby friends um who's my uh friend's little boy he will just like they have dinner together quite often and he'll just be like popping a cherry tomato like eating a cucumber stick and when you present the salad to joseph

he's just like no he's very salad averse like he basically ignores that it's on his plate give him carbs give him like muffins he'll absolutely destroy it do you eat dinner with joseph or do you eat separately well when he was going through a really fussy phase i started eating my dinner at the same time because i wanted him to see that and and we'd have the same thing as well so i wanted him to see that like mummy was eating it as well and it's fine and it's nice and it's tasty and this is what we do at dinner time yeah when he was going through a fussy phase there's honestly few things in parenting that i found more stressful than a child not eating because it affects everything like if they don't eat a dinner, you think they're going to be hungry in the night.

They're not going to sleep through. They're not going to gain weight. Like it honestly really is really stressful. So that's why I say I just fell back on the safe things that I knew that he liked. He eats a lot of beans on toast. Cause I know he loves it, but that's not that bad for him. It's not that bad.

He has a little bit of cheese, fiber, calcium, fiber, protein, beans are one of your five a day. So he loves that. He loves eggs. for him it's not that bad he has a little bit of cheese for fiber yeah calcium fiber protein beans one of you five a day so he loves that he loves eggs so like all that stuff that baby's life it's not unhealthy he's not eating burgers and nuggets every day but i am a little bit of a wimp with like trying new things it's just the pressure isn't it it's the pressure of

what we should be doing but we are very much a family of eating yeah so we when the babies were little we used to eat together so i used to put everything on the table for everyone to take oh so they just took what they wanted so now you put everything on the table and they'll just take what they want to do they eat quite well that way colby a colby from day one has is an insane eater we've spoke about this before dotty is my fussier one but i will say the last couple of weeks that girl is she is blowing my mind really yeah she's she's i i feel like it's hard because as well you don't understand like a child's palette no like what can make your baby reach like the

texture the feel the smell sometimes they smell it before they've even got it in and they're like yeah yeah and i think sometimes it's just going off of their lead but i always found that doing a food but having and even really silly i was that awful not awful but awkward mom that would be like we're eating broccoli like with the cards like when it was colotsie came, I don't know where the fucking cards are by the time she got here. Do you think there was a second child thing there then that made her maybe a little bit more fussy?

Like you didn't have time to do all the stuff? No, I did everything exactly the same. Oh, really? Yeah, did everything. It's funny, isn't it? Maybe, maybe I say, looking back, maybe I say I did everything the same, but definitely you don't have the time.

It was more of a pouch. Here, quick pouch. Here, have a slice of toast. I was going to say about like some of the, we've spoken about this before as well, everything the same but definitely you don't have the time it was more of a pouch here quick yeah here have a slice of toast i was gonna say about like some of that we've spoken about this before as well some of the shop bought stuff like sometimes you do just need to give them a pouch for convenience oh they love and there's people that say oh they shouldn't really have the pouches they should have home-cooked stuff whatever i don't think there's anything bad in them like we only give joseph the ones that are like 100 fruit or 100 yogurt 100 spag bol whatever but to be honest he kind of grew out of them because i think actually after a while the flavor to them is quite bland yeah but when they do like them they're great the only

thing i found with them is i did the um pouches but just when like you said they go off them because they are bland i just used to take the whole portion of dinner and blend it yeah and that's all i used to do i used to go and i just used to work my way up so it used to be really really smooth then i added a little bit of chunks in yeah and that's just how we progressed but they basically had exactly the same dinner and if it was that they never had a dinner like you're saying about joseph you sit there and be like oh my god you're not at a dinner it just used to up the milk yeah just if they're still having milk obviously that's something you can fall back on but but yeah baby's not eating is is really it's stressful and there's no point stressing yourself out if

they don't eat the dinner just be like let's just have a bowl yeah snuggle on the sofa yeah a baby bottle have a boo and obviously keep trying things like things that you think they didn't like last week they might like this week they're so fickle they change their mind all the time so just keep trying them on stuff you never know but it is a stressful process and i think the less we can do to stress ourselves out the better yeah and at the end of the day a fed baby is a happy baby yeah fed child is a happy child but don't create work for yourself like you're saying about having meals together like now that he's a bit older i find it so much easier because he can just eat what we're eating yes the weaning phase is a bit of a nightmare because no one's sitting down

having pureed carrots for dinner. No. But now I'm like, I'm making a spag bol. He can have a spag bol too. I might just make his a bit softer. Yeah. Like I used to do like leftovers.

So like tonight's dinner or last night's dinner that we have, I used to go, oh, it's pasta. So I can just give it to Colby for lunch. Yeah, exactly. And I used to just do it that way. Yeah.

So it's just finding a routine that works best for you. But I wouldn't put too much pressure on it yeah a key things i would say get a blender get a yeah blend the fuck out of everything get slow cooker get a blender yeah and your bob's your uncle fanny's your aunt loads of wonky veg yeah yeah and you can it's cheap as well so cheap veg just to pop pop it with water in a stock cube you can get stock cubes pretty relatively cheap yeah just blitz the fuck out you get dozens of meals out of that can even get like a bag of pasta soup pasta can't you yeah and chuck that in chuck that in it cooks yeah lentils i do it with lentils

also is good the little um the pastery rice yeah it's like a it's like a pasta rice it's like a jaffa cake is it pasta is it rice that's all though isn't that it is mad how kids they like we've tried to be really um strict with like chocolate and ice cream and stuff with joseph but he has had stuff now he's 19 months old so like he has tasted a little bit of ice cream he has had a little rich tea biscuit here and there and it's mad how they are like programmed to like that stuff it's weird like even though he hadn't really had sugary stuff before when he first tasted an ice cream he was like holy shit give me some i don't think it's programmed i think it's just pure delicious it tastes phenomenal whereas i was on the opposite end of the spectrum

my marine chocolate buttons biscuits custard dotsy was basically a custard cream from eight months old really she'd yeah she'd have a couple of custard creams and a cup of tea in the morning the thing is once you get them onto it like now joseph knows biscuits he's like joseph biscuits more biscuits i took him around sainsbury's the other day and he's going biscuits where are you god love that boy i'm like there's no biscuits here today they're closed biscuits are closed like my dad used to say the ice cream man oh he's played this song that means he's run out yeah he's gone cheers dad done it to me last week god they can mug you right off can't they parents but no i just think it's it is cheap i think you

can do it cheaply and i think it's just sometimes you you end up doing these things and you just don't really know how they worked but they work you just need a couple of staples that you go back to time and time again and i don't care about repetition because to be honest no thinking of what to have for dinner is a fucking and sometimes if i cook like a chicken dish and i've had chicken in the slow cooker i'll do it with pasta but then also do it with noodles exactly and with spag bol so i make a massive portion of spag bol i can talk about this for i know so i'll have spag bol right but i'll make it so big divide the portion in half and then have spag bol one night

and then the next day i add kidney beans baked make it chili con carne it's a whole new dish we have it with pasta one day we have it the next yes and then you've got chili con carne not only have you got dinner with rice you've got a jacket of potato the next rice the next. Yes and then you've got chili con carne not only have you got dinner with rice you've got a fucking jacket spun the next day. Hey. Hello. We are winning. Winner winner. Chicken well it's not it's chili con carne for dinner. So there we are. We've got to stop it

there otherwise we would talk about spag bol for two hours. All day. We could talk about food all day long. We want to know your top tips for getting the children to eat healthier drop us a message the email is hello at secret mom pod.com or we're secret mom pod on tiktok and instagram and if you have any topic suggestions you can pop them in a message to us or we'll be back first thing on monday with the main episode and our bonus episodes will be out every friday morning to keep you going through the weekend in a bite-sized 15-minute chunk.

Anyway, we'll see you next time on the Secret Mum Club!