Only Organic Carrot, red lentils, and cheddar

There are times I sit down to enjoy a new baby food with my darling daughter, and we are confronted by a uniquely flavoursome punch to the palate, something we've never experienced before, but something we wouldn't mind much having to try again. And you know what? Because the world of baby purée is finite, we can try it again! But there's only so much deliciousness you can re -eat over and over again. So today it was on to new pastures, pastures containing carrots, red lentils, and cheddar. I very much had my suspicions that the lentils may turn out to be one of those foods added to the label to appeal to hipsters. Would I be proven correct? And would Emily make a face like this? (Spoiler alert: yes, that's why I have a photo of her making a face like this).

Ingredients: Vegetables (carrot (27%), pumpkin), Water, Apple, Cheese (milk) (5%), Lentil (4%), Ground rice.

And, it's all starting to fall down already. There's already looking as though there's more of the ubiquitous fillers pumpkin and apple in this than anything else, with a good dollop of water to boot. It's a little bit of a shock there's no kumara. And what was that I said about lentils being a trendy trace ingredient?

Emily's reaction: is pretty much summed up by the photo above. Mum had thought it a nice idea to try her on a piece of raw mushroom, a fungal delight her older brother inexplicably loves. Emily showed herself to be eminently more sensible, and had gagged and choked until the experiment was abandoned. 'Surely,' I thought, 'some pre-prepared packet food would go down a treat in this particular circumstance'. 'However,' I continued in internal monologue, 'past experience with cheese based foods would suggest the lentil and cheddar variety may not be the most welcome taste sensation.' Turns out the latter recollection was correct.

First impressions: I'm pretty sure I've previously hypothesised that if you were to add pumpkin to a food, it's going to dominate the taste and texture. If I haven't, I'll hypothesise that now, albeit in retrospect. On the spoon, this was orange. Granted, that could have been the carrots, but the sinewy, granular texture was all too familiar from previous pumpkiney tastings. The smell was, similarly, all pumpkin. Not even a hint of apple to linger over the turbinates.

Taste testing: I'm going to call it. What Only Organic have done here, is take Wattie's for Babies pumpkin and sweetcorn food, add some ground rice for texture, and put it in a packet suggesting far grander ingredients. I cannot taste cheddar. I cannot taste lentils. I will give benefit of the doubt, there may be some carrot included. But you are paying an extra seventy cents here for a bit of organic ground rice and a status symbol for a packet. Nothing more.

Overall: 4/10. Not bad, but tastes nothing like what it says it is on the packet.

Enjoy: trying to convince your friends at Thorndon Paleo Vegan Coffee Group and Crochet Club that your 9 month old is eating a pulse, when in fact they're actually eating a mass produced sludge aimed at a child half their age.

Heinz Organic Pumpkin, ricotta and spinach

As Emily grows, the more her diet repeats itself, and the more proper food she eats. However, today for dinner she found another baby food straight out of the upper middle class book of buzz foods. Ricotta, really Heinz? I can barely spell ricotta, let alone recognise it's taste. Surely the generic title 'pumpkin and cheese' would do? Anyway! excitement spread over my face. I realised this would be an opportunity to add to my already booming collection of foods containing pointless ingredients which should never be allowed near a small child's mouth, but at such trace levels that they barely do anyway.

Ingredients: Vegetables (71%) (pumpkin (33%), tomatoes, sweet potato, onion, zucchini, sweet corn, spinach (0.5%)), water, wheat pasta (10%), cornflour, cheese (ricotta (1.4%), pecorino (contains milk))


I feel like this is false advertising. I buy something on the pretence it is a pumpkin and spinach food, with a little bit of cheese: look at everything else in it! Half a percent spinach... It's not even trying to make an impression on the flavour, as opposed to the FIVE other vegetables listed as being present in higher quantities. And WTF... Pasta? That's a whole new carbohydratey food group just being dropped in, sorry if your baby who is pretentious enough to be eating ricotta at such a tender age is paleo, guess you can just GGF. And thirdly, I had to look up what pecorino is. Turns out it's a cheese made from the milk of sheep. Sheep. This is a food made for under one year olds. They're usually happy enough to eat a raisin covered in fluff they've found under the sofa. Why the need for sheep's milk? Chuck in some grated mild cheddar, they're happy.

Emily's reaction: I wasn't present when she ate this one. I'm told she liked it, but then, the was also half a jar left. Don't know who to believe any more.

First reactions: Is there any label on a jar, can, or packet of food better worded to get a hunger up than 'soft lumps'? To be fair, 'soft lumps' was actually a fairly good description of what this looked like, a deep orange gloop with indiscriminate chunks of maybe vegetable, maybe pasta, maybe who knows what else interspersed throughout.

Bouquet: The pumpkin runs strong on the nose of this one. There are hints of tomato which linger, but the pumpkin is so overwhelming it is easy to see exactly why it deserves top billing. A slightly wheaty tone does hint at the pasta within, but would be easily missed if you knew not it were an ingredient.

Taste test: I've tasted a fair few baby foods now. Truely, this was the first one I had really hesitated before putting in my mouth. The soft lumps, to be fair, we're probably pretty much what you'd expect: little morsels of pasta (I assume), easily mushed under tongue, and not really adding to the overall flavour. A few small solid bits of onion or zucchini also were obvious on sight, and perhaps hinted at taste-wise if played over the tongue. The main substrate of the food was half pumpkin, half tomato, and certainly not unpleasant. Maybe some slight cheesy undertones were detectable, but the overall impression was of a slightly thickened minestrone soup served at room temperature. Was the ricotta and sheepy milk curd really noticeable? No, but I doubt sales would be anywhere near as strong in the upwardly mobile middle class target demographic if you called this cheap vegetables and cheese.

Oh, and I'd completely forgotten there was meant to be any spinach in it at all, to be honest.

Overall: 7/10. Honestly, it doesn't taste that bad. But cut the crap about the ingredients, and don't advertise the soft lumps.

Enjoy: Heat it up in a bowl and add some crusty bread as a starter before an Italian meal.

Only Organic: Cauliflower, Broccoli and Cheddar

Firstly: a week in and I'm still going! The novelty hasn't quite worn off yet, not just for me, but for you, the loyal reader, too! Thanks everyone who's kept on reading my inane blabber, I feel I've only scraped the surface of the underrated world of baby purée so far, and there are many high peaks and probable low troughs to go, so stay tuned! The quinoa post was an early highlight, and I hope to have several more for you over the coming weeks!

Father's Day today seemed like the perfect excuse to take on one of the big challenges I'd been saving for a while: Only Organic stage 2 cauliflower, broccoli and cheddar. So different in formulation was this from almost anything Emily and I had tried so far, I had genuinely no idea how it would come across. It has dairy in it! Not just cheese, but milk too! And cheddar: a family of cheese with such diversity across its spectrum! Would it be a strong, finely aged specimen? A creamier Colby varietal? Or a more delicate mild version? Would the cheddar entice us to gorge ourselves until full? (Geography pun there for all you South-East Englanders!) And how would Emily take the massive change in dietary direction forced upon her?

Contains: Cheese sauce (water, ground rice, whole milk powder, cheese (milk) 3%), Cauliflower (15%), Broccoli (9%), Onion.

Eagle eyes will note that the named ingredients only add up to of  27% of the total content, with presumably water and ground rice making up the balance. Having since tasted it, I can't really say this surprises me.

Actually on second thoughts, eagle eyes probably wouldn't notice that, as they would belong to eagles, which are birds, so can't read. Maybe The Eagles' eyes would, if they were feeding their grandchildren, as I imagine this would be the type of fancy upper class food they would choose in that case.

First impressions: not a huge amount to be honest. It's a pale cream purée in colour, easily the thickest offering so far, with a coarse texture visible to the eye.

The packaging is fairly non descript. A couple of florets of broccoli and cauliflower are scattered next to a red bowl containing some sort of broth-like liquid. A wedge of what appears to be a maturing, crumbly cheddar lies nearby, hinting at a rich, sophisticated taste within. Additional branding assures the consumer that only the finest New Zealand cheddar, mashed with a fork, is included, and that the cheese does not contain something called BPA, I assume from the cheese's rind.

Emily's reaction: I commented yesterday that a picture speaks a thousand words, so without further comment, this was Emily's reaction today.

When presented with an option of the food and a used wet wipe, Emily decided to try her luck eating the wet wipe. There was plenty of food left for me to taste.

Bouquet: Not much of a nose on this one at all. Hints of cauliflower entered the nostrils, but hardly lingered. There was dissapointingly little in the way of a cheesy scent, but sometimes the most delicate of curds have nary a whiff about them.

Taste test: Recall, if you will, the taste of cauliflower, the blandest of vegetables. Now imagine it mushed into a purée, until at the texture of cold vomit (without chunks). Add a hint of onion at the back of the tongue as an afterthought. Served cold. That is what Only Organic cauliflower, broccoli and cheddar offered up here. The cheese flavour was so underwhelming, it would be unsurprising to find the company was in breach of fair trading descriptions to include a picture of the block on the front of the packet. The broccoli was absent in taste, but possibly added to the mildly unpleasant tactile sensation in the mouth. Not truly as offensive as my offspring would have me believe (Luke also passed the left overs up), but hardly the winning taste combination you would expect from the ingredient list.

Overall: 4/10. I'm not angry, just disappointed at the blandness of this meal. Would probably gain from a cheese aged for 24-36 months prior to preparation.

Enjoy with: some actual cheddar, or an aged single malt Scotch, to add some flavour to your evening.