French Toast with Strawberry Coulis (Father’s Day Special Breakfast)

It is my hubby’s first Father’s Day this year. And what a great father he has been.

He used to be one of those men who wasn’t very fond of babies. When I became pregnant, he had self doubt in his parenting skills . But boy were we so wrong. He was the first one to hold the baby. When he did, the look on his face was so priceless. He was simply in an awe (I think he was fighting back tears). It is the most precious and unforgettable moment in our lives.

Since then it’s been a roller coaster ride being new parents especially baby having infant eczema. It had been trying times at the most. But my hubby’s relentless dedication and optimism to manage and care for our baby has been most inspiring to me. I believe it may just be why my baby’s skin condition is now fully healed.

I’m so thankful to have a hubby like him. So to celebrate his first Father’s Day, I made him his favourite special breakfast.

I believe everyone knows how to make a French Toast. Here’s my version and it’s such a delicious recipe.

Ingredients
4 Eggs
4 pieces of rustic white bread
60 ml of cream
2 tablespoons of raw sugar
Pinch of salt
Dash of Black Pepper
4 tablespoon of Olive oil
1 stick of cinnamon
2-3 cardamom whole

Strawberry Coulis
12 (250 grams approx) of Frozen Strawberries or fresh ones if available
2 tablespoons of raw sugar
1 teaspoon of Vanilla essence

Crispy bacon
4 slices of Bacon

Whisk eggs, cream, sugar and salt and add dash of black peppers.

Spread the mixture thoroughly on the bread and set aside let it soak.

In a bowl, add halved strawberries, sugar and vanilla essence. Pop it in a microwave for 2-3 minutes until the strawberries are mushy and syrupy. Set aside for plating.

Heat pan and add tablespoon of olive oil. Add cinnamon stick and cardamom to infuse oil. Add a slice of bread and fry it gently on low to medium heat. When it golden, flip it to cook the other side. Repeat same process for all the other slices of breads.

When breads are done, fry bacon slices until crispy. Remove it from the pan and dab off the excess fat in a paper towel.

Slice french toast in triangular shapes. Serve it on a plate with strawberry coulis and crispy bacon.

Recipe ideas for baby food

As a new mom, I get very excited about each and every milestones that my baby reaches. When he smiles, giggles, squeals, bangs things together and make cooing sounds and now he’s saying ‘baba’ and ‘booba’ and sitting up. These are very special moments that melts your heart. The moments like these makes you realize how blessed I’m to have my baby and become a mother.
There are times when things are tough and are very overwhelming not knowing why my baby is crying, sleepless nights and adjusting your life around your baby’s routine.
The times like when my baby had eczema and/or first cold, my heart just broke and ached so bad seeing him in pain and I couldn’t do anything to ease it. But you always find that inner strength and confidence being a mother.

When my baby first started solids, I was very excited as it such a big milestone. I was over zealous about him getting to explore and taste different fruits, veggie and meat. I was so looking forward to giving is as many varieties of food and making him discover new taste sensations.
Oh my, how naive was I. I didn’t know babies loves their routine and anything that messes up with it will face a huge challenge.

It was especially challenging for my baby due to suspected (yet to be proven) food allergy.
I had to be cautious with what I was introducing. It has to be one at a time and tiny portions like a touch and a speck to start with when introducing high allergic food like wheat, dairy, eggs, fish and nuts. So far my baby didn’t respond well to dairy and wheat. He’s good with eggs. Now we have to try fish and nuts.

Due to this hubby and I are very concerned with the iron level as we are restricted on choices of varieties of food that he can eat. Also he’s a choosy eater and he doesn’t seem to be very fond of bananas, avocados, pea purée, chicken or eggs that we have tried. But we are trying to prepare it in a best way possible so he will eat it.

There’s so much information out there on giving solids to baby that sometimes I feel inundated and confused.

I make all his meals at home with fresh ingredients twice a week. I try and include Veggies that are high in iron. He loves broccoli and spinach so I add these with base veggies of carrot, sweet potato and pumpkin.

Here’s his meal planner

Breakfast
Oatmeal with Prune Cereal

Lunch
Puréed veggies

Dinner
Apple purée with 2 tspn of oatmeal cereal or pumpkin purée

I’m going to try and give him chicken purée which I’ve poached and puréed. Because when I introduced chicken, I over steamed it making it too dry. Also I mixed it with pumpkin and puréed it together. The purée was gritty and tasted like cardboard

Here are 2 simple recipes you can at home.

Recipe 1
Ingredients
100 gms of sweet potato
50 gms of carrot
50 gms of broccoli florets
Peel a carrot and sweet potato. Wash it in cold water. Chop the veggies in medium size cubes.

Wash broccoli in cold water and break it into bite sized pieces

Put the veggies
in the steamer and steam for 20 minutes.

When cooked, purée the mixture and put about 3 oz in each storing container. Cool the mixture before freezing it.

Recipe 2

200 grams butternut pumpkin
100 grams of chicken breast

WaPeel and deseed pumpkin and wash it in cold water. Cut them in small cubes.
Put the pumpkin cubes in a steamer and steam it for 20 minutes.
(Option: Add handful of spinach or peas or broccoli for extra boost of iron.)

When pumpkin is cooked, blend it into a purée. Portion it into a small container and cool it before freezing it.

Fill the pot (with a thick base) with cold water. Put chicken in the pot and turn on the heat. When the water comes to the boil, turn the heat low. Cover the pot and let the chicken poach for 10 minutes in a gentle simmer.

After 10 minutes, remove the pot from the heat and leave the chicken in the pot for 5 mins.

Cut the chicken into small pieces. Put it in the blender and add 150ml of liquid (stock from the pot). Blend it to make fine purée.

Portion chicken purée into small containers and cool it before freezing it. I usually store the mixture for 5-6 days in the freezer.

Mix 2 teaspoon of chicken purée with 100ml of pumpkin purée to make a yummy lunch or dinner for your baby.

I hope your baby will love these recipes as much as my bubba does.

Enjoy.

Mother’s Day: Tribute to my mom

Today it’s Mother’s Day . I’m very excited as this is my first Mother’s Day as a mother. I’ve already bought Mother’s Day gifts for myself and a cake too as hubby is not good with these kind of social events. So he gave me his card and I went on shopping spree buying Mother’s Day pressie. Bought myself 2 beautiful charms one of which is mother’s pearl charm and another one says MUM and a nice robe. I hope hubby was taking notes so that he knows what to do next year.

I gave birth to my beautiful baby boy last year. It was the most amazing and surreal experience of my life. I know it’s a kind of cliché when woman says child birth is most amazing, significant and indescribable joy and experience of their life. I used to feel the same way but now I know better. It’s true. Being a mom changes your perspective of life. I can go on and on about this immeasurable joy, but maybe in my next post.
In this post, I want to pay tribute to my mom ( whom I call maa). As being a mom now, makes me realize how precious my maa is and how much I love her.

Needless to say, I’m on maternity leave at the moment. My daily routine is caring, spending and loving my lil bub. When he’s asleep, I do get to indulge by watching TV or surfing the internet. I was watching morning show today. There are lots of promotion and advertisement on telly for Mother’s Day. One of the network is doing makeovers for working busy mom. The mom who was getting makeover had five sons. They nominated her for a makeover as she’s been too busy looking after them that she had ignored herself. I thought that was the sweetest gift the sons could have given her to show their love. It just reminded me of how much of a supermom my maa is.

My maa had a tough life. As a child, she didn’t have a mother to look after her as she passed away when my mom was a baby. But my grandfather remarried and brought home a nasty stepmother. She didn’t cared for her. My maa used to tell us stories about how she didn’t even had food to eat. Due to these hardships, she started working at my dad’s business when she was about 12-13. That’s how they met and fell in love.
Due to being of different caste ( caste
system is big deal in countries like Nepal), they had to elope as my father’s family was not ready to accept my maa. They were kicked off from family home and stripped off from family inheritance.

My mom and dad had to start off from zero. They struggled to feed the family of six daughters. My dad started his own business and they were working 18 hours a day to put food on the table and a place to call home. They went through such hardship sacrificing their youth to raise a family and give us a better life. My elder sisters used to help out with the family business and they used to look after us too. They made sure that we got good education so they enrolled us into boarding school. Not only it is a big deal to give daughters an education, on top of it, we were sent to boarding school to get the best education. I remember we were the only 3 girls who went to this prestigious English medium school from our area. Our neighbors used to be quite jealous of that and used to fill my father’s ears saying why does he bother getting us education, once they marry they will be caring for in-laws not the parents.

My parents never waiver from their commitment to give us a better future.

My family business took off and started bringing lots of profit around the time when I was 7-8 years old. My parents were still putting all their effort into making our business grow.

My maa was juggling with looking after 6 daughters and helping out with the business. She never had time for herself. No vacations, no pampering, no me-time. Her only breaks were few family visits to temple. We did once went to India for few weeks but that was also a business visit.

Then I never understood how much it takes to just give and give and never ask for anything in return. She never complained, never made us feel how tough life she’s been living. When it was not us demanding her time, she had to care for my dad. Cooking, cleaning, caring for us and dad took all the best years of her youth.

2 years ago my dad passed away suddenly. It was very shocking tragedy for my maa. Suddenly she’s all by herself and lonely. She doesn’t know what to do with all the time she has. She’s still coming into terms with the fact that my dad is not there anymore.

I’ve invited my mom to Australia twice now. We are trying to give all her lost time and compensate for all her life long effort in raising us by taking her to all these beautiful places. She loved the beautiful beaches as she’s seen it the very first time. She was amused to see Opera house, Harbour Bridge, kangaroos and koalas. Now most of her daughters including me are living overseas. loves Great Ocean Road drive. She loved it so much that she asked me to buy her koalas and kangaroos as a souvenir. I was much happy to obliged and bought her half her suitcase full of it.

She also visited my sister in United States. She’s been to New York , Niagara Falls, Washington, D.C.

Seeing her this happy to visit all the new places gives me contentment of knowing that we are giving something back for all the love, nourishment, care and time a mother gives to her child.

I love my mom and on this Mother’s Day I thank her for my life and everything else.