Sunday 5 February 2012

Hospobaby's Daycare Diet

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday mornings are special for us. Hospobaby has started daycare!
AGGS daycare doesn't have a chef, so I have to come up with lunch and 2 snack time meals for Zoya.
They have strict guidelines - no whole egg, peanuts/nuts, chocolates, juice allowed. Well that makes things a bit hard as Zoya loves boiled egg and toast  for breakfast and PB n J sandwiches for lunch.
I didn't think this lunchbox dilemma would start until 5 years of age when she entered school, so I was a bit stumped.

Last Thursday Hospobaby's teacher had some interesting observations for me (this is only her second week, I thought it was best they suss her out for themselves.) I went to pick Hospobaby up and her teacher commented on her funky lunches. She wondered whether her dad who is a chef, packed her lunches because they were so interesting. Well he doesn't! I do. Until I came across a blog about Bento lunches I found the task tedious. Check out www.anotherlunch.com
 Now it is a little game every day.


Zoya's Bento Lunch box
Tools of the trade

Tomorrow her box includes, little round french toasts,  ham and cheese stacks, pitted cherries, box of raisins, yogurt pot, rice crackers and tuna rice sushi. These were so simple to make. As the blog suggested, I made a quick trip to the dollar store and to Japan mart on Queen street to buy some cookie cutters, a couple of silicone muffin moulds and a sushi mould. Milly's on Ponsonby road also stock some cool cookie cutters (we got the heart shape and egg shape ones for $2). Use the cookie cutters to make funky shapes out of bread or cut cheese shapes. Stick your fruit or vege into the silicone moulds. I bought the little flags on toothpicks from Japan mart and skewer ham and cheese on them. The sushi mould was handy to layer rice and canned tuna like a terrine.
The combinations are endless I guess, you only have your imagination to limit you. I have been getting empty lunch boxes ever since I started doing this, whether I am motivating the daycare staff to feed Hospobaby more or Zoya to eat more is another question.





Friday 3 February 2012

Meet the Hospobaby

How many 10 month olds can brag that they have had "Air Dried Beef with Truffle and Egg"? Not very many I bet. So I decided that I would chronicle the adventures of our daughter Zoya. My hope for her, like any other parents is that she will be a non- fussy eater. She has the ideal father for it, Sid my husband is a chef and we own our own restaurant; Sidart in Auckland. Our biggest milestone for Zoya was the day she could eat. We started "solids" early, the day she turned 4 months old.
Our journey started with baby rice w milk 
 Since then she has started giving up milk at a remarkable pace, she would rather eat than drink, the white tasteless stuff. We typically eat out every weekend ( hospo weekends are Sun and Mon ) Usually not the top end restaurants but ethnic places or cafes. We try to include Zoya in as many of them as possible. Last week it was Yum Char at Grand Harbour downtown. We kept her busy with deep fried squid. Dumpling stuffing was another thing that went down well but the one must try thing was ice cream balls. Vanilla ice cream wrapped in dumpling pastry. We usually don't order it but I suspected the Hospobaby would scoff the lot. I was right.






 Last weekend was also Auckland anniversary so we were scavenging around town for possible places that were open. We found cafe O, on Great North Road. We like Cafe O because it has a clean high chair (newish) from Mocka. They also give me a little espresso cup to pour some juice into for hospobaby. Unfortunately this time the high chair had gone walkabout and the staff couldn't find it. So we put Zoya in their big O swing.
The big O swing at Cafe O on Great North Road
She had a whole bacon and egg pie all to herself, then attacked daddy's corn cakes and ate my banana pancake too with a few nibbles of bacon on the side. The long weekend was completed by our trip to another one of our favourite haunts, Canton Cafe in Kingsland. Zoya has been there before but was not at a stage to eat their food. This time however she tucked into some pancakes from our Peking duck, ate Hoisin and rice, and some cucumbers too.

Eating pancakes at Canton Cafe in Kingsland Auckland

Uhh can I have some more please...
 We were too scared to let her have the hot and spicy prawns. Well, she proved us wrong. We had some in a doggy bag and she had one when we got home. Guess she's ready for some spicy action. If only Canton had a better high chair, I' d be willing to go there more often.
 A reminder of our last holiday arrived in the mail today. I saw the Australian post marked envelope and got excited. Had one of the restaurants we visited sent us a copy of a menu? Or something more exciting. It was a surprise, an infringement fine for speeding for my darling husband. We drove from Melboure to a little town called Dunkeld where the only thing worth mentioning is the Royal Mail Hotel. Which is so renowned that we drove all the way for over 3 hours to eat there. The ticket that came in the mail was for driving back from there. The meal at the restaurant at The Royal Mail was good but I won't talk about it here as it was one Hospobaby was not allowed to join us. However Hospobaby had plenty of adventures in Melbourne.

Hospobaby @ Spice Temple Melbourne

Spice Temple was the first. It was brilliant . They were so welcoming, despite not having a high chair but we always carry our chair in a bag for that situation. Zoya ate pork from the pork sliders, chicken off the chicken wings and duck and rice. Mmmmm.

Chocolate fondant @ Movida Melbourne
Air Dried Beef w Egg


 Movida was good too, very accommodating. The waitstaff fawned over Zoya as she ate the air dried beef and wiped the plate clean when it came to the chocolate fondant. Cutler and co was an exceptional meal, Hospobaby didn't like being out that night. She has not mastered the idea of courses yet. We have to work on that and her patience. She was better after the Maitre'd kindly gave her another one of their yummy sourdoughs to keep her mouth busy in between courses.
Thank you for the Sourdough you saved the night.

Again the desserts were hospbaby's favourite dishes. Bless good waitstaff everywhere in the world- I thank god for your existence.

Duck liver parfait at Cumulus


Duck liver Parfait though sharp in it's taste is Hospobaby's favorite. Cumulus and Inc. was a hit for that dish. They were great, as they accommodated us when Mama Sita's down the road told us the wait was over 2 hours when they had not even opened the doors yet.

Divine Gnocchi w braised rabbit and truffle at Sapore

The best and most succulent Gnocchi can be found at our friends restaurant Sapore in St. Kilda. Teamed with braised rabbit and truffle it was heaven for both Zoya and me. We throughly recommend it and they are happy to have children there, we saw another bubba on the night we were dining.

  We are off on another adventure very shortly. Just Hospobaby and Me this time. First to Singapore and then to India. Please send us your long haul travel tips. I have asked for special baby food for the trip. Keep you posted from almost the other side of the world... Live to eat!