My daughter has a wonderful diet thanks to my wife’s tireless search for the tastiest and most nutritious best baby lunch recipes – usually with the best ingredients as well.
Avocado is a food my wife has always loved, and she’s a strong believer in its health benefits as “the only complete food”. As a result my daughter gets plenty of lovely avocado, and for lunch or dinner she will have it mixed with banana and yoghurt twice a week.
When I was a child, my parents would never share an avocado with us – I think it was one of their special treats, and they used to tell us that it was “grown-up’s food”. So even today this food has a strange alluring quality for me.
This morning I rose late, having been gifted a glorious sleep in. I had a craving for something “nice” – something that felt wholesome and a little culinary as well, but requiring little effort.
Spying the leftover avocado, I sliced it up on some lovely toasted crusty white bread and drizzled with really good extra virgin olive oil – result! So Dad and baby are both fed and feeling good for the Sunday afternoon ahead, and Mum’s gone for her well earned rest having watched poor Andy Murray beaten in the Australian open by Roger Federer.
Avocado, Banana and Yoghurt
Ingredients
- Half of one ripe avocado
- 1/3 – 1/2 of one ripe banana
- 1 – 2 tablespoons of Greek style organic yoghurt
Make sure your avocado is ripe – it should give beneath your finger when squeezed gently.
Mash the avocado, and slice the banana into bit size chunks. For smaller babies you may wish to mash the banana too. If your baby likes texture and chew, you can mash the avocado roughly only, or even leave that in small chunks too.
Mix in the Greek yoghurt, stir and serve.
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Don’t you just love cookery blogs? My favourite, 
There are a lot of books out there on routine, and most are well known. The one book I will mention here is 
from hospital and settling baby into their new home is wonderful. The first few days at home with your new baby will be very exciting – here is some advice from the Dad’s perspective.
onto something such as a chair or table. It’s quite a precarious process.
when our daughter was about three months old. It’s a much nicer approach than some of the more militant techniques out there. The main technique centres around “pat-shush” where you pick up the very young baby until they stop crying and put them back in the cot. You repeat this until the fall asleep. It does work – though our first attempt I counted doing this 330 times!
– though this book is clearly not aimed specifically at Dads, I found this a great read during the nine months leading up to the arrival of my daughter. What is really great is that is tells you how your baby is growing and developing, what size they are, as well as explaining what is going on during the pregnancy in detail as it comes up – great for understanding your wife, her needs, and not forgetting those mood swings of course!
Debenhams and the Great Irish Rip-off
by Graham on December 28, 2009
During a recent visit to Ireland we were shocked to discover the price of goods consumers are faced with in Irish outlets of the major UK retail chains.
We’ve been visiting family in Ireland over Christmas, and with the cold weather needed some extra bits and pieces for our young daughter. I’d heard anecdotally in the pub (where most good information gets shared in Ireland) that Debenhams, a recent addition to the department stores in Cork City, following the closure of long term local Roches Stores, had a ridiculous markup on their UK prices.
It was only when we went to buy some items for our daughter for the cold weather that we had first hand experience of what a rip-off Cork, and Irish consumers in general, are experiencing when they go to the shops.
To give an example, we bought a warm top for our daughter, from designer Jasper Conran (though admittedly I’ve never heard of him outside of Debenhams itself). We purchased out of pure need, and didn’t really stop to research prices – surely they couldn’t be that far off the UK prices?
This equates to a markup (on their already profitable price) of 40%.
Apart from feeling I’ve been had myself in our purchases, I know that our purchase was not a unique one – in fact this seems to be par for the course in the Irish consumer market.
I heard an encouraging story from the car hire firms, which validated my own decision not to rent a car. Shopping online before leaving for Ireland, I was being quoted prices as high as €700 to rent a very small car for two weeks. It was too much, so I opted to not rent a car and depend on taxis and the kindness of friends and family when in Ireland.
Speaking to an insider from the industry I learned that the car companies had hiked up the prices three weeks before Christmas, as they typically do. However, they had so mis-judged the market this year that a slew of cancellations and customers walking away from the quotations ensued. In a desparate attempt to bring the customers back the firms dropped their prices at the last minute, but it was too late.
Ireland faces a long recession, budget deficits and serious unemployment. But if it’s population want to do something to help end the recession as quickly as possible, the sooner they refuse to pay the ridiculous prices charged on the high street, the sooner retailers will wake up and price their goods more realistically. Visitors to Ireland already see the sky high prices for what they are – and the Irish tourism figures dropping in 2008 reflect that – hopefully the locals will make the same realisation very soon.
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