Welcome to the Sees the Yay Podcast. Busy and happy, but tired and worn, just some of the feelings when baby is born. There's magic, elation, there's chaos and tears, but everyone goes through the same hopes and fears. So this is a segment we hope helps you feel supported and valid. The mum juggles real, the good, bad, the ugly, the best and worst day. It's part of the journey
to seize the Babe. I'm Sarah Davidson, a lawyer turned entrepreneur who hung up the suits and heels to co found Macha Maiden, a Macha Milk Bar, become a TV and radio presenter, and of course host The Sees the Ya Podcast. This year, I added motherhood to that list, which is the best job I've ever had with our beautiful baby Teddy, and this segment was designed to house
all the conversations we've been having about parenthood. We'll still do our regular episodes and just like real life, it's a constant balance between our parent identity and everything else. I hope you guys enjoy this segment as much as I have enjoyed creating it. Lovely Neighborhood, It's been a little while since our last Sees a Bebe episode, but as always, that in itself is just such an apt
representation of the Juggle. So many good topics have come up recently just in going about my life that I've wanted to dedicate episodes two for this segment, but without anywhere near enough time to squeeze them in, including another episode on the Juggle itself after a little video I shared on it when viral, But that will have to wait, because what we did manage to squeeze in over this past week was to catch an incredible guest during her
whirlwind visit to Australia. I still can't quite believe I had the opportunity to sit down with the woman who has already revolutionized meal time in our household, which is becoming quite the challenge as Teddy enters the wild world
of toddlehood. When it comes to feeding small humans. There is pretty much nobody better to speak to than Annabelle Carmel, who has published fifty one books on the subjects nineteen ninety one, had several TV shows, a life changing range of delicious already made frozen meals, and now an amazing app featuring her easy, healthy recipes, her decades of work since well before similar resources were accessible, has earned her an mbe our equivalent of an OAM, along with the
praise and loyalty of millions of families around the world. I just was not prepared for how difficult it could be to simply feed your child once they realized that they have autonomy, plus add the overwhelm of meal prep, balancing nutrition, and simply finding time. But Annabel's frozen meals and recipes have been unbelievably helpful, and I couldn't believe that not long after I discovered her, I actually got
to meet her in the flesh. Not only do we cover so many of the burning questions that many of us have about picky eating, introducing new flavors, determining the right volumes, and all that kind of thing, Annabel also shares the heart wrenching story that brought her to this point, another path ya that she never could have predicted. A little heads up, we do touch on the loss of a child, so please do take care while listening. In the meantime, I hope you gain as much from this one as I did.
Annabelle welcome, so lovely to be I love coming to Australia.
Oh my god, we love having you absolute icon and I feel like this is you've been here a month ago, you're coming again later in the year. I always thought you were Australians. Yeah, I mean, aren't we lucky to have you? And I'm so excited to have you for so many reasons, not just because you happen to be the pre eminent author and expert in an area that I've just it's just started to consume my life feeding my toddler, So that's one reason, but also because your
story is so interesting. We've been talking for about seven minutes and I've already heard one of the most interesting stories I've ever heard.
I think the why you started it is always very interesting. It isn't a path that you ever thought would happen, but it just life takes you that some is this tragedy that finds your career, which was for my life.
Well that's something that I mean, not necessarily the tragedy, but the show is all about showcasing the many different, unexpected, often and nonlinear pathways to the most exciting.
Well, this is definite've very non linear, and I.
Think most of them are and people will walk into your life right now and see you know, you're a mum yourself, You've got two girls getting married, you're traveling the world, you've got three dogs, fifty one books, six dogs, six three children, three children, two marriages in a year, fifty one books, an app arrange in supermarkets around the world. And it's easy to think that you knew you'd end up here, or that you always had it all together.
But I think revealing the many chapters that came beforehand is reassuring to others perhaps who haven't faund.
A lot of it was not planned, It just happened.
Yeah, exactly, exactly, So I would love to start there. You had, I mean even a whole career that unless you googled you, you wouldn't know from your current pages that you started as a musician, or that you know you had whole life before the chapter we walk into today. So take us back to the very beginning. How did it all come around?
Well? I started off as a musician, so I was for twelve years as a professional harpist and singer, which I absolutely loved. Music was my life. The half was a difficult instrument because many of you may not know but apart from the strings, there's southern pedals with three different notches, so it's quite complicated, but it's a good training for anything else. It's like me and patting your head, but worse. So I did that for many years, and I probably would have continued to do it had it
not been for me getting married. Actually I played Cinderella and PANTOMI I did crazy things about half I heard from the kitchen, and I learned classically and did many conscerants travel over the world, and I loved it. But it was a trashity that happened to me. It always wanted to have children. Took me over two years to get pregnant, and then they gave Birsta Natasha, my daughter, and I was over the moon. And then one day I looked at her and she didn't look quite right.
Her eyes were like rolling back and her hands were twitching, and I just knew there was something wrong. And I called a doctor and he didn't really want to see her, but after a lot of persuasion, he agreed to see her. And when I took him to see her, he just gave me a selecture about first time mothers and how they worry about their child, and they're much more robust than you think they are. And I came home thinking
I should never have taken him, and almost embarrassed. But the next morning she looked worse and she projectile vomited and it was awful, and I took her to another doctor, and nine o'clock in the morning I was on his doorstep and then he examined her, and then he said I've got to go and see another patient and left me for ten minutes, and actually hadn't gone to see another patient. He had already decided in his own mind
there was something seriously wrong with her. And when he came back into the room, he said, I didn't go and see another patient. I tried to get her admitted to Great almost at Hostital, which is the best hospital for her. Couldn't get her a bed, but take to Saint Mary's and they'll do tests on her. And that day they did the tests, and at five o'clock they took me into a room after doing a cat scan. They told me she'd never be normal again, or she might die, and they were transferring her.
To Great Ormond Street Hospital.
So I stayed there are five days and five nights and on the fifth day, they told me that they wanted to have a meeting and you know in your heart of heart's what it's going to be. Yeah, And they basically said, the thinking part of her brain had gone, what did I want to do? And of course, what do you want to do? I mean, you can't keep a child alive like that. So they push in my arms and for four hours she didn't actually die, and
then she died, and it was just terrible. And you go home and you're not a mother anymore, and all her things are in the house and you just like your whole life is just gone. And for me, music was not what I wanted to do anymore, and I wanted to work with children, but I didn't really know what that's going to be until my second child was born. But that was also not straightforward at all, because I
got pregnant, thank goodness, within four months. But I took Clomid, which is fertility drug, so it could have had multiple babies, but ended up only being.
Pregnant with one.
And my doctor went away and then he came back just in time. When I called him to say that I was in labor. He said he'd be at home and it was very early stages.
Don't worry.
Then I called him again half an hour later and I couldn't get ahold of him. And I called him again because my waters broke, and again I couldn't get a hold of him. So I went upstairs get my things to go to hospital. And the head came out. But this is bad enough for any mother, but for a mother whose child had died one year previously, it was like, oh my god. And I was thinking all the time, if I lose another child, I really won't
want to go on. And I called my husband and I said I'm having the baby and he said it was stupid. And then he saw and the head was blue, and he thought the baby was dead because the baby wasn't breathing.
But what do we know.
The baby can't breathe till the body comes out. We learned that later. So I went on all fours. It was kind of just a natural instinct to do that. And the baby came out on the staircase, on the staircase, half on the staircase, still attached by the corse. I couldn't get the baby really close to me, and then I said, you better ring the hospital, like see if somebody can come. And I was left there for two and a half hours and no.
One came at home.
Yes, and even worse because we'd sold the house and the carpet was pale yellow and it was not pare yellow by the time the baby woud been born, and it would look like a murder had been committed anyway. Then a doctor came, but not my doctor, and he cut the cord because we would not have known what to do. And then my doctor arrived and he kind of said, like, must have been a wonderful experience for you, just you and your hospital. I'm thinking this was definitely
not a wonderfully experience in any shape or form. And then my mother rives at the hospital when I was eventually taking to hospital and told by the nurse and no one had give him birth there, but someone had given birth at home, and she didn't think that was me because we hadn't called her, because she would have been like flapping around and made things twenty times worse. And I'm sat up in bed with a dress, my
boots on covered in blood. Doctor's immacurate. My husband's got blood all over him, Like what has been going on here?
Anyway?
That was the birth of Nicholas, and he was an interesting child. He wouldn't eat, he wouldn't sleep, he was difficult. But obviously I was so happy and over the moon to have a child again. It was the only thing that would help me. And he wouldn't eat very much, so I was very vulnerable having lost a child, thinking that I I really want this child to eat. So
I started out making recipes for him. And I was writning a big playgroup at the time with mothers and children about eighty months and babies came to it and I was testing out all the recipes on them and they said, Wow, these receipees are amazing. And after about three months they said to me, you know what, you should write a book about feeding children because these recipes really work. And I thought, I can't even type if
I'm going to write a book. But then I thought, you know, this is a great way to kind of you want to make some sense of like why this child was born, why this child died, and give something back. And I just thought, for me, it's a therapy and for me to give something back and help other children is what I want to do. And I spent two and a half years researching child and nutrition, came up with my first book, sent it to fifteen publishers, and every single one of them either did not answer.
Or turned me down.
No, they did, and everybody thought every single book on feeding babies had never sold well. It was such an uncommercial subject to write a book on. It could not have been a worse subject. I eventually found a book packager, and that meant that my royalties were terrible. But it got published and it's sold five million copies.
That book.
It was eventually published by a random house, being a random House and Simon Shuster in America. And I guess, so that book hadn't done well, that wud been the end of my career as a writer. But I've now written fifty one books. I mean, who's counting, but a lot of books.
I am, that's a lot of books.
And what I've done now is actually developed an app which is amazing because it has thirteen hundred recipes on it and it takes you through every single stage of your baby's development, from the very first foods to finger foods, to fussy eating, to how to cope with allergies. And that is an incredible resource for parents and it's been very popular and we've been developing that and that's become what I call my fifth child, my app which I love,
and now I have. Yeah, I have three healthy children, my son who's married, my daughter who just got married, and another dog is getting married in two months time. So hopefully there will be babies next year.
Oh my gosh.
I want very much, obviously, because up until then, I've had dogs, and every time I don't have a grandchild, I get another puppy. So I'm counting now six dogs at home.
I can't believe it's since the post where I saw five, there's been another one at it.
Well, I've bred my dog. I saw they were pennies.
My dog out to a friend's dog and they had four puppies and I kept three of them, and it already had two dogs. And there's her the three puppies. So there's six dogs in my house.
Oh my gosh. I mean you love to keep busy. I love how these eighty five projects going on at once.
Don't cook book, of course, I did How to Feed Your Dog, And for the first time I let my dogs eat while I was cooking, which they could not understand because normally I say you can't have that. And it's funny because to do the pictures, they used to put peanut butter on their nose. They would lick their lips and it would look like they're really enjoying it.
Mind you, they are pretty indiscriminate eaters, And when I'm cooking, I have these like at least four dogs drooling that hoping that I'm going to like drop something on the kitchen floor that they can eat.
Goodness. I mean, I thought you were extraordinary. I thought you were an extraordinary gift to society and parents everywhere before that story, but hearing the background of where someone came from adds just so much depth, I think to your appreciation of everything they've achieved.
I think why you do something is so important because you know, as you know, business is not easy, and however successful you are, there's so many pitfalls. And because at the end of the day, I did it all for Natasha. It just drives me through anything that's bad because I know that what I'm doing is giving back and helping parents to give their child a healthy diet
the will last and the rest of their life. Because children make up their minds by the age of five, what they're going to eat basically, and one in three of us will die from a doubt related disease. So what you give your children now? I always say like it's giving them a longer life and a better quality life. Oh, I mean it is so important. I say, what you eat today which terms your future tomorrow?
Which it does. That's scary. But also well, my children love salad.
I make this amazing salad dressings, and they hated their school food and they took bottles of this like Japanese style dressing school with them, poured it over their food, and that anything they would eat with that dressing, and then all the other children wanted to have it at school as well. I was making It was like a factory at my house making this salad dressing. Which is they still love it now, Oh my goodness. So not biscuits or cakes, but salads.
I have personally found it surprising that toddler feeding and nutrition has been one of the most difficult parts of this parenthood. And I wasn't expecting that. You think it's going to be behavioral or sleep or whatever, and of course sleep is difficult, but you think they'll want to eat. They need to eat. For survival. You just don't think it's going to be so difficult or that they'll be so discerning.
It's genetic that they're fussy. It's actually nothing to do with you. You can have two children, one who eats well when he doesn't eat well in the same family. That's not to say you can't do anything about it, but you are born that way. It's not your cooking.
Oh well, I'm very but I mean already in our household, you've been just such an incredible You've empowered us so much to minimize the trauma of meal time and to be able to I mean the way that you have recipes that hide veggies, like you're targeting every parent's problem area and making it easier and removing obstacles.
When I read my book, every said babies really like bland food. And I put that to the test because I'm thinking, I don't like bland food. Why would they? And you know what, they didn't. They like things with taste. And we have like one of our most popular meals here as a butter chicken, which is, you know, a curry chicken.
But they love that.
And in a way, making meals like that are good because you can't really add salt before one year, but then garam masala and a bit of like curry paste, which is delicious. You don't need to have salt. So it's a good way to get children to eat something tasty, and they do like tasty food. So all of my recipes can be eaten by the whole family. Really, yeah, well, I don't have to cook separate meals.
We're also in that chapter where I mean, he absolutely adores your bolonnaise, but he won't eat the full serving, Like I'll warm the entire thing up, and so I just finish it. Absolutely, it's delicious.
It's my hidden bolonnaise has got mushrooms, capsicum like, coushat like, it's got so many different vegetables. Now we make that embark at home. I absolutely love it. It is the best bolonnaise ever. But it's like vegetables. It's fantastic. Yeah, but they're all blended, and what.
You can't see you can't pick out. It's great.
I know.
I love that. Half your technique is a hiding things from the toddlers, which is amazing. But before we get into the practical questions, of which I have many for you, I do just want to highlight the fact that this is a show about joy and we don't often speak about the interaction that has with grief, and the fact that tragedy and grief can be worked through and you can find moments of joy and obviously an incredibly purposeful journey that helps so many others. And now it's easy
for you, easy one. Not easy, but I mean now you can speak about it in hindsight. But I'm sure at the very beginning, before you knew that the book will be successful, before you were a multi million best selling author, it was very hard.
You were taking break.
I can't even explain what it felt like. Was it felt like something pressing on your head, It was a physical I don't know. It was just hard to function at all, and you just imagine you'll never have children again, or whatever happened to Natasha would happen to another child. And it's a very bleak, dark period and it was really really hard, and I just felt They offered me counseling and I said, no, I just want to hold a baby in my arms. I knew that that was
the only thing that would help me. Know amount of counseling would help, and more parents than you imagine have lost children or had a miscarriage, which is also incredibly emotionally upsetting. And I think you either drown in it or you think I'm going to do something to mark the fact that I had this child and make something
happen from her short life. And I think that she will have helped many children to have better quality lies, because without Natasha, without what had happened to me, I doubt whether I'd ever written my first book and done everything that I've done. She was a driving force behind it. And very often when something like that happens, when you lose a child, you do end up doing something that's.
Very meaningful in their honor. Yeah you do.
I didn't do it for money. I never did it as a career. It just happened to be a career. It was to write this one book as my kind of my way of like remembering Natasha and always, you know, always rumbing that she was there and making some sense of her very short life.
And I love that. I think there are many parents who do experience grief in different forms and for many different reasons, and it's still not really spoken about as much. It's still quite stigmatized.
As a parental there are other things I do because the reason she died, So the reason she died was she was kissed by somebody with a cold saw. And now I do talk a lot about the fact that when babies are very young, they're very vulnerable and they don't have the antibodies that we have, and that it's not a good idea to let them be kissed by people, in touch by people like let people see them. But kissing babies is not a good idea in the very
very early stages. And that's what happened to me. Somebody kissed her with the early signs of a cold salt. It developed into en capolitis, slowing of the brain, and it was irreversible because she was a healthy.
Normal child.
And I never knew that something like that could happen, but I was told when I left the hospital by I remember the consultant said, I'm going to give you one piece of advice. Next time you have a child, you know, take into the park, but don't let them mix, don't take them out, don't let them mix.
With other people. They're very vulnerable.
And I talk about that because I think that many parents don't understand that or if somebody comes to kiss them or touch them, they feel embarrassed that if you say, don't touch my baby, I'll think you're really fussy, crazy mother. But we're doing it for a reason to keep up babies safe.
And I think also that is why it's important to talk about the areas of parenthood that are a little bit more shrouded in shame or secrecy or taboo, because you have to have heard that to take it seriously. Unless you know the consequences, it is easy to go no, it's fine, you just do it. So I think, yeah, the more aware you.
Are of or can happen.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean you don't want to live in fields, I know. But awareness I think is such an important part of you know, making choices. But you have gone on to turn it into such an incredible career and become such a pre eminent authority and in everything that I need you for right now.
Well, the thing is that we can't always scratch cook and there are times when you know, even peanut carrot feels really ambitious.
Showering feels ambitious, so carots on the list.
So yeah, when I was approached by I was a number one Frozen few company in Australia to design a range of meals for children. I'd already done that in the UK become really really successful, and we developed this
amazing range. It was originally for coles of like just delicious meals that had lots of vegetables, no artificial flavors, colorings, and snap frozen so everything was locked in, all the goodness because let's face it, like when you go down the baby ail in the supermarket, there's no electricity, so it's all long life, and in order for it to have a long shelf life has to be heated to a high degree, which actually destroys a lot of the nutrients.
And there's a program on television looking at some of these baby food pouches and like there was a mango pouch actually contained zero vitamin C in it, or if it happened meat, it was such a tiny amount. Whereas you know, if you freeze something, you've locked everything in and it's just as good as when you cooked at
the first time. So that's what I wanted to do, like give mothers the opportunity to give their children something that was like a freshly cooked meal, but they could take it home and book it in their freezer for days and they don't have time to cook. And at the beginning, people didn't even know to go to the freezer to find a children's meal. It just you know, they weren't looking there. So it took about a year for it to catch on. But after that it became really,
really popular. And I think it's amazing because you know, we're developing another range now and it's been ten years now since I developed that range, and so many people come up to you and say, well, it's a lifesaver. It's a lifesaver because you don't feel guilty about giving it to your child. You don't because you know it's good quality.
And there is a lot of guilt. And I mean, we put so much pressure on ourselves to do it all, and like the expectations. I actually posted a video the other day about the modern motherhood riddle, which is that women in twenty twenty five are expected to work as if they don't mother mother is if they don't work, and look as if they do neither working or motherly.
True exactly, And the pressure you put, either externally or internally to do it all and cook from scratch but also be one hundred percent of your work and maintain or your friendships, and something's got to give somewhere. So being able to do it knowing that there is nutritional value and that it isn't full of preservatives, and that they love the taste it is, you are actually yeah, and it's actually saving lives, Anna Belle.
It's even also about like what if I did spend time in the kitchen cooking something, is my child actually going to eat it? There's always that worry as well. At least here you can experiment with lots of different flavors and see which one your child likes without having to buy the food, chop the food, cook the food. I mean, it's just it really is like so easy, and we work really hard to make sure that all the nutrients are as if you cooked it at home,
and it will be as good and it's tasty. And they're based on favorite recipes from my book.
Yeah, I was going to say so.
I've just come from developing a new range which hopefully we will launch next year, and there we just launched a new bolonnaise mac I call it really two childhood sweethearts meeting each other. The macaroni, cheese and the bolonnaise is an absolute winner, and I think it's become one of my most popular meals. It's only been out for about ten days, so I think it's adults.
Eating that because that sounds like my favorite meal.
Yeah.
I just tasted and it really is good.
Well, that brings up I mean the whole idea that the other day I cooked a twelve hour slow cooked brisket thinking this would be a really good way to get some more iron into him, and he doesn't love tough.
Beef, so of course it sounds good to me.
Yeah, I mean it sounds tasted great to me. I'm glad I could eat it, but wouldn't have a bar of it. And so there are lots of behavioral questions. I'd love to ask you for any parents listening, because I know it is such a hard time. So the million dollar question is volume. Yeah, I mean it's really hard to work out how much they should be eating, how often, and when they are sort of throwing half of it and playing with it in their face, Like how do you deal with the volume question? Are they
eating enough? And if they are leaving a lot of it on their plate, do you keep persisting? Do you take it away and start again. Like in your experience of seeing probably millions of families go through these.
I think is less about volume more about the quality of what you're giving them. And I think there's a stage where children eat pretty well in the first eleven months, and then something has clearly wrong and you're snarled into this sense of false security that my child's a good eater. And that's because in the first year they grow more rapidly than any other time in their entire life, so their growth rate slows down, and also life becomes more interesting.
They're not stuck in a high chair, so it's quite natural that they will not want to eat as much. And also basically they prefer to eat things that they pick up and put into their mouth themselves. So I wrote a book all about fingerfoods, my latest book, And what I did was I would put all sorts of
ingredients into a food pressss so chop them up. Maybe it's chicken thigh which is twice as rich as the breast, with lots of vegetables, of breadcrumbs and some herbs and things like that, and then I'd roll it into balls and either cooked in the alven or an air fryer and they would pick it up with their fingers and
that word wanders. And the book is all about that sort of thing where you put all of these delicious like superfoods together to make really tiny food that they pick up with their hands that works really well and they don't drop it because they like it. Yeah, And also in that book are like homemade fruit and vegetable lollies, so you can make lollies out of like berry fruits and beet fruit, so it can be vegetable and fruit lolly or oranges and mango and carrots, and they sounds strange,
but children love them. And also like you can do like your own homemade fast food. So I make things like my own burgers which are delicious but they've got lots of veggies in them, or my own pizzas with also hidden vegetable tomato sauce. So there are all sorts of things you can give your children to eat that they will like and they don't take too long to make. And also that you can make in batches and freeze, which is good.
Yeah, the bulk, but I just love how all of your sneak something in there that otherwise I mean, if I put a piece of brocoli in front of him that's just steamed with nothing on it. It's probably not going to be thrilled with that. But I love the way you sneak ingredients in because I think that's half the battle. What about if their You mentioned that your son was quite picky eater, when they are very finicky,
like just won't even try new foods. I have been told that it can take twenty exposures before they will like a food. But you know, do you persist that long? What did you do to kind of.
Get one day?
And they eat it all up? And then you think, this is great, I'm going to make it again.
Yeah, make it again. It did like it once, Yeah.
So I think that I would give it again, obviously, but I would try giving it in a different way. So, for example, my children did not like boil or steamed cauliflower, and then I roasted the cauliflower in the oven and it gives it that lovely sweetness and they love that.
So there's other ways of doing it. And I mean they do say you have to try ten to fifteen times, and I would try quite a few times, but also I would give it a rest sometimes if you find something they like and keep on giving it to them. You can overdo it and then they don't ever want to eat it again their entire life. So I think it's about variety, about making sure there's not too much
on the plate, about making individual portion sometimes. So let's say you have a chicken potato pie and make it in a small ramkin, so it's that individual portion rather than slopping it onto a plate. Because they eat with their eyes as well as their tummies. Cut up through this colorful you know, cut like a pumpkin into a star, make things into balls, and there's just a way to
entice children to eat. I do these like stars, where actually I grat carrot and cogette, I mix it with egg and cheese and I push it into a star cutter, and then I bake these stars in the oven. And they absolutely love them. But if they were like all mushy and didn't look like a storied out or they'd even give them time of day. But they say they didn't like something they've never even tried it, I mean that's hopeless. You've got to get them to eat the
first tiny bit of something new. And I also don't think that you should give attention for not eating, but you give loads of attention for eating an infinite testinary small.
Thing is something new.
So if you ignore the bad eating habits, it's not so much fun for them to actually make a fuss.
Yeah, because they know they're.
Not going to get a reaction from you, but they'll get the reaction for eating something. And eating together is important. Who likes to eat alone? You know they don't like that just spooning food into a child's mouth in a high chair. So if you eat together with them, I think that also helps, or bring a child over is a good eater. That's why a nursery they often eat better than they eat at home because their friend Johnny is eating that, so they're far they'll eat it.
I've actually heard a lot of babies who have nap time problems at home with sleeping. They sleep absolutely fine when they're a kinder because every other baby goes to sleep, they just copy. I'm like, what do you mean, it's so contrived. They're very clever.
They are clever. I guess they're very very wily, these children.
But they are gorgeous, absolutely, and they has to be otherwise it's too hard.
But it's such a lovely thing that when you have me something and you've come cut something that they eat is a really good feeling.
Yeah, oh, you feel like a queen. Achievement. It's unbelievable. But that's a really interesting suggestion to mix up the form factor and that they eat with their eyes, because I didn't think about that. If they do look enticing, yeah, why would? I mean, we don't like things if they look gross, we wouldn't give it a chance. So is very good at that they present everything so well. And I love the idea of cutters, like the shapes.
I do cut things in shapes, yeah, which it does make it a difference.
What about new foods, So if you are introducing I think I watched one of your videos the other day about spices, which are you know right now at Teddy's palette, he hasn't really had too much. Like we've introduced a lot of things broadly, but he hasn't had curry, for example, he hasn't had chili or like. There are lots of spices that are quite pun and or potent that he hasn't.
You can make them a bit more mile So I made up a feated chicken which was absolutly delicious and had a bit of cumen in it, and it's not spicy, but it gives it a lot of flavor, and children absolutely loved it. I'm thinking making it into a ready meal because it was so delicious. Gara masala is very good. I use a lot of time and herbs like that because you can't really add salts. You've got to add
flavor otherwise it's really boring. So I think it's really good to use herbs and basil and all of that is something that children really enjoy.
What about treats? So I have a couple of friends who had very, very fussy eaters, and their original hopes and dreams of how they would feed their child had to go out the window because it was like, if I can get him to eat this packet yogurt and that is the only calories I'm getting hit him today, then I'm just going to have to deal with that.
That's okay. I don't believe in banning treats.
My children have chocolate and whatever they wanted, really, because as soon as you ban them, they become the forbidden fruit and they want it all the more.
So there's still.
So basically, my children, I just made my healthy food taste so good that they weren't particularly interested in the chocolate and the biscuits, but it was always there for them. And there isn't such a thing as a really bad food. It's how much you eat.
Of that food.
I mean, my children would go to my dolls have a chicken nugget, and I wouldn't say anything, that's fine, But then I would make my own chicken burg as we were delicious. It's just what you eat in a week that matters, really, not what you eat in a particular day. And actually it's the frequency with which children eat sugary food that is the worst thing. That's what damages their teeth because then the sliv never has a
chance to wash it away. So if the child are going to have chocolate, give at the end of a meal, but not between meals. Yeah, And even things like raisins they stick to teeth as well. And a lot of these fruit snacks it says one hundred percent fruit, that doesn't mean it doesn't tack your teeth because fruit sugar is also sugar. So I think that a lot of the things in the supermarket that are like healthy snacks are not that healthy and can do a lot of
damage to children's teeth. And in the UK a lot of children are going under general anstatic before the age of four to have teeth extracted, mostly because of these snacks, you know, like fruit leather. That's so bad for children's teeth. Wow, you have to be careful.
Yeah, And I would never have thought of the order of offering chocolate, like I wouldn't.
Have spend of a meal between meals.
What are some other tips like that that you wouldn't think of until you get to speak to sit down with someone like you who's such an expert, or things that you know parents have asked you that your surprise, they don't know.
Well, actually a lot of it is early on. It's all about like what foods could cause choking. So if you're in a cut a carrot and you cut it into round shapes, that is a choking hazard. You need to cut it into batons. If you're going to have a large strawberry, that's fine, you can suck on that. But a small strawberry it is a choking hazard. You have to cut it into quarters. And on the app, we show every single food and vegetable and how to
cut it so that your child doesn't choke. But the thing that a lot of parents don't realize is that gagging is a natural reflex and that's how children learn and not to choke, and that they will gag. They'll all gag, and nature is very clever and the gagging reflects and a young child is very far forward in their mouth, so gokough, cough, cough, and they go red in the face, and the best thing is not to interfere.
But a lot of parents then stop giving their children any finger food choking and they have the other hand is when they go blue and they go silent and their airway is blocked. So you've got to understand the intertween gagging and choking. You've got to let them get on with the gagging, because that is how they learn how to swallow. It's a hard thing, but if you know that's natural, then you understand that just let them get on with it. They sort themselves out. They're pretty good at that.
Yeah, that's actually fascinating because I think, I mean, choking is a parent's a worse night mare, of course, like literally the worst case scenario. And I think it's also because it's something unlike all the other risks that you face. There are a million risks that children and parents face, but it's the one that you feed them three times a day, so it comes up more.
You do worry about it and never leave them alone, obviously. And the other thing is about allergies, Like specific allergies are not inherited. So let's say you have an allergy to peanuts. It isn't necessarier that your child's going to have that allergy. What is inherited, however, is the propensity to have an allergy. So that means if you have exma or asthma or hay fever, your child may have that. And it's the children have EXMA who are most at
risk of having a food allergy. So in fact, if a child has very severe X march an early age, they're very likely to have a food allergy. And in some cases, and this sounds really odd, in some cases you need to give them an under medical supervision peanut butter at four months, not six months, because you have this window of opportunity we're giving this potentially allergenic food
can help to actually stop them getting their allergy. And when I was a mother, they would not give babies peanut butter until nine months, and the instance of peanut allergy went right sky high. And then they did this trial with giving children peanut butter very early on, and the ones who had the peanut butter early on were the ones who didn't develop the allergy. And the other thing is that in England the common asalergies actually to eggs,
not dairy, but eggs. Really in my day that meant you could not give any eggs, no biscuits, no cakes, no nothing. Now they know that you can have baked eggs. Some children who are allergic to like omelet or scrambled eggs can actually tolerate eggs in a muscle or something a muffin or in a meat ball, and by having a small amount of egg in whatever form may well help them grow out of that egg allergy. So all these things are really important to know because it may not
be forever. Not all allergies are life threatening allergies well also like peanuts are more life threatening than egg or dairy, but you know important And also a lot of parents like they think their child has an analogy when they actually don't because often gastroentritis is followed by a period of intolerance to anything dairy, and then they think, oh, my child's got a dairy aalergy. I have to take everything dairy out of their diet, which is quite difficult actually,
so it's best to get it properly tested. I think when you think your child has an analogy, and after they say eighteen months, two years, try again. And there's a milk ladder where you give a biscuit with a small amount of milk and see if they can grow.
Out of it.
Because allergies are not that common and it is more difficult to give your child a bounced out if you have to avoid a common food group.
It's so fascinating how something seem really counterintuitive, Like I know there's you know, we all go through the allergy testing at the beginning, and then the instructions are make sure you re expose them regularly.
Isn't given peanut right, that's great?
My child would have an argue, no, no, no, You've got to give it like twice a week, and you just wouldn't think of that.
No, gosh, there's so much admin to feed his children. But also another thing that you said that I'd actually saved this post on your page the other day that you think that the bigger the food, the more likely it is to be a choking hazard. But actually the food, as you mentioned, needs.
To be bigger, smaller, ash it is or you cut them in.
Half and again choking and gagging. Like, there are just so many things that it's so valuable to have this information. I love that your page is constantly reaffirming these messages, so it's just giving you're getting the reminders.
It's giving you this what you need to know in order to be able to feed your baby and feel confident and feel in control. But there are two critical nutrients that babies often don't get enough of, and one of those, and you were talking about brisket, is iron. Iron is so important first of all, like particularly for a premature baby hasn't got the iron stores that a full time baby has. But iron really you need to give iron rich foods twice a day, which sounds like wow,
that sounds really difficult, but it's not. Because you can give porridge which contains iron. However, if you give a meat source of iron, like red meat or the dark meat of the chicken or egg, that is well absorbed by a baby or a child or an adult. But if you give spinach or porridge or something contains iron which is plant based, you can't absorb it unless you
have written and see at the same meal. So you think you're giving you a child iron, but you're actually not because you're not absorbing it.
So it's the.
Combination of things that children eat that is really important. So if you're going to have porridge, put it together with berries, and the other thing is essential fatty acids omega threes. Our brain is made up primarily of omiga threes, so it's very important for the development of a baby's brain to have oily fish and also for their visual development and to boost their immunity. And a lot of children, especially if they're brought up on like package baby food,
do not get oily fish. You really have to cook it yourself. And salmon is such a great food and they should have it twice a week.
It's really important.
I make this really delicious meal, and it's just you can cook the salmon in a microwave and then I saute tomatoes with a little bit of cheese, and then I add some steam carrots, and I put the salmon and the steam carrots, tomato and cheese sauce together and I blend it and it's absolutely delicious and I want to eat it.
I love how many of your receipes I save all of the words. If they're lessen five ingredients, I'm.
Like, that is me.
That's doable. And it feels you feel so accomplished when you make something at home.
Yeah, as well, you can't go on it's like step by step.
It's so easy.
I mean, I think the app like and you have it in your pocket so or in your bag, and so when you go into the supermarket, you'll never be at a loss of what to cook. You can just put in broccoli, chicken six months old, or I want to make something for my family's dinner. And there's just so many recipes there that are simple and quick, will be delicious and you can freeze. You know, it's been my life's work that out.
Really.
I think it's just so easy to use it in a way, it's better than the book because you can do can't do with a book. Yeah, it's always with.
You on what are the most popular recipes? Are you surprised ever by the ones you put out and then the deck like do you say the downloads.
Of specific Yes, I mean they are the really simple ones. So also is really popular anything really? Yeah? I mean like I do a carrot tomato cheese sauce with orso that's really popular. And then I created because my son would not eat chicken. I made these chicken and apple balls because you liked apple, so I thought if I put the apple with the chicken, that might get them
to eat it. So I took chicken thigh because it's really rich and iron, and I mixed it with some bread crumbs, some chopped onions, some thyme egg, and the chicken and grated apple and mid into little balls. And again you can bake them in the oven, you can cook in the air fryer. He absolutely loved them. From that day on, he loved chicken. So my chicken apple walls are like one of my signature recipes. They were in my first book, The Complete Baby and Tittle Meal Planner,
which is still a huge best seller. It must come into nineteen different variations of that book. Nows. I keep on updating it recipes to it, but it's a really really popular book. And my lentil pures are really popular that babies like lentils, and nobody would think of doing that. And then strange combinations like my avocado and banana mash together.
Oh have we do that? And that was by accident.
I know. It's so good that and it's also something you can take with you. And there's one recipe which sounds like wow, that sounds awful, but actually babies love it. It's whitefish. I use cold and then I put orange juice on it, and I put grated cheese and crushed corn flakes and I put it in the micrave and it takes like two and a half to three minutes. And the orange juice and the cheese and the corn
flakes they mix with the fish. It's absolutely delicious and it's so quick and easy, and people go crazy for it.
But now it's in the pallet.
It's an amazing it's an amazing recipe.
Oh my god.
And in this book, which is a fun, fast and easy cookbook, which is a cookbook for teaching children how to cook, I do these cookies. They are unbelievable. They oat and raisin cookies. They only have like six ingredients. We make them every week at home. They are the best cookies you'll ever have, and you cannot go wrong with them. You just put all the ingredients together in a bowl, roll them together, flatten it onto a baking dish, and ten minutes later you've got these homemade oat and
raisin cookies. The whole house smells so inviting and incredible. They're so good, it's amazing. And I'm doing an influencer event tomorrow and I'm making my carrot cake energy balls and they're really good. They've got no sugar in them. They're made with dates and oats and some raisins, some grated carrots and they're just like all put together and you don't need to cook them at all, and some
desiccated coconut. They're absolutely fabulous. Again, great stack. And that's in my finger food book.
This is a whole wanting so many recipes.
It's so quick and so easy and like, just make your life. I mean, I think food is so important. Can you imagine life without food?
I honestly think about.
Food all the time.
I think about what I'm going to cook, what are I going to eat? What am I going to make for dinner? And what Michel and are going to eat. I mean, I'm just I'm sassive food. That's my job.
That brings up another question I selfishly have with the balance between things like cookies or balls or muffins. I find it's, you know, pretty safe to assume Tady will love a muffin or he'll have a bit of banana bread. There's a certain form factor that's kind of soft and caky that he'll almost always love. But I want to get my iron, my veggies into him. So when it comes to the main meal versus dessert or main meal versus treat balance, do you sort of offer them both
in one meal like you would an adult. You'd have your main meal, then you'd have dessert, or would you do main meal savory and then the cookies would be for snacks in between? Is there like a system that we should be being guided by so they don't get, you know, expect the cookie and then not eat their their savory food.
I think this thing that children need loads of snacks during the day is actually not great. And actually, if you're going to you've got to think about your snacks as being part of their overall good nutrition. So like having cut up fruit, because whole fruit and a fruit bowl.
They just walk past.
But cut off fruit is very inviting and looks very colorful on a plate, So that is a good snack. And all these snacks in the supermarket that says it's got carrot in it, and when you look on the back it's like three percent carrot, which is why eat a carrot?
What's wrong with a carrot?
You know? And like cut up carrots have a hommer step, and you know, these kind of things are great snacks. Or cheese is a great snack, or make a pasta salad, that's a great snack. I don't think these packaged snacks from supermarkets. They're just like they're puffed up corn with a spray of carrot on them. For me, there's no place in them. It just fills up a child's time, which is already very small with calories that are not
giving them any nutrition. So I think snacks should be a good part of their diet and think of them as fruit and veg cheese, that kind of thing. When they have a good meal, yes I give them a cookie or something, or an ice cream or something afterwards, because that can be it's a good food. Ice Cream has dairy and it. Cookies have the good things in it. Muffins. I do an apple and carrot muffin and they're good, and we all like this, you know, finish with something sweet.
But as I said, like sweet things between meals attack children's teeth, and the more like sticky they are, they tax teeth even more. And children are going to have teeth extracted at very young age because we're giving them too many sacks in between meals.
Yeah, so join them to the meal, like at the end of the meal.
And give them like healthy snacks that won't damage their teeth. Cheese is one of the best things to give cheese cheese, So do we do that? Yes, cheese cheese e morcializes the acid on children's teeth. No way to give us apples at school, and that's the worst thing because apples are acidic and they're not good for your teeth at all.
Have you found over the years that you've been doing this that I mean, I feel like the literature on parenting generally, but food specifically changes so rapidly that there are some things that we used to do and then suddenly it's like do the opposite, like allergen exposure and things like that.
Things changing. Yeah, we're learning all the time. There's so much we need to learn. I mean, we just to make all our bottles up and just put them in the fridge for the whole day, and I can't do that. Yeah, I mean our babies lived, they were fine.
Yeah, I just.
You can worry too much sometimes.
Yeah.
And also like breastfeeding, Yes, I mean breastfeeding was great, but if you can't breastfeed your silk child's still going to do well. You formerly don't have to feel guilty about it. Yeah, it's too much guilt put on parents. But I think you know, home cooking is a joy if it's not too complicated, and I try to make it so easy that you want to do it and you feel good about your child eating something you've made. But I also think there are many times in your
week when you just can't cook. And then what I've developed in my ready meals, which are frozen and locked in goodness, are a life saver for parents and they know that they're child's eating good meal and the child's enjoying it. And it's a great pleasure that I've been able to do that I've been able to create something that wasn't there, that there was only long life food for children. There was nothing frozen, nothing as good as this in Australia and it's really coolt on and I'm
I'm really happy. You know, if Natasha hadn't lived and hadn't died young or doubt whether any of this would have happened.
I mean, what a legacy for her. She couldn't hope to have had a more incredible No.
I didn't really understand when I was writing my first book what it would actually global food business. I would never have believed that because I couldn't get the book published for life, you know, at all. And so this has been a dream of mine. And I'm always doing new things. So I'm going to bring out a tablewear range in Australia probably later this year. So we just developed it and that would be lovely. And you know, I'm always doing new restes for my app has new recipes every single week.
Oh my gosh.
There's always a lot going on.
And I work with a lot of hotels over the world and do children's menus, I do cruise liners, so you know, all sorts of weird places.
Well, I mean that is a wonderful place to finish. We weren't recording when you first told this amazing story. But this journey has led you not into all of our households, and if any parent listening hasn't already been introduced to your frozen meals, I mean you will have seen in my stories how much they say of our lives weekly. So I will include all the links, of course to the resources in the show notes. But what are some of the crazy, crazy experiences that this has
led you to? You mentioned you were in a downing street with some famous actors, Like, what are some of the craziest rooms you've ended up in that you never expected? And tell us about your charity work.
So I was asked to present paul Charity of the Year and the winner was a charity called Julia's House, and it was a hospice for children who have life threatening diseases and will probably die by the age of thirteen. I've never heard of it, so I thought I would go and visit them. But I thought me going to visit them would be quite boring, but me going to visit them with my dogs would be much more entertaining.
So I brought my dogs and the children had the best time, and then I just thought they don't get any public funding. What can I do to help them? And I'd been to a few cocktail parties at Downing Street, which is the government okay, number ten.
Number ten, Yeah.
I wrote a Samantha Camera at the time, and she'd had a child who had been to a hospice. I even know she died very young as well. And I wrote her and I said, like Amnuel Carmel, I sent us some of my books. She said, oh, I know exactly who you are, and I used your books.
Everyone knows you never need to introduce yourself.
Anyway, so she said, yes, you know, you pick a date and we'll host it. And then the original hospice was in Dorset in the country, and I looked up all the people that lived in Dorset and one of them.
Was Guy Ritchie.
So I invited, well, we invited him. Most people don't turn down an invitation to Downing Street. And he came with his wife. Was very stunning, and he was very taken with the charity. And he then said he wanted to go and visit the charity where they have this beautiful building and the children can come there and be looked after. And also like when it comes to the end of their life they can actually be there with their parents.
It's a beautiful place and he.
Was so taken with it that he decides that he would do an event in his country house in Dorset
and invite a few of his friends. And his friends happened to be Robert Downey guy, so this is quite an event and he had a shoot I think it was Clay pidge and shooting, not actual live animals, and a lunch and he raised one and a half million pounds and with that we built another hospice in Wiltshire and Robert down Junior was kind enough, he was doing iron Man at the time to give a lot of the props from iron Man to the hospital, so when you walk in it's like this huge iron Man, like
all the whole thing and like and there's amazing and it was just amazing what they did. And yeah, so they have two hospices now and I think people don't realize that it's a massive pressure on the family. Very often they have one child who's terribly sick and two other children and then the hospice will take the sick child for a day so they can spend time with the other two children and very often, like parents split up because of the pressure and the stress, and it's
just a wonderful thing. And I felt so like akin to it because my child died in a cold hospital and I know what it's like to lose a child, and also like, you know, helping them get over the death of their child. And you know, I go there and I see the children and I do a lot of work with them, and recently we had a lot of fun. We've got a lot of like these beautiful statues and I have lots of different people painting them
and they're all over at the city. And then they went for auction and we raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for the hospice. So I've been very active with them. And it's nice to put something back and see the children's faces light up, because even though they have short lives, they can have happy lives. You know, every day really counts when you know that you've have a limited life.
Absolutely well, what a beautiful way to finish and a belle. You are truly an incredible human being, and it's just been a you. I mean, you're in our house every night anyway.
In your kitchen.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I know I say it all the time, but especially in this chapter of my life. Gosh, I feel so lucky to have a platform that just gives me an excuse to sit down with people as clever as Annabelle. Literally, her brand has been all over our home for months now, and then I use she's coming to Australia and would be open to jumping on the show. It just doesn't
get more exciting than this. I'll share the link to her meals, her books and her incredible app that we mentioned, And if you did find this episode useful, please do share with any takeaways or even any questions, tagging at Annabelle Carmel and us to thank her for her time and wisdom and keep growing the neighborhood as far and
wide as possible. In the meantime, there are so many more sees of bebe episodes brewing and coming your way on single motherhood, modern working motherhood, expectations, weaning, and so much more. If there's anything that you'd like covered, or any experts you'd like to hear from, please also never hesitate to send a DM. It may take me multiple business days slash business weeks to get back to you, but I will get there eventually. I hope you're having
a wonderful week and are seizing your yea. The h