I've been busy, I made quince jelly! I love that stuff as it is not as sweet as jam or even marmelade. Unfortunately I've got only about three and a half jars… One of them made me laugh as it set so quickly that the jelly got stuck to the lid:

We've finally also cut off all the red chillies which now will have to be dried. Here you can see Yannick's chubby fingers holding one for the camera:

The varieties are called 'Ring of fire' and 'Cherry bomb'. Have a guess which one is which. I am wondering whether the few remaining green chillies will also manage to become red or whether I should rather cut them off as well. Any advice?

As I've already mentioned on facebook, Yannick surprised me by suddenly wanting olives on bread. He must have overheard a conversation with my of my friends who is a vegan. I dug out some tapenade (with sundried tomatoes) and ever since that's what Yannick is having at least once a day, usually for breakfast. Until recently he actually wouldn't touch olives at all. Weird world.

Yesterday he surprised me again. At lunch time I was preparing rice with chicken breast in tomato sauce with peas. He usually has the meat and not much else nowadays. Yesterday he said he didn't want chicken and ate copious amounts of rice with tomato sauce and peas! He hadn't touched peas in months! After a while he also had a little chicken but this behaviour was definitely quite different! I wonder is he turning vegetarian? Maybe so, as he keeps asking me what is animal and what is plant: 'are courgettes animals?' 'Now, sweetie, what do you think, you've seen them grow in the garden!'

It's funny but dry runs really work to kindle an interest in unknown/previously disliked foods.

At Christmas time Yannick got a little cooker/oven unit which was accompanied by some plastic food:

• a burger bun
• hot dog sausages with rolls
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• a burger
• a lettuce leaf
• a sunny side up egg
• corn on the cob
• tomato slices
• a chicken thigh

Some of these items he had never seen in his life, for example a sunny side up egg or a burger. We also don't eat corn. However, he loves cooking, frying and baking all of these items.

Inspired by this I thought I could include him a little more in our real food preparation and he loves that.

Before the cooker, Yannick would only eat egg as omelette. I had tried scrambled egg and hard boiled egg but he wouldn't touch either of them. So after seeing him play, for the first time I made a sunny side egg and I gave him strips of toast to dip into the yolk. He LOVED it.

Today I thought I show him several incarnations of egg. We did a sunny side up once again, a normal breakfast egg (5 minutes) and a hard boiled one. As expected only the sunny side up one was excepted. I showed him the soft yolk of the five minutes egg and he finally accepted some of that - but only poured over his almost finished sunny side up egg. The hard boiled egg became only interesting after I put some sauce over it (in Germany we eat those with something similar to tartar sauce), but by that time he was too full already to appreciate it.

From the other plastic food items we have only had hot dog sausages which are like Frankfurters and he loves those. I already knew that broccoli wasn't going to be a big hit even though he loves serving his plastic broccoli. But at least he would try it again after playing with it.

I will have to try cauliflower cheese again, last time it was 'so so' with him. About corn I'm not sure as I don't like it too much and I think Yannick wasn't too keen on it either when he had it somewhere else recently.

And guess what, my child doesn't like baked beans too much. Just like Frank and I.

Things he loves:

• Cucumber.
• Apples. Sometimes kiwi. He used to like pears, have to try those again.
• Porridge with banana.
• Fruit purées.
• Rye-bread, crispy bread rolls, or toast with cheese, salami or paté.
• Camembert/brie.
• Sandwiches with salmon, prawns or cheese.
• Pasta/tortellini/ravioli with red or green pesto and crème fraîche.
• Pasta with smoked salmon (or prawns), courgette, and dill in crème fraîche.
• Rice with chicken in sauce hollandaise and if I'm lucky some veggies in there (mushrooms/courgette).
• Rice with braising steak and super sauce (with puréed carrots and red wine!).
• Rice with left over super sauce and chicken meat (marinated in soy sauce).
• Pizza.
• Fish fingers.
• Chocolate, biscuits with chocolate - but not cake (in general)!
• Smarties and milk chocolate buttons.
• Yoghurts and fromage frais.

I found this in the Cosmic Buddha blog:

Eating Mickey (or, how I overcame one of my last food prejudices)

Don't read if you are a vegetarian or very squeamish. I found the first photos hilarious and the result quite interesting to be honest.

Yum yum.

This was on the radio both when I went into work today and on my way back home. It seems to be a big thing. Is it really? OK, those people who have been let go have a big impact on their lives. Other than that? No. We've seen so many special diets being in the news over the last decades and all of them seem to go out of fashion after a while. Why? Because people don't want to diet. They want to eat whatever they like and as much as they like of that. Naturally.

I've never been a friend of diets, but for completely different reasons. (more…)

I asked my mum for her potato salad recipe. It's soooo good, but I never prepared it myself before yesterday. It looked a bit different to my mother's salad as I tend to leave the potato peel on and we couldn't get the proper bacon for this, but it still was delicious. Let me share the recipe with you.