The Netmums Podcast - S1 Ep57: Annabel Karmel on what she REALLY thinks of kids’ diets

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Listen as Annie and Wendy ask Annabel for her verdict on how to feed kids a balanced veggie or vegan kids’ diet, PLUS the one recipe her grown-up son still comes home for! Sponsored by Clairol: Get Feel Good Colour with Clairol Natural Instincts. The natural choice for rich colour and brilliant shine - with no ammonia or harsh scent - that is kinder on your hair. It’ll make you and your hair glow with radiant shine.

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It lasts for 28 washes apparently no way you can tell me more about it later now on with the podcast you're listening to sweat snot and tears brought to you by netmums I'm Annie O'Leary and I'm Wendy Gollage and together we talk about all of this week's sweaty snotty and tearful parenting moments with guests who are far more interesting than we are hello sweaty snottyary lot. Welcome to another delightful episode with another fabulous guest. Now, before we introduce today's guest, I bring big news. Wendy, we're going weekday vegetarian in our house. Oh.

I can feel... So, seven-year-old has started to talk about veganism, which brings me out in a bit of a rash. I'm just not prepared to go that far. They're both little eco-warriors. And so I think if I say yes to going Monday to Thursday, veggie, I can hold off the veganism for a bit longer. What do you think? Do you think I'm mad?

I think you're actually very sensible. We have done the same in our house. Have you? It's a back-to-school thing's a back to school thing okay give me tips give me tips well no mine's a ploy because chloe wants to go vegetarian but i've told her that she's only allowed to go vegetarian if she eats a vegetable so it's a trick to get her to eat some vegetables you see and how's it going so far we're only on day two ask me in a week okay all right well the reason i bring it up is because i think today's guest might be the ideal person to hold our hands through this funny new phase that we're both in.

She's the creator of no less than 37 cookbooks. I think the new one might make it 38. And is essentially responsible for the fact that we all care about our kids' diets these days. Please welcome parenting legend in her own lifetime, Annelle carmel welcome annabelle so lovely to be with you i mean have you heard of veggie hating vegetarians because there's quite a lot of kids that don't eat vegetables for a vegetarian well it sounds like wendy's household so don't think this is the easy answer to get them eating their veggies because it's not. So what can we do? What's the answer? Should we be spending more days a week eating no meat or not?

I think it's good to be flexitarian. The thing about meat and chicken and eggs and things like that are they are such a good source of iron. And the commonest nutritional deficiency in children is iron deficiency but if you want to be vegetarian you just need to know that you have to have vitamin c at the same meal as something that contains a vegetable source of iron like spinach or porridge and that if you don't have the vitamin c it's really hard to absorb it so you might be thinking you're giving them loads of veggies with iron in it but you're not so you just need to know that little tip it's really important that is a really good tip so what would be a good rich source of vitamin c alongside an irony thing then any like very technical terms there and blueberries irony things being whole

grain porridge i mean any like whole grain cereal iron fortified cereals, spinach, dark green leafy vegetables, broccoli, red pepper's good. That contains vitamin C. So, yeah, there's loads of ways of doing it. It's just not quite as easy as eating meat, which is on its own a great source of iron and easy to absorb. Well, that's why I'm thinking of not doing it every day and just trying to get a bit of balance. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm a huge animal lover, as you you noticed at the beginning as we can tell from the dogs four dogs barking and I eat a lot of vegetarian food I make lots of vegetarian recipes but because I'm in the food business and I have to cater for everybody I can't really tell vegetarian because

we make things like cottage pie and chicken tikka masala in our meals so you know I wouldn't be able to try it and that wouldn't be very good yeah and your kids chicken curry might be the most popular food in my house oh that's good to know we can't give it up altogether well I remember Annabelle going back to when my now almost 10 year old was almost one and we'd started the weaning journey and I was there with all of your books and I was reading and in one of the basically you said something about if you can get your child to eat some sort of fish you're winning because it's so good for them and I was there trying to give her all of this fish and she was like no you can just get bent that's not happening she literally didn't eat anything apart from

cucumber for a year and I was just like so i remember sitting there with all of your books in front of me thinking i'm failing i can't well i am on a mission to get kids to eat more fish and i've actually teamed up with youngs so youngs make the best fish and we've just spring out the end of this month and youngs and animal caramel fish pie and also something called fish and chips which actually isn't fish and chips it's fish shapes and chip shapes but they're both fish so but they're delicious on this fish pie is amazing and it contains two of the children's five a day in it as well so yeah it's great and you know i think it's very important that especially they eat salmon because that is the only good source of omega-3s and they should be having omega-3s like twice a week it's really important so you can just bung this fish pie in the microwave and there you are job done this

we like yeah we like it when it can go in the microwave without guilt that's true exactly weirdly i can get my kids to eat fish more than i can get them to eat a lot of other things kids are just weird aren't they why are kids so unpredictable Annabelle no not too big a question no in their tastes I mean I mean you just can't predict from one day to the next what's going to go down well and what's not also they could they could like something one week in the next week they won't touch it I think it's because we when we find something they like we overdo it because we're so excited that they'll eat something so we give it to them over and over again yeah three meals a day exactly so I think the thing is it's all about

variety and trying new things and i found out with my kids they like things like curries and quesadillas do really well anything in a wrap is like really popular satay chicken i would not get into a rut like it's only chicken nuggets and pizza and burgers because the more you give those things because you know your children will eat them the more extremely fussy they become so i i in my new cookbook i've like tried to introduce lots of different foods from around the world so that kids will you know they won't they won't be antisocial when they go to a restaurant they'll be able to eat other things we've got paella you know we've got lots of things that are delicious for adults but made in a child-friendly way why shouldn't they eat all these foods i mean my kids like sushi it's their favorite thing so many one of mine is obsessed with wait for it

smoked eel that is quite weird that is quite weird he will eat eels they come out of his ears long story to do with my family being from northern ireland and northern ireland being the place where you get the best deals but anyway but he won you won't eat potato. No, same in our house. She'll eat olives and calamari, but she won't touch a roast potato. But potatoes aren't, they don't even count as one of your five a day. So actually, they're not very good for you. So if you're going to have a potato,

you should give a sweet potato. The interesting thing is that the goodness in these vegetables comes from the pigment and the colour. Because sweet potato is orange, it contains vitamin A. So if you give something like blueberries, they're full of antioxidants because they're a dark blue colour. Because sweet potato is orange, it contains vitamin A. So if you give something like blueberries, they're full of antioxidants because they're a dark blue colour. And if you're going to give a melon, give like a red melon or an orange melon, but don't give

the white melon. So the colour is really important. And the more different colours children are eating, the more different things they're getting. It's like eating a rainbow. So basically we should just give up on the potatoes, Wend? Don't worry. Don't worry about the potatoes. Yeah, butloe ate beige foods for like four years it was all she'd eat you can mix so in my fish pie i've mixed carrots sweet potato and potato in the topping that's how it gets two of your five a day in it oh yes like the whole hidden veg sauce shenanigans yeah that works really really well oh like my tomato sauce with six veggies hidden in it or my bolognese sauce with six veggies I mean if if that's the only way you

can get them to eat your veggies then that's fine but eventually you do want them to eat things like broccoli trees but they tend to like things like that my kids love broccoli they like cauliflower when I roast in the oven and they like courgette which looks like spaghetti there's actually courgettes and then they're like raw veg like carrots with a dip so how old are your kids now annabelle oh my god they're old now so my my youngest is 29 well i'm flipping hope they're like they're broccoli at 29 but they were all very fussy when they were little were they got good training how was it being mrs annabelle carmel food guru of the universe

and then having four little fussy eaters trailing after you? But that's why I did it, because I'd lost my first child. My second child was the world's worst eater. And luckily, I was blessed with this terrible child who wouldn't eat. Well, I wouldn't have my career, let's be honest about it. And eventually, I got him to eat by trying lots of different things. And then I was running a playgroup with like 100 mothers. And I was giving them out

my recipes and they said to me, you know, you should write a book about feeding children. And at that stage I couldn't even type or do anything. I was a musician. But because I'd lost Natasha, I was not in a very good place. And actually it was really cathartic and a kind of a legacy to write that book and spend two and a half years like putting something back and trying to give children better quality lives and it was like dedicated to Natasha because it kind of gave some meaning to why she was born I was gonna bring Natasha up actually because a lot of people might not know that she died at was she three months old she's three months old but she's

born healthy I know it's just it was a horrible thing and I've talked about this quite a lot on my social media that someone kissed her who had a cold sore and that then became encephalitis which then caused her brain to swell and it's really important like when you have a new baby like you know don't pass your baby around get people kissing your baby when they're really young I mean it's a freak it's like not going to happen very often but that one time it can happen you can avoid it but I didn't know anything about this I had no idea I mean I was like 25 years old and losing a child is like it was terrible I was like in such a bad place and it'd taken me two years to get pregnant so losing her was devastating it must have been so horrible I just well and it it's not something that ever leaves you does it but it wasn't the end of it because then I rang my doctor when I was in labor with my second child he told me that

was very early stages and I ended up giving birth on the staircase because he told me to stay at home and half an hour later I tried to get a hold of him I couldn't get a hold of him went upstairs and I gave birth and I shouted my husband I'm giving birth and he's like don't be stupid he came up the head was out already Annabelle it was horrific I thought I was going to lose my second child but then no one came for two and a half hours so what did you do what did you do I couldn't do anything I was stuck on the floor though I was like the cord was still attached so I'm attached the baby by the cord for two hours sat on the top of the stairs wait wait wait I need details did the placenta come out no it didn't because they

give you an injection yes they do to make you expel it so it could take hours to get this placenta to come out so i thought did you just wrap the baby in a blanket what did you do yeah i tried to wrap it but i couldn't really get the baby up really close because i was going to i thought i was going to snap the cord god i didn't know we didn't know what we were doing to be honest but thank god he was all right he was fine and you know having him was like wonderful having another child and be able to build a future so he was very very wanted and so then how did the what's the connection do you think between natasha losing natasha and and starting this new career writing um about children's nutrition because i knew that i wanted to work with children after losing Natasha

that that was something that I wanted to do but he was the catalyst being a bad eater and then getting him to eat because I love to cook and finding ways to get him to eat new things and then sharing them with all the mums in the play group that was running and then sharing with a wide audience with the complete baby toddler meal planner which is the first book I ever wrote and this year the classic but this year was the 30th anniversary edition of the book so i've updated it it's 30 years since i wrote that book unbelievably 30 years that's nuts and it's still my best-selling book of all time yeah i don't think there's a house that doesn't have a copy is there it's a fabulous book the rest well i when i gave birth to mine my

step mother-in-law gave me her copy so she used it for my sister-in-law who are now 23 and 21 so i had a copy that was one of the you know originals because it just gets passed around well you have to keep it and give it to Chloe and Grace now. You have to make sure. Yeah, I'm looking forward to when they have kids who don't eat. The only thing is that a lot of the advice has changed. Oh, OK. And there's a lot more finger food recipes. So actually, you really do need to get the new version, which has the updated advice.

And also lots of finger food recipes and things like peanut butter. You know, we now give it very early on and how to give it so do you have to update your books quite a lot then as yeah I do every every few years I update the books and I it gets bigger and bigger it gets more recipes in it more photos in it and I take out some recipes put new ones in and it's always like all the latest advice in the book so i love doing that was any one of your four a worse eater than the other like is there one who wears the crown of fussiest eater of the century my first first child was literally the world's worst eater and what would he and what wouldn't he eat pasta and fruit that was it nothing else unbelievably terrible you wouldn't

i think a lot of our users will be very reassured to hear this but now oh my god he eats so much food it's like not normal he had covid really bad at christmas and he moved in with me and i looked after him and he gave up his house which he was renting and he hasn't moved out he's still here eight and a half months later because of the food and one of his favorite recipes i can't say i blame him. I'd be there too. And yes, he's largely done. He loves it. And his favourite recipe is my mini minute steaks with caramelised onion from the complete Baby and Toddler meal planner. Oh, I think I would like a plate of that

right now. It's amazing. I mean, he loves it. I make it every Sunday for him. And I love having it with me, so I'm making lots of food all the time. To keep him. Yeah, to keep him. Annabelle. Oh, sorry, Annie. Oh Annie oh no go on I was just going to say so we know that fussy eaters fussy eater children drive millions of parents to net mums every month in search of some answers if you could give any tips to fussy parents of fussy eaters today

what would you say well I would try and get them to cook with you in the kitchen. That's why I've written my latest book, which is called The Fun, Fast and Easy Cookbook, which is all about cooking food with kids or older kids can cook it themselves.

So things like burgers, spaghetti bolognese, chicken curry, and kids love to cook. And I got my kids to cook when they were four, five and seven on a Friday and I got my kids to cook when they're four five and seven on a Friday and they would make supper for the whole family I mean it was chaos in the kitchen I I do you know it is a mess I believe uh it's unfortunately but they all learned to cook really

well and they loved it and they're learning they're learning maths time measuring and being part of the adult world is what they absolutely love so cooking is a really important life skill and if you don't cook yourself at home there isn't that much time at school where they learn to cook and they don't usually get involved in like proper cooking and I think it's really important that we teach them about the dangers in the kitchen the kettle's still hot when you turn it off how to use a sharp knife otherwise how you cook? And all these things that we need to teach them. And I think children, you know, need to learn independence and preparing delicious, healthy food will set them up for life

to have a good eating habit. But what about the tinies? What about the seven-month-olds who, like, still won't put anything food-like in their mouth? What do you do? Well, I put everything into a food processor. Like, I make salmon and quinoa balls chicken apple balls I make like carrot cake balls with no sugar I wish it all up in a food

process and then I roll it into small balls so they can pick it up with their fingers and they love that it's that dainty small piece of food that attracts them so it's about kind of making it fun and not making it too food like they do like look at something if they don't like the look of it they'll say i'm not eating it they won't even try it that's the most demoralizing bit though if you've spent half an hour whizzing up quinoa and salmon balls and making them look beautiful and then you put them on the high chair and they look at it and they go and they throw it away especially if you've got a dog who then eats your lovingly crafted salmon and quinoa ball but it's that's the bit that i found so demoralizing but they do eat it that's

the thing is they do eat these small balls of food they do pick them up they love the size of them and they put them they want to be independent they want to feed themselves and i find that these this way of cooking is the best way of cooking for a very fussy child. And my son, Nick, the world's worst eater, would not eat chicken. So I made these balls out of minced chicken thigh, onion, and thyme, and breadcrumbs, a bit of egg. And I made them into small balls. I baked them in the oven. And that was the first time he loved eating chicken. And I still make them. They're fantastic. And they're so easy. and you pop them in the freezer in a plastic box you take out as many as you want defrost them heat them up in the microwave and hey press you've got

great meal for your child so if the balls end up on the floor the first time keep going with the balls but i put a splash mat under the floor under the high chair so you can recycle them back again not if you've got a greedy golden retriever you can't the dog the dog needs to be in the other room when yeah the dog needs to be banished a bit like your dog's annabelle banished to the other room yeah now back to coloring my hair again i'm thinking about going darker what do you think wend and doing it myself with clare all natural instincts all i need to do is to decide which of the 18 shades to pick totally agree spending hours in a hairdresser would be lovely but it just never seems to happen exactly which

is why i'm loving the sound of cleral natural instincts their semi-permanent conditioning color promises to give me shiny swooshy hair in just 20 minutes and it contains coconut oil and it contains aloe vera so it feels very treat like and it even works on my crazy curly hair exactly no roots just shininess and general fabulousness what's not to love consider it hair when now on with the podcast so what do you wish if you could send your wisdom to all of the parents on our forum who are going here alone to eat chicken nuggets what do you wish parents knew about feeding their kids what's your kind of mantra for parents well there's so many things i think starting from weaning is that if

you're starting to wean later now at six months the way we weaned previously was just fruit and vegetables for like four to six weeks you can't do that if you start at six months because from six months and this is really important to know for anyone weaning, from six months the iron that a baby inherits from their mother starts to run out and neither breast milk or formula milk will give your baby the iron that they need. That's why one needs to introduce solids, but neither will fruit and vegetables. So you need to move on from your fruit and vegetables fairly swiftly and introduce iron rich foods within that six month period.

It's really important. And the other really critical nutrient you need to be introducing at six months is essential fatty acids, which can really only get from oily fish. So those two things are really important early on. And babies actually need more fat and less fiber in their diet than we do. So this healthy eating guidance of low-fat, high-fiber is completely wrong for babies. And also, if you're vegetarian, an adult vegetarian diet, which is full of fiber and brown rice and high-fiber cereals, it's not a good diet for babies. So they would really need to have eggs and cheese in their diet,

because what they need is they need what I call nutrient-dense foods to fuel their very rapid growth in the first year so it's very important to realize that what's good for adults isn't necessarily the right way to feed a baby I think this is really interesting because I'm noticing that as kind of millennials who are becoming parents now are kind of known for their very vegan or veggie diets as they become parents they're really struggling because they want their babies to eat veggie or vegan and yet like you've just said it's not really enough to sustain a baby nutritionally what what is the right thing to do if you're a vegan or vegetarian couple and you then have to start feeding your baby so vegetarian is okay provided you have vitamin c with iron rich foods to help dissolve the iron and provided you have eggs and cheese because that's going to give your your baby the calories that they need to grow and remember not to give

too much high fiber because your baby can then feel full and not get the nutrients they need because they've got the point tiny tummies yes tiny weenie tummies so even weetabix which is quite high in fiber can deplete their body of iron so you have to remember that so that's important that's really important i didn't realize that but vegan is another thing i mean vegan i wouldn't recommend unless you give supplements because it's going to be very hard to get enough essential fatty acids without a supplement, or probably to get enough B12 without a supplement. And maybe, like, go vegetarian with your baby,

and then when your child is a little bit older, let them decide what they want to do. I mean, I support vegans and vegetarians, but I just worry in the very early years whether it's going to give them the nutrients that they need, because an adult vegan diet Isn't going to be suitable for a baby. I think it's really important that we remember that like babies aren't just mini grown-ups Are they they're their own little and they're not if they grew at the same rate that they grow in their first year All the way through up until 18. They probably as tall as Nelson's column, but they don't nuts They don't they said that of growth slows down at the

end of the first year which is why they become more fussy so they aren't eating as much because they don't need as much food their brain triples in size in the first year which is why we need essential fatty acids because that's a really important part of the brain formation and visual development so fish is so important that's why I've developed this fish range because a lot of children aren't eating enough oily fish. Fish fingers tend to be white fish, but the oily fish is what they need. I mean, obviously they need white fish as well, but the oily fish is very important.

Yeah, we have oily fish Tuesday in our house to make sure that they're good. That's very good. You're putting me to shame, Annie. Well, you can't have oily fish Tuesday now you're having vegetarian Monday to Friday, can you? Well, I know. It's all just been thrown into complete disarray, Wendy i don't know what i'm gonna do i think you're gonna

have to be pescatarian annie yeah i think that is a good idea because i think you know flax seeds walnuts all these things that contain essential fatty acids i mean a baby can never eat enough of those to get the essential fatty acids they need so how are they going to get it if they don't eat fish or have a supplement right the other the other trend that i'm noticing annabelle which causes me great concern and i actually have been known to stamp my feet a little bit in meetings with unnamed uh food brands for children um is when they start saying and we're thinking of introducing um a range of gluten-free baby this and i'm like why has there been a massive spike in in celiac children and and they're like no but their parents don't really want them that's ridiculous like what's going on we need people to better understand the difference between giving up gluten through choice and

actually being allergic to something don't we absolutely um i mean the commonest allergies and ditto with dairy there's a lot lot of dairy. I know, I know. And like dairy is such an important source of calcium. I know. And the dairy-free milks that you give, the formula milks, they don't taste as good. I don't know. Unless you need to give dairy-free, don't.

Get your child properly checked out. But a lot of people think their child has an allergy when they actually don't have an allergy. But interestingly enough, the earlier you give eggs and peanut butter, the more chance there is of your child not developing an allergy, which was completely opposite advice when I was a mum. And they told me not to give peanut butter until about nine or ten months. And now they know that by giving peanut butter early,

it helps to develop some barrier to that allergy. Especially in cases where your child has eczema, under medical supervision, they even recommend giving it before six months, but obviously under medical supervision, because babies who have eczema, particularly severe eczema early on, are much more likely to develop a food allergy. What about honey, Annabelle? Because when mine were little, it was not before one.

That's the same. It's very rare. But that's because it was not before one that's the same it's very but that's because it's not pasteurized right yes because in very rare cases it can cause infant botulism but i don't know that there's been any cases of infant botulism for a long time but still it's probably a good idea but if you heat honey to a high degree you kill off that infant botulism anyway so you could cook with honey to a high temperature so what advice would you give to parents who make choices themselves about things like drinking milk with a y one of my parents and um not eating bread and stuff like it's not okay to make that choice for your children unless they have an allergy is it i think it's much more difficult to give a child a good rounded

diet by excluding very important parts of their diet like dairy because dairy is the best source of calcium and it's really important and they're growing with their bones and it's going to be much more difficult to to get the calcium without including dairy so i think it would be a shame unless they really have to but obviously if a if a child has a cow's milk allergy there are plenty of things that they can have but the you know the the type of milks they have the formula milks that are dairy free don't taste as good no my daughter had to be on um i can't remember what it was called now but it tasted revolting neocate that's it it was what does it taste like it smelled like drains it was horrible seriously

did she drink it she did but she was on it from really really young because she had cow's milk protein intolerance and then as she once she was on cow's milk itself at about one she was fine but the other thing that's interesting that with an egg allergy before when you had an egg allergy you were told not to give biscuits cakes or anything containing egg like a meatball now if you have an egg allergy and the child can't eat something like scrambled eggs or omelette you should give the meatballs with a bit of egg in if they can tolerate it or a biscuit with a bit of egg in it because by giving them these small amounts of egg you're helping yeah you're helping them eventually hopefully grow out of their allergy that's why they have the milk ladder it starts off with a biscuit with a little

bit of dairy in it and a lot of children who have a dairy intolerance or dairy allergy, they'll grow out of it. Yes, that's what we found. Yeah. Now, we've talked a lot about the kind of the science and the practicalities of feeding fussy eaters or kids with allergies or, to be frank, kids without allergies. What about the emotional wrangling that happens in a mother or father's head

when they've got a fussy eater or a child who genuinely can't eat something how can we calm ourselves down and not make food a meal times battlegrounds Annabelle? I think it's a psychological thing with many children and provided you're making something that's tasty and looks nice sometimes if they won't eat it the best way to deal with it is they find you're not hungry and just let them go. Because forcing them to eat something when you can't anyway. And eventually when they're hungry, they're going to be less fussy. That's the truth of it.

A hungry child will eat something new. That's really interesting, but very hard to do. But it's the best way to get your child to eventually eat a healthy diet. If you keep on only giving them chicken nuggets or or pizza then they're going to be even more fussy because that's all they'll eat well yes i have a friend who had famously the fussiest eater child ever would never eat a meal wouldn't eat anything and yet if you spent a day with them they were eating more snacks than you could shake a stick out so actually what was happening was't hungry. The kid was filling up the snacks and then at mealtime was just like, I'm not hungry, I don't need anything.

And to be honest, these bags of snacks for toddlers, there's nothing in them. I mean, there's nothing. They're like Watsits without the salt. Like, what's the point? So where do you stand on snacks? Well, I think if you're going to make a snack,

give them something like fruit, vegetables, like vegetables dipped in hummus, like cheese. I mean, give them something that's part of their overall nutrition why should a snack be empty calories why can't it be fruit veg cheese and what about being hungry though does a child need a snack between a meal what do we do i'm worried about this but not so early they probably don't need snacks at least nine ten months old to be honest because they're having milk and everything they don't need it and you're filling them up and then they don't want to eat their really good nutritious meal but think of snacks as being part of the overall nutrition and if you can have a snack like a rice

cake with peanut butter on it that's a good snack and they like that but why buy these bag snacks and you look on the back it says carrot but it's like one percent carrot so give them a carrot that's a hundred percent carrot why would you do true it is that's a good tip it's a good tip i just swing wildly on snacks sometimes i'm like yes of course they need snacks they mustn't go hungry and then i'm like but then like you say put a meal in front of them and they're like oh no i'm not or have something in the fridge like all ready to go like cut up veggies or steamed or roasted sweet potato wedges or cut up pieces of cheese. They'll eat it and go out with something like that. The snack time I struggle with the most, I don't know about you, Wendy, is when they first come out of school and they're ravenous.

But they don't want fruit. They want something. An apple's not going to cut it, Annabelle. We might give them a wrap. They love wraps. I make amazing wraps. I put mayonnaise, a little bit of sweet chilli sauce or some plum sauce, some chicken, some like cucumber. And I wrap it up into the wrap and it's like a mini duck roll.

And they love it. So wraps are really good. Yeah, mine will always eat a wrap. That's a good idea. Yeah, wraps are great. And you can make so many things in wraps. I mean, you can make tuna with sweet corn you can make you know vegetarian wraps you can make hummus with grated carrots they love that and cucumber and you stick it into a wrap and then suddenly it becomes well

that's magically agreed into child's appeal because it's stuck in the wrap quesadillas are another one i make this lovely chicken mixture with like sweet corn and red pepper and tomatoes and onion and chicken and a lovely sauce and I stick it between two wraps with a little bit of grated cheese and then I flip it over and I cut it into wedges. They go mad for it. My children absolutely love it and it's only because I stick it inside the quesadillas. If the chicken was on the table they wouldn't eat it. If I offered Florence a cheese sandwich she'd turn her nose up and say no I didn't like cheese sandwiches do a melted cheese between two soft tortillas and she's like oh this is so amazing thank you mummy yeah so wraps are good quesadillas are good you can do tomato pesto and mozzarella quesadilla that's really nice as well and they're

so quick to make really quick so if you are going to give your kids something labelled naughty, as it were, what's the best naughty? So I make these, they're like chocolate balls, but they're not really made of chocolate. They're made with dates and cocoa and cashew nuts and a bit of orange extract. And I put it all into a food processor and I whiz it up. It tastes like chocolate and it looks like chocolate. It looks like a truffle. I'd quite like one of those now. Yeah, the problem might be it might not make it to the kids. It looks like a truffle. I'd quite like one of those now. Yeah, the problem might be

it might not make it to the kids' animal. This is also true. It's also true. I mean, with my son at home, it's like for four people. It's not normal. I have to hide food so we have something left at our dinner sometimes.

It's like if he's going out early. Or I have to lie, like have all the burgers gone? Yes, but no, they haven't really. This is all coming to you, Annie. This is coming. I know, my brother's a bit like that. My brother will, like, eat a whole chicken in one sitting

and think that that's completely normal. Very strange behaviour. The male of the species is that. But how old are your kids now? Nine and seven. And do they cook? Do you get them to cook in the kitchen? Yeah, Florence in particular loves cooking

and basically would cook anything if you let her. The boy child, not so much, is more of an eater than a cooker. Well, I think if you got my new cookbook, the pictures are so enticing and the recipes are so yummy. In fact, some of them are my favourite recipes that I cook for the family that they would get interested in cooking. And when they cook, they're more interested in eating it. It's almost like like hurts their pride if

they made something and they don't eat it okay well i'm gonna i'm gonna put this to the test then and i'll get the new book and give it to atticus and send you a copy whether he's inspired thank you so much now we're getting to the end of the pod and we have some regular questions that we always ask our guests at the end and about oh this is a surprise no one warned me about this i hope they're not too difficult no they're they mixture of thought-provoking and utterly banal first of all thought-provoking how do you want your children to remember you Annabelle she's thinking people I'm thinking about that I want them to remember me as a friend and a mentor. And I think that I'm very blessed that my daughter works with me in my company and I see her every day in the office. And as a working mum, I had to give up quite a lot when they were little, but I was always there at bedtime and always there for all the things that they did.

And I think that they've seen me as a role model and they've all got an amazing work ethic and they're going to start their own businesses, all of them. And I think that I've given them a gift of being, it's not what you do for your children, it's what you teach them to do for themselves. That's what I want to leave with them. And I've always made them do things for themselves. If they say tie your shoelaces, I'll say no, I'm not going to do that. I'll show you how to do it and then I'm going to untie it and I want you to do it. Because I don't believe in giving stuff to kids too early. I think they going to do that I'll show you how to do it and then I'm going to untie it and I want you to do it because I don't believe in like giving stuff to kids too early I think they need to earn it and I've brought all my kids up to be self-sufficient and I think that's a gift that

is really important that parents need to give to their kids and not always easy to do either but they're happier they're happy no you completely right. It's just sometimes you're tempted to save the day, aren't you? And yeah, but you're right. So what's next for Annabelle Carmel? Tell us. Book number 39? Yeah. Well, my Fun, Fast and Easy Cookbook comes out on the 30th of September.

And I'm launching a clothing range with Rachel Riley. Annabelle! Yeah. Really exciting. And it's based on the illustrations from the Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner. That's so cute. And it's really cute. And it's baby grows.

And some of them you can actually have your child's name embroidered on them. And it's pyjamas. It's muslins. It's baby grows. Even baby grows where you can embroider your child's name on so you can have like in case you forget their name or you've got twins or triplets very good for triplets well the next one is the most perfect question to ask it's surely fairly obvious well we ask it of everyone um but it's it's particularly brilliant to put it to you

what's for tea tonight and who's cooking? I really hope it's you, Anna. Well, I'm cooking. I'm cooking. So I'm making my seared tuna salad. It's incredible. We literally lived on it in the pandemic and it's on my website.

And I take fresh tuna and I cook it for literally one minute, that's it. And then I put like amazing salad dressing with lettuce, mouli, tomatoes. I buy these seeds, I sprinkle on it. It's the most delicious salad and I'm also making my giant couscous salad with red onion dressing which is fabulous, also on my website. And then I'm making for dessert something that my mum taught me to make. It's called a lakshan pudding. It's a really interesting thing.

It's thin verse vermicelli and you put egg and a little bit of milk with it and you put raisins and sultanas in it you bake it in the oven it's all crispy it's to die for it's incredible do you have puddings every night in the annabelle carmel household i like to cook puddings not every night though but i do like i do like to have a little bit of stuff i feel like you need something sweet at the end of a meal i do so what i did also i bought these tiny cornettos and they look like mini cornettos, but they're only this big. So you think you're not eating too much, but then you end up eating six of them. That's the problem. I'm glad you are quite normal like the rest of us.

When do you do pudding every night? Not for the grown-ups, but the kids tend to have something like fruit and yogurt or something. I always have cookies, actually. I have ocean raisin cookies that are incredible, and they're healthy. And they're really easy to cook, and they're always on the table, and the kids love them. But they've actually got good things in them.

Okay, so I'm not a bad mum if I give something sweet after a meal. I think a meal isn't complete with something tiny bit of sweet. I just feel I crave it. But I don't want to train them to be sugar mums. No, I know. It could be fruit, though though but it could be fruit okay yeah all right you're making me feel better right last question over to you wendell annabelle you have to imagine that your very grown-up very hungry son is a baby again and you're

tucking him into bed and singing him your family lullaby and we'd like you to sing it to us please oh my god that's terrible i'm not sure i can do that of course you can you can do anything you're annabelle carmel indeed can it be really short yeah one line's fine how much is that doggy in the window the one with the waggly tail how much is that doggy in the window i wish that that doggy was for sale you're the first person to have sung that on this podcast and it's one of my absolute favorites so thank you very much annabelle carmel well annabelle it has been an absolute pleasure thank you so much for joining us and long may our friendship continue annabelle well i love

coming on your show. Thank you. I just want to say one thing, that it's one of the things that we do, and it's actually one of the things I did several years ago, but it's become really popular, is our app. We have over 300 recipes on our app, and it's amazing because you can keep it in your pocket. Yeah.

And whenever you're in the supermarket or you're thinking about what to cook, it's just full of ideas. Okay. Well, we will be downloading it today. Thank you so much, Annabelle. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye.