Annabel Karmel
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When I was lamenting to some other mothers from Fitfor2 about how fussy Gavin was with eating, they recommended some infant recipe books by Annabel Karmel. At first I thought, “A infant recipe book? Oh please, I have plenty of those already.” But they all swore by it. Every single recipe they tested on their babies was lapped up to the last lick.
Still skeptical, they related a story to me about Issy’s son. Like Gavin, he was extremely fussy with food. At every meal, Issy would bring along five little bottles of a variety of flavours and all the other mothers were impressed at how dedicated she was. Issy insisted that they were all “left overs” which she brought along in hopes that her son would at least eat something from one of them. After forty-five minutes, Issy would give up with her son barely touching any of the food she made. When she started trying the recipes from Annabel Karmel’s cookbook, Issy’s son started to enjoy mealtimes.
D showed me the recipes books and I flipped through the pages. Although they looked fairly ordinary to me. I searched for the titles of her books at MPH only to find that they were all out of stock. Wow, I thought, Annabel’s quite a popular author. So I did a little online search about her and discovered that this author of fourteen best-selling books covering nutrition and cooking for babies, children and families is also an MBE award winner for her outstanding work in the field of child nutrition.
Touted as the expert when it comes to getting your fussy eater to eat a healthier diet, Annabel was inspired to learn more about healthy diets for children after the death of her first child. She spent two years researching child nutrition and development, during which time, she interviewed leading paediatricians and child nutritionists in the UK.
Her first book, The Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner was written in 1991 and is endorsed by Great Ormond Street Hospital (the leading children’s hospital in the UK) . This book remains on the top 5 best-selling cookbooks in the UK.
A regular writer for The Times, The Mail and Sunday Mirror, she also contributes articles to Practical Parenting, BBC Good Food and Sainsbury’s Magazine. She also has various roles and achievements on radio and TV from being the children’s celebrity chef on the BBC website to being UK’s expert on nutritional issues.
With such a hefty list of credentials, how could I not get a copy of one of her fourteen books? I found Annabel Karmel’s New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner at Borders for RM70.
Her recipes come with age recommendations and she has a number of fingerfood favourites appropriate for babies aged 9 months onwards who only want to feed themselves. I think it was this last that convinced me to buy the book. She also provided a very useful piece of advice I think every parent starting their infant on chewable solids should be aware of:
If baby is choking, place baby over your knee with his head lower than the rest of his body and firmly pat his back to help dislodge the food that is stuck in the throat. Do not attempt to dig the food out with your fingers because you’re more likely to push it further in.
Since we’re heading down to Singapore this weekend, I’ll probably only get to try the recipes next week. Stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted on how it all goes…
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[...] I listened politely with little interest. I thought it would be another cookbook like the one by Annabel Karmel – just your regular kids recipes that would have interested other children except [...]