Shanghai Mama

Restaurants come and go in the space of year so it is hard to give a extensive and reliable list of what’s out there. There are lots and lots to restaurants to pick from, all kinds of cuisines and prices. Chinese food itself offers a enourmous variety of tastes to choose from, from very la 辣 hunanese to the sweet and saucy shanghainese dishes.
To get a most updated list of what’s available consult that’s shanghai or city weekend (www.cityweekend.com.cn)
Here is a list of my favourites:

Zaozishu Vegetarian Lifestyle everything is good! great for kids.
Good Times must try the Masala dosa and Paneer Kati Roll. great for kids
Element Fresh, ask for the kid’s menu, Theo loves the fish fingers and broccoli. great for kids!
AnnaMaya macrobiotic, organic, yummy yummy and very chilled. Haven’t been with Theo, think it is a little too chilled for toddlers… mummy alone experience with a friend or a book or laptop..

Imported organic baby/toddler biscuits are over priced and over packaged and cause earth damaging carbon miles. So make your own instead.

This recipe is for yummy and relatively healthy biscuits that Theo loves, and they are a great treat for stroller rides. They are really easy and fast to make, taking around 30 mins from weighing the ingredients to out of the oven and ready to eat.

Ingredients- Makes around 20 nibbles
100 g organic wholemeal flour　（有机全麦面粉　you3ji1 quan2mai4 mian2fen）
25g organic porridge oats (有机燕麦片 you3ji1 yan2mai4 pian4)
1/2tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
2 tbsp honey (蜂蜜　feng1mi4）
50g butter

Oven 180 C/350 F
Mix all the dry ingredients then stir in the honey and rub in the butter to form a soft dough. Pat the dough on a floured surface into a 5mm flat shape. Then using a cutter cut out your nibbles and place then on a lightly greased baking sheet, bake for about 10 mins or until golden. Cool for 5 mins and enjoy! I normally use a very small cutter (or a 125ml baby milk bottle neck) which makes coin sized nibbles of about 2cm in diameter.

This is the basic recipe. You can create your own special variations adding a little something to the mix: raisins, dried cranberries or even chocolate chips.

This recipe is slightly varied from the Oat Biscuits one on Finger food for Babies and Toddlers by Jennie Maizels
. This is a really great book with lots of great ideas for picnic and on the go food, also has some nice “healthish” treats.

I remember doing an online test on a natural birthing forum I was/am a member of when I was pregnant, the test was to decide how crunchy granola you are… turned out I didn’t breast feed enough children at once, didn’t grow my own veg and shaved my arm pits too often to qualify..
Anyhow maybe not crunchy granola enough.. but hey I’m feeling pretty good about my crunchy muesli credentials recently after finding this awesome recipe online, I must admit that I felt like a bit of a kitchen goddess baking my muesli in my mini oven til one o’clock in the morning while my boys were fast asleep. We are all big fans and now that the jar is almost empty, I’m getting ready to make another batch in the next few days. I’m adding the recipe below for those you are keen to try it out.

Apologies to the original creator of the recipe as I can’t find the url anymore, thanks for putting this recipe online anyhow I love it!

CRUNCHY MUESLI
Ingredients:
1Kg Oats (from Tesco’s)
200g slivered Almonds (I didn’t have any of these and it was great anyways)
250g Sunflower Seeds (from Helekang)
250g Pumpkin Seed ( I didn’t have any of these either..)
1tbs Cinnamon
Finely grated rind of 2 oranges
1cup firmly packed Brown Sugar
100ml Canola Oil (from City)
2 tsp vanilla Extract (I didn’t bother and I don’t think it really needs it but try it if you have some nice vanilla extract in the house)
200ml water
I also added half a cup of flax seeds

Preheat oven to 160C
Combine, oats, almonds, seeds, cinnamon, rind, sugar plus half tsp of salt in a bowl. Whisk together oil, vanilla and water and drizzle over the oat mixture, then suing your hands mix until well combined. Spread over 2 large oiled baking trays. Bake for 1 hour or until golden, stirring occasionally and swapping trays half way through.

You can add all kinds of seeds and after it’s baked any dried fruit you have. I didn’t bother adding that part of the recipe as I find that dried fruit in Shanghai is extremely expensive.

After the mixture comes out of the oven let it cool down completely and store it in an air tight container, it’s delicious served with yogurt!

Helekang has a really long list of items on their order form. Not only fruit and veg, also organic meat, milk, grains, pulses, coffee, baby wear by Wobabybasics and deet-free herbal insect repellent (imported from US). If your order is over 100rmb delivery is free, if not you pay 10rmb.
I tried it out recently and found the service on the phone extremely good, they were very very polite and helpful. Will be ordering from them again soon…

I’ve been on a mostly veg diet for about 5 years, I do sometimes have a little fish but eat not meat at all. Same with my husband so we’re bringing up Theo meat free. Some of you who might have read my blog before might know about my attempts at Baby lead weaning, not an absolute failure but not a success either. Theo preferred breast milk to most things and just spent his time on the high chair throwing food about. That got vvvvvery boring and frustrating and out came the spoon. So I did a bit of a mix of spoon feeding and letting him feed himself. It took a while but I think that in the past month we have turned a corner and Theo finally seems to be enjoying his food and is into trying to things too. At the wknd he just couldn’t get enough egg fried rice while we were having lunch in Suzhou!
Now that I know that food is not going to be wasted I am trying to commit more time for cooking yummy nutritious meal for him. I should add that I was getting a little worried about his protein intake as he was having quite a bit of pasta and veg but really not into eggs or pulses or tofu until my friend Clara sent me this veg burger recipe which he really loved and it’s super easy.
This is a great one because is great for everyone in the family and you can make a load and freeze them.
Here it comes:

2 cans of lentils (drained, rinsed) you can do any other beans cans or soaked and boiled from dry
4 free range eggs
1/2 cup diced fresh coriander
1 clove garlic, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1/2 small onion, diced
1 cup Bread crumbs (I buy the Progresso brand bread crumbs from City, it is a blue cylinder container) I make my own with some toast bread in the mixer

Saute the garlic, carrot and onion in olive oil until a little tender. In food processor or blender puree 1 1/2 cans of lentils and the 4 eggs. Add 1/2 can of lentils which were not pureed into the mixture, so you have some whole lentils in the mix. Add the sauteed carrot, onion and garlic to the mix. Add the fresh cilantro. Add the bread crumbs (can add more or less until the batter becomes a consistency you like). Form into a patty or just drop a gallop of mix into a frying pan with oil. Fry them until crispy. Delicious!

I make mini ones for Theo and he looks pretty adorable feeding himself his baby burger.

Another organic veg delivery service I heard of… Haven’t tried it yet myself but I hear it’s organicalicious…
Free Delivery on Tue(Pu Xi) & Fri(Pu Dong), Order from 10:00am to 8:00pm daily for next day delivery)!!
Order No.: 13564798532 (Janet)
Email: organic-vintageliving@hotmail.com

Slowly demolishing my pumpkin

Originally uploaded by Bettina Dormalini

Theo turned 6 months on the 17th of this month and after giving it some tought we made a family decision to try BLW (baby led weaning). There are quite a few good blogs out there talking about this subject, and I’ve been really enjoying reading this one. For those who know nothing about it there is a good intro here.
I wasn’t in too much of a rush to start Theo on solids as I find breasfeeding really convenient and easy. Having said that I must admit that at the time of writing this Theo has been feeding a lot and I’m feeling pretty exhausted and keep craving sweets and cake.
As I seem to have little time to myself at the moment I hadn’t fully researched BLW beforehand but have a friend started with it and had read up on the basics a while back. Now I tend to refer to blogs and online info as I go along and have doubts and questions about the whole process. I think BLW is a great idea but one needs patience and has to have a high threshold for coping with mess.

This is what I used and a brief report on what has happened up to now:
EQUIPMENT: Vegetables (Up to now I’ve used broccoli, carrots, pumpkin, avocado), ANTILOP High Chair from Ikea (199 rmb)- I need to add that although I am not a big fan of plastic this super plasticy chair is good because it’s really easy to clean-, shower curtain (cheap one from Ikea) to cover the floor under the High Chair- Just added this today-. Bibs (the ones that cover the arms too) found a cute one in toweling from Puan lu but will need more (15 rmb), Bamboo steamer.

Day 1- Morning- Steamed carrot sticks.
Theo was interested in the sticks, took a bite off one and just played about with it. The problem was that I made the sticks too small and were quite hard for him to hold on to. I panicked a bit and mashed a few sticks then spoon fed him a spoon full, then gave thim the spoon to play with. I also gave him water from a beaker for the first time, he had a tiny bit.

I know he ate something as I found some carrot bits in his poo the next day… Guess it was a success.

Day 2-
Morning- Big steamed carrot sticks
Again I didn’t get the sticks quite right, good size but too soft and so there was carrot EVERYWHERE! He did try to put the carrot in his mouth and played about and then I gave him some on a spoon and the spoon to play with. Not bad for a second try.
We were excited so we tried again at dinner time.
Late afternoon- Avocado
This was really hard to get hold of even for me, soooooooo slippery.. anyhow he did managed to get it in his mouth and then play with it and get it caked all over his clothes. I cheated again and put some on the spoon and then just gave him the spoon. It never appeared in the poo the next day so not quite sure what happened to it, think he did eat some, maybe it’s easier to digest?

Day 3-
Morning and Lunch- Pumpkin slice, steamed
I think this was the most successful attempt as it’s really easy for Theo to hold (due to the curved shape of the slice) and seemed to chew it quite a bit, even though a lot of the times he would chew then open his mouth and let the pumpkin goo fall out. Both attempts (breakfast and lunch) seemed to go well and he was really into it. I should add that by this time having read a bit more about it online and getting loads of support from my hub I was more relaxed about the whole thing and didn’t even have a spoon at hand, I think this method is great and hope I have enough patience to keep going!

Day 4- Today! Steamed broccoli
This was a success at breakfast as he really was interested in the whole thing and put the piece I offered in his mouth, bit and chewed at the stem and generally played about. He did loose interest after not so long and I didn’t push it. The second attempt at dinner time (5 o’clock) was a big mistake, should have just not bothered, he was tired and didn’t even pick the broccoli up, just hit his fist on it and threw it on the ground. He did the same when I handed it back to him twice. He was just tired and wanted a good feed the traditional way. Had a real struggle getting him in his nappy and pjs tonight but all he fell asleep during his last feed as usual.
I’ll try to be better at posting as I had a few tough days recently and feel that writing might just help me keep my sense of humour about motherhood.

It’s not so easy to find yogurt that doesn’t contain sugar or artificial flavourings in local shops and supermarkets. If you are a yogurt fan there is a great option which doesn’t even involve you leaving the house.
Bebemamie can deliver natural, sugar free, flavour free yogurt to your doorstep once a week.
There is a deposit for the glass jars (also good for the environment, no plastic!!) of 150 rmb so make sure your ayi doesn’t through them out,
The minimum delivery is of 8 jars per week and the cost is of 10 rmb per jar.
This yogurt most definetely passes the taste test!

Contact details are:
6437 3717 (9am-6pm)
email: order(at)bebemamie.com
Jallet Hano: 1316 2304 448 (10am-6pm)