The Resurection: Only Organics minted peas, black currant and lamb

Sorry guys, I had to stay late at work. But here I am back with renewed vigour, enthusiasm, and a load of baby food reviews you simply cannot do without. Today I have a lovely concoction I accidentally bought on special. Normally you'd pay top dollar for organic lamb on a bed of minted peas. Chuck in a few black currants, and I was sure at $1.69 this will be an absolute steal.

The lovingly rendered artwork on the front of the sachet doesn't give much away as to the contents of this mash. A few fresh peas in a pod, some artfully scattered currants, and a few mint leaves are tossed in front of a bowl filled with a foul green mush. Not one cute, fluffy baby sheep, alive nor dismembered to be seen. Turn the pack over, and you find a different story altogether, however. 'VEGETABLES', declares the ingredients, first off. Sweet potato and carrot turn out to be most prominent, unsurprisingly, with only 8% pea, with an added 0.01% mint to add flavour. The total lamb content comes in at 6%, less than both completely unannounced apples and water, but more than ground rice. At one percent (ie less than the component of quinoa in most quinoa containing baby foods), the black currants seem to be present only to give the impression that 'whoa, this food is such a whacky combination!'

The food itself gives a good impression of that pictured in the aforementioned bowl on the packaging
art, except that to fill such a bowl from a 120g sachet, it would have to be quite a small one indeed. Mainly a sickly yellow-green, and coarsest granular rather than mashed, but with the occasional fleck of purple-black: is that evidence of a currant skin? A fleck of lamb? Some stray chia seeds from another organic batch? A fleck of paint off the hipster manufacturer's thick framed glasses? Who knows. Surprisingly, the smell is strongly of peas. On the odd occassion I may trick myself that I smell the slight whiff of mint, but then it's gone again, dashed into the rocks of realisation that this is going to be another disappointingly bland taste test.

The taste is strongly of mushed peas. The subtle mint smell is decimated by the starchiness of the sweet potato base. There is a vague hint of the texture of a few strands of pulled lamb, but the flavour isn't strong. I held long in my mouth, vainly searching for some meaty quality, but alas, this only exposed me to an after-taste, no, an after-texture of the discarded shells of peas across the roof of my mouth. This is not pleasant. In fact the closest I could describe it to is the feeling you get on burning your mouth, popping the resulting blisters, then playing with the loose flaps of skin left behind by the
destruction.

To be perfectly honest, I'm really disappointed by this food. The description, the packaging promised so much. Even with the named ingredients constituting only 15.01% of the total recipe, I was hoping for a puréed delicacy. Instead, I got blister mouth. This is not a lamb dish. It is a sad pouch of mushed peas. You could warm it up and serve it with soggy fish and chips in a poorly lit pub in northern England.

In fact, you could feed it to vegetarians. They wouldn't know the difference.

3/10.

Only Organics: More Quinoa

This isn't a food review. This is a quick Ost because I found these in the in-laws' cupboard the other day.

I have not tried these foods. This is because I do not need to try these foods. They will taste, respectively, like banana and blueberry purée and kumara and banana purée. The banana will overpower, but there will be a slight aftertaste of berries on the first, and a hint of tannin-like kumara on the second. Yes, the quinoa may be present on concentrations of up to 2%: BUT IT IS PURÉED TO A SMOOTH PASTE. It will not be detectable.

Only Organic baby food, I have tweeted you before on this topic. Please stop. I know if you put quinoa in your baby food you are enabled to write Supergrain Quinoa! in fancy writing on the top of your packet. But here's the thing: it makes no difference whatsoever. The amount of quinoa in one of these sachets is probably similar to that which I would inhale passively whilst walking down Cuba Street at 10am on a Sunday morning.

I've done a little research into the health benefits of quinoa, and actually found it a little mor fifficult than I expected, by which I mean the first four google hits were pretty useless and then I got bored. One site, authoritynutrition.com sounded as though it would be fairly authoritive on nutritional matters. But then the first of their 11 proven health benefits of quinoa (number one is my favourite) boiled down to the following:

Which essentially in my opinion is the title  reworded. Granted, the article goes on to list the nutritional breakdown of quinoa, spell fibre incorrectly, and point out its benefits to weight loss, heart disease, type two diabetes and gluten intolerance, but none of these are particularly of concern to a four to six month old. Sure, quinoa, may be a great source of protein, but if your serving size is 1.4% of 120g, you're still getting  sweet FA protein. Then we come to this gem at number six:

Now, I'm not going to try and deny that quinoa has a low glycaemic index. But you know what has a very low glycaemic index? Kumara. That shit you've drowned your healthy, slow-sugar-releasing, all glorious super grain in. Damn. Anyway, on to proven reason number 8 that quinoa is good for you:

MAY have some major benefits for metabolic health. That doesn't sound so proven to me. Surely they can't pad out these reasons any more?

Fries are also easy to incorporate into your diet. I guess that's a proven health benefit of fries, then.

Oh, and on a side note, authority nutrition dot com, time to get better at clickbait: if you're going to have a list of eleven things, telling people that number one is your favourite then having it as such a let down means they're not going to read any further. Here's an example to help you out with the format!

So, after this brief foray into the world of health food blogs other than my own, I'm forced to conclude that Only Organic's slow morph into Only Quinoa can only be a cynical attempt to cash in on a current health fad. In which case, I fear they are already too late. According to the BBC Good Food blog, the UN declared the International Year of Quinoa to be 2013.

Wattie's for baby, Apple, kumara and mango

Another day, another random assortment of fruit with a token vegetable thrown in, puréed and served in a small vacuum sealed pack. If you can't tell by my decreasing blogging frequency, I'm starting to tired of these fruity concoctions, but never fear! Meaty feeds are on the horizon! So let's hurry up and get this one out of the way.

Just in case it had somehow missed your attention, it's International Baby Wearing Week this week, and what an exciting prospect it promises to be! If for any reason you are unfamiliar with the ancient art of baby wearing, it essentially involves strapping a small child (could be a toddler, doesn't even need to be a baby) to your person using cloth or a purpose designed carrier. And then doing things with the two hands that you presumably have free. It recently became news worthy because Ryan Reynolds did it wrong, and then lots of people told him he was doing it wrong, and he got a bit sad (that's a Daily Mail link by the way, if you'd rather avoid it. And I wouldn't blame you). I'd also point out he called his daughter James, which is possibly an even bigger error than the way he wore her.

Anyway, I write this not because it has anything to do with this Wattie's product, but because baby wearing is another buzz word which I cynically think might get me more page views. On with the food review.

Contains: Apple (62%), Kumara (20%), Mango (11%), Water, Cornflower

Just so you know, it is specified on the packet that water is added for cooking and to ensure appropriate texture. Quite a lot of mango, though, probably the food with the highest content of mango other than in a mango.

Emily's reaction: Emily quite enjoyed this one, despite the odd combination of ingredients. There were several false finishes, each punctuated with a shrill, loud demand for father to keep shovelling. That said, it can't have been too filling given she was chowing down on a bag label within the hour.

First impressions: Well, it's a deep yellow colour, and looks slightly granular in appearance. Not sure there's much else to say.

Bouquet: You know what this smelled like? Tea. Not like the meal tea, which might include apples, mangoes and kumara. Not Turkish Apple tea, or chamomile tea, which do somewhat have a not unexpected apple-ey aroma. But more like a Ceylon or English breakfast teabag that has been allowed to stew for longer than it ought to have. Exactly like the sort of tea served by Brittish Airways, with a dash of milk and certainly no sugar to corrupt it.

Taste test: It doesn't taste like tea, though. It tastes like apple, and frankly I that's pretty much exactly what I was expecting. Cos after a month of tasting baby food, I have learned two things: 1) they really will throw any ingredients they can find together no matter how bizarre it sounds, babies are dumb and they won't know any better, and 2) no matter what ingredients are included, if there's more than 50% apple, it's going to taste pretty strongly of apple. Granted, the 11% mango does shine through pretty strongly too, and the kumara does add to an interesting texture. But this is apple for most of the way down.

Overall: 6.5/10. Not bad. Probably not my first choice, but could be an awful lot worse.

Enjoy: With a small pack of biscuits on your flight out of Heathrow.

Only Organic Kumara, Sweetcorn, and Baby rice

Unfortunately sickness has hit our household over the past few days, with child number one (Luke, he of the train nappy) coming down with what's turned out to be a fairly nasty case of the old hand foot and mouth disease. Sleepless nights have been spent being kicked by small, febrile legs, and days at work downing coffee to get through to home time. Baby food has remained untasted, a small collection of mostly-eaten jars piling up in the refrigerator. Still, things could be worse: I'm still in my job, unlike the once Honorable Tony Abbott, immediate past prime minister of the commonwealth of Australia, who lost his last night. A man who liked to remind the press at every opportunity how he had managed to stop the boats, last night Tone was simply powerless in his attempt to stop the votes as they piled up for his opponent, Malcolm Turnbull. As a man with so many public gaffes, who had managed to alienate almost every single loving and dead Australian (as demonstrated by the great John Oliver), undoubtedly  the final nail in the coffin came when Tone bit into a raw onion on a visit to a vegetable processing plant. As a man who's job primarily depends on his kissability to babies, his days were numbered by chosing to chow down on the one vegetable I have yet to find as an ingredient in ANY stage one or two purée or mash. Why not the sweetcorn the kumara, or the baby rice, Mr A (wow, what a segue this is turning in to!) and so, though he tried to cling on to a Prime Ministerial job that is clearly comparable to an onion (layered, and he wasn't willing to let anyone else have a bite), his caucus colleagues declared, 'Tony AbbOut!!!'

Anyway, on to what Tony should've eaten at that factory.

Contains: Vegetables (Sweet potato (20%), Sweetcorn (17%), Pumpkin (unspecified percent)), Water, Ground rice (6%), Brown rice (1%).

Firstly, NO ONION, see Tony? The inclusion of pumpkin, despite it not being in the puree's name is vaguely interesting, in the same way that there's a drummer in U2, but everybody ignores the fact that he's there and he's probably forgotten his own name. And brown rice... This is verging on a superfood, and Only Organic are the company who trumpeted the presence of 1.6% quinoa in their food... Why not put this on huge front of the jar in large neon letters?

Emily's reaction: To be honest Emily had this for tea two nights ago, whilst I was trying to wrangle with a febrile toddler. The fact that there was easily half a small jar left probably means she didn't take too favourably to it though.

First impressions: The packaging comes in standard by now Only organic hues, with a picture of a cob of corn, a sliced kumara, and a little serving of white rice in front of a larger bowl containing the puréed mix of the three. No mention of the brown rice, and I won't be drawing any further parallels here. Nor the pumpkin. Again, like Irish purveyors of faux-political activism whilst pertaining massive wealth-mongers U2, there's a staple ingredient within which the music would be bland and soulless without in this, but they'll be damned if it's going on the album cover (please don't @ me with cover art depicting Larry Mullen Jr now, I don't care to take this analogy any further anyway).

What I will discuss further, is the presence of a 'Good Night' brand, with a little motif containing a moon and two stars in the upper Right hand corner of the label. What does this mean? Is the food good at night? If you want a pleasant evening, should you eat this? Will it send your baby into a sound sleep leaving the night ahead free for 'adult parent time'? (Spoiler alert: no).

The food itself is a congealed yellow mess. It even LOOKS like canned pumpkin soup. Some weird vegetable cleansing is going on here, and I do not care for it one bit.

Bouquet: Straight to the nose wafts strong elements of sweetcorn. Not just sweetcorn, though, sweetcorn and PUMPKIN. I can't detect much in the way of kumara and rice. Rice I can forgive: unless it is Jasmine (hardly likely in a stage one baby purée), rice is hardly the most fragrant of the carbohydrates. Kumara though, as a headlining act in this food, should surely be much less underwhelming?

Taste test: first hint past the lips is of sweetcorn, strong, flavoursome, and yes, sweet. Both the pumpkin and kumara hit you next, travelling over the palate towards the back of the tongue, and lingering strongly. The rice does make itself known: whether brown or standard white is unclear, as it is mashed beyond recognition, but certainly it does give the food a slightly intriguing texture on its journey oesophagus-bound. All round, quite pleasant, and I've been quite happily snacking on the rest of the jar over the course of tonight. 

Overall: 6/10. Not too bad an evening option. Could rebrand as a risotto on the go and sell in a larger quantity. Not sure why Only Organic are so loathe to advertise the pumpkin content though.

Enjoy: When a leadership spill threatens to end your Prime Ministerial term in office. With the advertised promise of a Good Night, there'll be no stopping your vote! Best to take a litre bottle of gin, however, just in case you do lose your job.

Heinz Organic Sweet Baby Vegetables takes on the KFC challenge

Today, a two for one deal, as I start a new quest: to find a babyfood replacement for new Zealand's most popular purée, KFC's potato and gravy. The first challenger is Heinz Organic's sweet baby vegetables, one of the few stage one purées I have found with real potatoes in it, though given the nature of KFC's potato and gravy, I doubt having real potato in it need necessarily be a qualifier for these foods.  But first: the original.

A week after starting this blog, I received a direct message on the the twitter machine from a Dr Andre from New Zealand (@keeweedoc):

• Hey Chris,
  Loving the reviews.
  After a few recent consultations with almost 4 month olds I have seen a pattern emerging in first food choices. Our good friend the colonel provides a well puréed dish at his widespread children's fattening centres. Potato and gravy. Not sure if I'd give it to Emily but interesting contrast to other options.
  Andre

Firstly, thanks Andre, glad to hear you are enjoying the blog (or were a while back, I do note readership has dropped a bit since then, come back!)

Secondly, great idea! I did refrain from using Emily as a test subject for this one, on account of not wanting to displease my wife. However, it was not an invitation I could pass up. So I acquired myself a small pot of the Colonel's finest, and tucked in.

Contains: Honestly, who knows. According to KFC, potato and gravy. Also, according to their Facebook account, it's not vegetarian, but no further details. Given Frank Bainimarama threatened to kick KFC out of Fiji unless they told him what the eleven secret herbs and spices were (clue: salt, pepper, and mine others you can't taste), he might be a good person to ask. I've tweeted him, no reply yet, but I'll keep you up to date.

First Impressions: Much the same as when I've eaten this before, I open the little plastic tub and marvel at a) how much this doesn't look like the picture on the menu, and b) how much this doesn't look like potato. A mess of white purée with a greasy brown gelatinous gloop oozing down the sides. The strong bouquet is mostly of  chicken stock, strong and lingering on the nose.

Taste test: According to double-U double-U double-U dot KFC dotcom, this produce 'always hits the spot'. The potato should be 'soft and fluffy', and the gravy 'thick and rich'. Now, I'm not one for strong language, but I'm calling bullshit on this claim. As hinted upon, there a two elements at play here, so I shall review their gustatory merits separately.

Firstly, the potato, or what masquerades to be such. Soft it is, but rather than fluffy, I would draw up one another f-word, flakey. Given, the side serving was not at optimum temperature at the time of my dining, but I felt it more came apart in my mouth rather than ran back down the tongue and onwards in the manner a true cream should. Taste wise, there was very little, but to be fair, the potato is present more as a vehicle of delivery for the 'thick and rich' gravy.

Speaking of which, I was mildly surprised to find that the gelatinous appearance did not translate into such a texture once past the lips. The gravy was, indeed, thick and viscous, but certainly retained a pleasant fluidity within the mouth. Strong salty tones predominated, presumably from a chicken stock heavily influenced by some, but likely not all, of those eleven seasonings known only to Colonel Sanders and perhaps Commodore Bainimarama (still no reply though).

Overall: 5.5/10: whilst not perfect, the true beauty of the Colonel's potato and gravy is it can be used as a makeshift dip for your chips, or as a thick spread for your sweetened dinner roll. It's going to be quite a role to challenge!

Enjoy with: A KFC quarter pack, obvs.

And so, on to the first challenger, Heinz Organic's Sweet baby vegetables. On account of the word sweet in the name, I already had my doubts whether this could be enjoyed alongside two pieces of original recipe, a dinner roll, chips and a regular drink. On top of that, how could something advertised as being so purely organic possibly sit alongside dismembered hunks of presumably battery farmed chicken? Nevertheless, I had a job to do.

Contains: Vegetables(65%) (Sweet potato (21%), Carrots (15%), Potatoes (15%), Sweetcorn (14%)), Water, Vitamin C.

 An ingredient list upon the packaging! Score one over imported American convenience food!  Again, similar to pervious Heinz Organic foods, this comes with asterisks next to all ingredients except water, to put you at ease of mind that they are all organic. No mention as to whether the vegetables themselves are babies, or whether 'baby' in the food's title is just denoting who this product is for. If the latter, then up yours Heinz Organic, I ate some too!

As a side note, we are informed below the ingredients listing that 'water is added for cooking, and to ensure appropriate texture', just in case you were wondering what this non-organic non-vegetable was doing imposing upon your baby's food.

Initial Thoughts: A pale orange colour, with a slight granularity about it, this just looked so much more ALIVE than the mass-produced fast food mash. It wasn't, of course, the vegetables within had been harvested from the life-giving Mother Earth, processed, and mushed beyond all recognition. Bent there was some sort of vitality here which was lacking from the boy-tied military man's food (Sanders not Bainimarama).

Emily's reaction: We'd been back on fruit predominantly for the past few meals, so the shock of something masquerading as savoury was initially quite disconcerting. As an added distraction, Grandpa was visiting, and making funny noises across the room. Still, a solid enough attempt, and ate most of the packet without grizzling or gagging.

Bouquet: I may be smelling too much baby food these days, but honestly, pumpkin was the main hint I got off this one. Very little in the way of sweetcorn, potato or carrot on the nose, but a sweet and alluring scent nonetheless.

Taste test: texture wise, this wasn't a million miles away for the KFC potato and gravy at all, moist, a few firmer small particulars adding a coarseness on the tongue. Additionally, on first taste, I felt this quite bland. Moving towards the back of the tongue, however, got the party started, with strong kumara and sweetcorn hints reaching up and punching me in the uvula. An after taste of carrot lingered, then all was forgotten before the next spoonful. A sweet concoction that wouldn't be fully expected from a combination of four vegetables, had it not clearly stated 'sweet' on the front of the packaging.

Overall: 6/10: Probably not a viable substitute for the dipping of French fries, but not without its own charms.

Can you eat this with fried chicken?: You could, but I don't think it's the best match. Maybe as a puréed compote next to a medium-rare scotch fillet would be more fitting.

Wattie's for baby: Pumpkin, Kumura and Carrot

Two posts in a day! But first, an apology.

As I perused the packaging for tonight's dinner, it occurred to me that I had erroneously missed the possessive apostrophe in the Wattie's brand name in my previous posts. To be honest, I had assumed that this was a company belonging to a family named Wattie, and therefore multiple Watties were involved in the branding. It had not occurred to me at all that the manufacturer of this fine food belonged to a singular member of the Wattie clan. For this, I am truly sorry.

But anyway, I had low hopes for this offering, to be honest. The pumpkin content had me expecting another sloppy soup-like offering not dissimilar to the pumpkin and sweetcorn tin we had tasted earlier in the week, and I did not hold much in the way of expectations for the kumara or carrot shining through. This prejudice was further enhanced by the fact that none of the foods I had tried so far had managed to escape the sweet categorisation.

As an interesting diversion, I find it noteworthy that my spell checker insists on capatilisimg the 'K' in kumara. Perhaps the West Coast settlement marking the starting point of the Coast to Coast race has achieved more international notoriety than its namesake sweet potato.

Contains: Pumpkin (49%), Kumara(15%), Carrot (5%), Water (for cooking), Apple (6%)

First impression: the viscosity of this purée was much lower than I had predicted: again, my previous pumpkin memories were playing on my mind. Checking the packet, indeed water (for cooking) was amongst the ingredients listed, and perhaps had not quite dissipated during the heating process as had been intended. A paste was a deeper orange, perhaps more influenced by the kumura and carrot (nothing but traditional orange in Wattie' s, no purple carrots to be seen here).

Emily's Reaction: A mixed bag. We had just returned from her grandparents' house prior to the evening meal, and she had fallen asleep in the car prior to being woken for dinner. First attempt at a sitting was a disaster, with a few spoonfuls swallowed heartily, followed by much gnashing of bare gums and howling. An interlude of ten minutes of walking around the house ensued, after which her gusto for eating was restored, and. The majority of the packet consumed in rapid time.

Bouquet: Again, unsurprisingly, very pumpkins. However, this time, the pumpkin was balanced finely with hints of kumara, and perhaps a dash of the unlisted apple present. The carrot was, sadly, again absent on the nose, and perhaps was present in the blend only for colour.

Taste test: On first presentation, not as watery as anticipated. A pleasant soft, fine, puréed sensation the mouth. The almost half of the purée made of pumpkin was balanced finely with the slightly sweet tone ps of kumara, giving a delightful savoury experience. If all you have eaten is is a combination of sweet purées in the past, I can imagine this taste being a slghtly acquired one, but to the adult palate, goes down a treat.

Overall: 7/10. Finally, a savoury treat, and not as bad as I had feared.

Enjoy: Alongside your puréed potatoes and beef, and thickened cask red wine for Sunday lunch during your later years in aged residential care.