Friday morning Jacob had his check-up at the consultatiebureau (Maternal and Child Health Care Centre) and was duly measured and weighed and poked and prodded, impressing the doctor with all his statistics, not to mention his ability to suddenly produce enormous amounts of poo at the words, “Je mag zin luier af nu” (You can take his nappy off now) Of course this was the first time ever I have left the house without a month’s supply of bum-wipes.
Now to see if home-cooking could produce the same results! My previous burst of culinary-maternalism was expressed in an obsession with chiquita bananas that unfortunately left Jacob constipated for several days. I figured at least things couldn’t get much worse for him. After a visit to the potato man at the Albert Cuyp and expert advise on the best potatoes for a baby, the purchase of a nice soup chicken and various other veggies and having invested in a Braun Thingy I spent this weekend practising with mixed success. I boiled up a chook and made some stock and thanks to a suggestion from Annabel Karmel decided to puree the chicken with some of the stock and also use the stock to puree some vegetables. I was a bit surprised that she suggested using the stock as I thought it would be too strong a flavour for a baby but did it anyway. My stock was very strong indeed, I suspect my chook was actually a goose or something. The end result was Jacob ate a few mouthfuls of my chicken, steamed carrots and potatoes in chicken stock purre before deciding it was all a bit too much. In the end even the vegetables by themselves were too much. (They tasted very strong even to me!) and I had to resort to disguisng them in spoonfuls of purreed carrots from some-large-Dutch-multinational.
Now I’m cooking up the rest of the vegetables and purreeing them with his milk formula which I think will be much more acceptable. Except of course its now Sunday afternoon and he isn’t at home for the next four days for his solid meals and i have enough mash to feed ten babies. I’m going to have to get into the habit of doing this on Fridays after going to the market.
In between mashing things we’ve also been making dashes upstairs to the disaster that is the spare room in the attic. Via, Osaka, the Isle of Man, Belfast and Dublin, Uncle Johhny is slowly wending his way Amsterdamwards and we’ll be seeing him on Tuesday which is very exciting. I haven’t seen John for a couple of years and Jacob never!
Meanwhile spring has continued to spring and now besides buds on the trees, daffs and blossom you can also hear birds singing in the mornings and that strange chemically smell wafting over from the farms that is the smell-of-spring in Holland.
postcards from the north 