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.

Rafferty's Garden: Spinach, apple, broccoli and pea

Today, I think I've finally stumbled upon the secret to making a top selling baby food.  Simply write down all the fruit and vegetables you can think of on separate pieces of paper, add a couple of grains if you feel fancy, or a few super foods if you feel particularly pretentious. Write 'apple' and 'pear' down on a few more scraps. Put all the pieces of paper in a hat, then draw out three or four. Mix them up in a big blender and put them in tiny little sachets. Wait for the dollars to roll in.

There is little other reason that a lot of these combinations should exist. I've written at length several times about the complete waste of putting traces of wanky foodstuffs such as quinoa and wild rice so minuscule that there is no way they can possibly impact on taste. Yet food manufacturers persist in these strange combinations that have no other business existing. Acai berries in baby purée is pretty much like having a parliament containing a member of a party voted for by 0.075% of the population, just for the sake of the representation of self-important cockatiel-lookalikes who enjoy wearing bow ties, and that we can have a pretty purple seat on the schematic representation of the House of Representatives, despite underneath everything him being nigh-on impossible to distinguish from the opinions of the rest of the centre-right.

Anyway, today's offering was one of these bizarre combinations, and with the grand contribution of 4% spinach, I wasn't holding my breath for a leafy flavour sensation.

Ingredients: Apple (70%), Pea (18%), Broccoli (8%), Spinach (4%)

Here we see the first trick in baby food manufacturing. We all know a true combination of broccoli and spinach would taste revolting, certainly to anyone under the age of 65%, and force feeding would likely be the quickest way to loose the trust of your 4-8month old. But people like the idea of eating healthy, and of giving their offspring what they perceive will be good for them, so these are precisely the ingredients they want to see in their baby's purée. So Rafferty's Garden gives them these vegetables, but in amounts which surely will have no impact on the taste of a food the contains 70% delicious apple. Really, a waste of space.

First impression: This food is really green, and as I'm pretty sure I've stated before, green is seldom a colour you want to be putting in your mouth in a puréed form. Pond weed again? Slimy bird poo? Whatever it is, the spinach, broccoli and peas are certainly making an impression colour wise, if nowhere else. Lowers my expectations,  if nothing else.

Emily's reaction: She actually really likes this one. Not as much as the traditional fruity favourites. Certainly nowhere near as much as Rafferty's Garden's other amazing offering, the Apple, pear and cinnamon. But half the pack is gone reasonably quickly, and even big brother trying to force feed her his lunch can't put her off.

Bouquet: Strong and sweet, this is apples on the nose all the way. Do broccoli and spinach even smell? If they do, I wouldn't want to smell them in a baby food, so the fragrant hints of Royal Gala and Red Delicious were a pleasant surprise on this one. If only it tasted this good...

Taste test: Initially, like the bouquet, the apples predominate as this pleasingly smooth mush rolls back down the tongue. However, as it reaches the back of the palate, the leguminous nature of the pea component lends slight nutty hints, which in her after the food has long disappeared down the oesophagus. This gives the overall impression of a smooth, but not sticky, peanut butter: not truly repulsive, but something that would definitely be an acquired taste. I had predicted the spinach and broccoli wouldn't make much impression past the colour, and it turns out I was right.

Overall: 5.5/10. An unusual combination of ingredients seemingly thrown together in a haphazard fashion give a slightly unexpected taste, which grows on you over time I guess.

Enjoy: as an alternative to mushy peas in your Friday night fish dinner