Seize the Bebe // Annabel Karmel On Feeding Toddlers!

Lovely yayborhood, it’s been a little while since our last Seize the Bebe episode but as always that in itself is such an apt representation of the juggle. SO many topics have come up recently that I’ve wanted to dedicate episodes to without anywhere near enough time to squeeze them in (including another episode on that juggle itself after a little video I shared on it went viral) but that will have to wait as we DID manage to catch an incredible guest during her whirlwind visit to Australia.

I still can’t quite believe I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the woman who has already revolutionised meal time in our household which is becoming quite the challenge as Teddy enters the world of toddlerhood. When it comes to feeding small humans, there is pretty much nobody better to speak to than Annabel Karmel who has published FIFTY ONE books on the subject since 1991, had several TV shows, a life-changing range of delicious ready made meals and now an amazing app featuring her easy, healthy recipes.

Her decades of work since well before similar resources were accessible has earned her an MBE (our equivalent of an OAM) along with the praise and loyalty of millions of families around the world. I was not prepared for how difficult it could be to simply feed your child once they realise they have autonomy... plus the overwhelm of meal prep, balanced nutrition and finding TIME to do it all. But, Annabel’s frozen meals and recipes have been SO helpful and I couldn’t believe that just after filling our house with her goodies, I got actually meet her.

Not only do we cover so many of the burning questions many of us have about picky eating, introducing new flavours, determining volume etc Annabel also shares the heartwrenching story that brought her to this point - another pathYAY she never could have predicted. A heads up, we do touch on the loss of a child so please take care while listening. In the meantime, I hope you gain as much from this one as I did!!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Sees the Yay Podcast. Busy and happy,
but tired and worn, just some of the feelings when
baby is born. There's magic, elation, there's chaos and tears,
but everyone goes through the same hopes and fears. So
this is a segment we hope helps you feel supported
and valid. The mum juggles real, the good, bad, the ugly,
the best and worst day. It's part of the journey

(00:22):
to seize the Babe. I'm Sarah Davidson, a lawyer turned
entrepreneur who hung up the suits and heels to co
found Macha Maiden, a Macha Milk Bar, become a TV
and radio presenter, and of course host The Sees the
Ya Podcast. This year, I added motherhood to that list,
which is the best job I've ever had with our
beautiful baby Teddy, and this segment was designed to house
all the conversations we've been having about parenthood. We'll still

(00:45):
do our regular episodes and just like real life, it's
a constant balance between our parent identity and everything else.
I hope you guys enjoy this segment as much as
I have enjoyed creating it. Lovely Neighborhood, It's been a
little while since our last Sees a Bebe episode, but

(01:06):
as always, that in itself is just such an apt
representation of the Juggle. So many good topics have come
up recently just in going about my life that I've
wanted to dedicate episodes two for this segment, but without
anywhere near enough time to squeeze them in, including another
episode on the Juggle itself after a little video I

(01:26):
shared on it when viral, But that will have to wait,
because what we did manage to squeeze in over this
past week was to catch an incredible guest during her
whirlwind visit to Australia. I still can't quite believe I
had the opportunity to sit down with the woman who
has already revolutionized meal time in our household, which is
becoming quite the challenge as Teddy enters the wild world

(01:50):
of toddlehood. When it comes to feeding small humans. There
is pretty much nobody better to speak to than Annabelle Carmel,
who has published fifty one books on the subjects nineteen
ninety one, had several TV shows, a life changing range
of delicious already made frozen meals, and now an amazing
app featuring her easy, healthy recipes, her decades of work

(02:12):
since well before similar resources were accessible, has earned her
an mbe our equivalent of an OAM, along with the
praise and loyalty of millions of families around the world.
I just was not prepared for how difficult it could
be to simply feed your child once they realized that
they have autonomy, plus add the overwhelm of meal prep,
balancing nutrition, and simply finding time. But Annabel's frozen meals

(02:37):
and recipes have been unbelievably helpful, and I couldn't believe
that not long after I discovered her, I actually got
to meet her in the flesh. Not only do we
cover so many of the burning questions that many of
us have about picky eating, introducing new flavors, determining the
right volumes, and all that kind of thing, Annabel also
shares the heart wrenching story that brought her to this point,

(03:00):
another path ya that she never could have predicted. A
little heads up, we do touch on the loss of
a child, so please do take care while listening. In
the meantime, I hope you gain as much from this
one as I did.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Annabelle welcome, so lovely to be I love coming to Australia.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Oh my god, we love having you absolute icon and
I feel like this is you've been here a month ago,
you're coming again later in the year. I always thought
you were Australians. Yeah, I mean, aren't we lucky to
have you? And I'm so excited to have you for
so many reasons, not just because you happen to be
the pre eminent author and expert in an area that

(03:38):
I've just it's just started to consume my life feeding
my toddler, So that's one reason, but also because your
story is so interesting. We've been talking for about seven
minutes and I've already heard one of the most interesting
stories I've ever heard.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
I think the why you started it is always very interesting.
It isn't a path that you ever thought would happen,
but it just life takes you that some is this
tragedy that finds your career, which was for my life.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Well that's something that I mean, not necessarily the tragedy,
but the show is all about showcasing the many different, unexpected,
often and nonlinear pathways to the most exciting.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Well, this is definite've very non linear, and I.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Think most of them are and people will walk into
your life right now and see you know, you're a
mum yourself, You've got two girls getting married, you're traveling
the world, you've got three dogs, fifty one books, six dogs,
six three children, three children, two marriages in a year,
fifty one books, an app arrange in supermarkets around the world.
And it's easy to think that you knew you'd end

(04:38):
up here, or that you always had it all together.
But I think revealing the many chapters that came beforehand
is reassuring to others perhaps who haven't faund.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
A lot of it was not planned, It just happened.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, So I would love to start there.
You had, I mean even a whole career that unless
you googled you, you wouldn't know from your current pages that
you started as a musician, or that you know you
had whole life before the chapter we walk into today.
So take us back to the very beginning. How did
it all come around?

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Well? I started off as a musician, so I was
for twelve years as a professional harpist and singer, which
I absolutely loved. Music was my life. The half was
a difficult instrument because many of you may not know
but apart from the strings, there's southern pedals with three
different notches, so it's quite complicated, but it's a good
training for anything else. It's like me and patting your head,

(05:26):
but worse. So I did that for many years, and
I probably would have continued to do it had it
not been for me getting married. Actually I played Cinderella
and PANTOMI I did crazy things about half I heard
from the kitchen, and I learned classically and did many
conscerants travel over the world, and I loved it. But
it was a trashity that happened to me. It always

(05:47):
wanted to have children. Took me over two years to
get pregnant, and then they gave Birsta Natasha, my daughter,
and I was over the moon. And then one day
I looked at her and she didn't look quite right.
Her eyes were like rolling back and her hands were twitching,
and I just knew there was something wrong. And I
called a doctor and he didn't really want to see her,
but after a lot of persuasion, he agreed to see her.
And when I took him to see her, he just

(06:08):
gave me a selecture about first time mothers and how
they worry about their child, and they're much more robust
than you think they are. And I came home thinking
I should never have taken him, and almost embarrassed. But
the next morning she looked worse and she projectile vomited
and it was awful, and I took her to another doctor,
and nine o'clock in the morning I was on his
doorstep and then he examined her, and then he said
I've got to go and see another patient and left

(06:29):
me for ten minutes, and actually hadn't gone to see
another patient. He had already decided in his own mind
there was something seriously wrong with her. And when he
came back into the room, he said, I didn't go
and see another patient. I tried to get her admitted
to Great almost at Hostital, which is the best hospital
for her. Couldn't get her a bed, but take to
Saint Mary's and they'll do tests on her. And that
day they did the tests, and at five o'clock they

(06:51):
took me into a room after doing a cat scan.
They told me she'd never be normal again, or she
might die, and they were transferring her.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
To Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
So I stayed there are five days and five nights
and on the fifth day, they told me that they
wanted to have a meeting and you know in your
heart of heart's what it's going to be. Yeah, And
they basically said, the thinking part of her brain had gone,
what did I want to do? And of course, what
do you want to do? I mean, you can't keep
a child alive like that. So they push in my
arms and for four hours she didn't actually die, and
then she died, and it was just terrible. And you

(07:20):
go home and you're not a mother anymore, and all
her things are in the house and you just like
your whole life is just gone. And for me, music
was not what I wanted to do anymore, and I
wanted to work with children, but I didn't really know
what that's going to be until my second child was born.
But that was also not straightforward at all, because I
got pregnant, thank goodness, within four months. But I took Clomid,

(07:41):
which is fertility drug, so it could have had multiple babies,
but ended up only being.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Pregnant with one.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
And my doctor went away and then he came back
just in time. When I called him to say that
I was in labor. He said he'd be at home
and it was very early stages.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
Don't worry.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Then I called him again half an hour later and
I couldn't get ahold of him. And I called him
again because my waters broke, and again I couldn't get
a hold of him. So I went upstairs get my
things to go to hospital. And the head came out.
But this is bad enough for any mother, but for
a mother whose child had died one year previously, it
was like, oh my god. And I was thinking all
the time, if I lose another child, I really won't

(08:18):
want to go on. And I called my husband and
I said I'm having the baby and he said it
was stupid. And then he saw and the head was blue,
and he thought the baby was dead because the baby
wasn't breathing.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
But what do we know.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
The baby can't breathe till the body comes out. We
learned that later. So I went on all fours. It
was kind of just a natural instinct to do that.
And the baby came out on the staircase, on the staircase,
half on the staircase, still attached by the corse. I
couldn't get the baby really close to me, and then
I said, you better ring the hospital, like see if
somebody can come. And I was left there for two

(08:51):
and a half hours and no.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
One came at home.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yes, and even worse because we'd sold the house and
the carpet was pale yellow and it was not pare
yellow by the time the baby woud been born, and
it would look like a murder had been committed anyway.
Then a doctor came, but not my doctor, and he
cut the cord because we would not have known what
to do. And then my doctor arrived and he kind
of said, like, must have been a wonderful experience for you,
just you and your hospital. I'm thinking this was definitely

(09:15):
not a wonderfully experience in any shape or form. And
then my mother rives at the hospital when I was
eventually taking to hospital and told by the nurse and
no one had give him birth there, but someone had
given birth at home, and she didn't think that was
me because we hadn't called her, because she would have
been like flapping around and made things twenty times worse.
And I'm sat up in bed with a dress, my
boots on covered in blood. Doctor's immacurate. My husband's got

(09:38):
blood all over him, Like what has been going on here?

Speaker 3 (09:41):
Anyway?

Speaker 2 (09:42):
That was the birth of Nicholas, and he was an
interesting child. He wouldn't eat, he wouldn't sleep, he was difficult.
But obviously I was so happy and over the moon
to have a child again. It was the only thing
that would help me. And he wouldn't eat very much,
so I was very vulnerable having lost a child, thinking
that I I really want this child to eat. So
I started out making recipes for him. And I was

(10:03):
writning a big playgroup at the time with mothers and
children about eighty months and babies came to it and
I was testing out all the recipes on them and
they said, Wow, these receipees are amazing. And after about
three months they said to me, you know what, you
should write a book about feeding children because these recipes
really work. And I thought, I can't even type if
I'm going to write a book. But then I thought,

(10:24):
you know, this is a great way to kind of
you want to make some sense of like why this
child was born, why this child died, and give something back.
And I just thought, for me, it's a therapy and
for me to give something back and help other children
is what I want to do. And I spent two
and a half years researching child and nutrition, came up
with my first book, sent it to fifteen publishers, and

(10:46):
every single one of them either did not answer.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Or turned me down.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
No, they did, and everybody thought every single book on
feeding babies had never sold well. It was such an
uncommercial subject to write a book on. It could not
have been a worse subject. I eventually found a book packager,
and that meant that my royalties were terrible. But it
got published and it's sold five million copies.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
That book.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
It was eventually published by a random house, being a
random House and Simon Shuster in America. And I guess,
so that book hadn't done well, that wud been the
end of my career as a writer. But I've now
written fifty one books. I mean, who's counting, but a
lot of books.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
I am, that's a lot of books.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
And what I've done now is actually developed an app
which is amazing because it has thirteen hundred recipes on
it and it takes you through every single stage of
your baby's development, from the very first foods to finger foods,
to fussy eating, to how to cope with allergies. And
that is an incredible resource for parents and it's been

(11:48):
very popular and we've been developing that and that's become
what I call my fifth child, my app which I love,
and now I have. Yeah, I have three healthy children,
my son who's married, my daughter who just got married,
and another dog is getting married in two months time.
So hopefully there will be babies next year.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
I want very much, obviously, because up until then, I've
had dogs, and every time I don't have a grandchild,
I get another puppy. So I'm counting now six dogs
at home.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
I can't believe it's since the post where I saw five,
there's been another one at it.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Well, I've bred my dog. I saw they were pennies.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
My dog out to a friend's dog and they had
four puppies and I kept three of them, and it
already had two dogs. And there's her the three puppies.
So there's six dogs in my house.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Oh my gosh. I mean you love to keep busy.
I love how these eighty five projects going on at once.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Don't cook book, of course, I did How to Feed
Your Dog, And for the first time I let my
dogs eat while I was cooking, which they could not
understand because normally I say you can't have that. And
it's funny because to do the pictures, they used to
put peanut butter on their nose. They would lick their
lips and it would look like they're really enjoying it.
Mind you, they are pretty indiscriminate eaters, And when I'm cooking,
I have these like at least four dogs drooling that

(13:00):
hoping that I'm going to like drop something on the
kitchen floor that they can eat.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Goodness. I mean, I thought you were extraordinary. I thought
you were an extraordinary gift to society and parents everywhere
before that story, but hearing the background of where someone
came from adds just so much depth, I think to
your appreciation of everything they've achieved.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
I think why you do something is so important because
you know, as you know, business is not easy, and
however successful you are, there's so many pitfalls. And because
at the end of the day, I did it all
for Natasha. It just drives me through anything that's bad
because I know that what I'm doing is giving back
and helping parents to give their child a healthy diet
the will last and the rest of their life. Because
children make up their minds by the age of five,

(13:43):
what they're going to eat basically, and one in three
of us will die from a doubt related disease. So
what you give your children now? I always say like
it's giving them a longer life and a better quality life. Oh,
I mean it is so important. I say, what you
eat today which terms your future tomorrow?

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Which it does. That's scary. But also well, my children
love salad.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
I make this amazing salad dressings, and they hated their
school food and they took bottles of this like Japanese
style dressing school with them, poured it over their food,
and that anything they would eat with that dressing, and
then all the other children wanted to have it at
school as well. I was making It was like a
factory at my house making this salad dressing. Which is
they still love it now, Oh my goodness. So not
biscuits or cakes, but salads.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
I have personally found it surprising that toddler feeding and
nutrition has been one of the most difficult parts of
this parenthood. And I wasn't expecting that. You think it's
going to be behavioral or sleep or whatever, and of
course sleep is difficult, but you think they'll want to eat.
They need to eat. For survival. You just don't think
it's going to be so difficult or that they'll be
so discerning.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
It's genetic that they're fussy. It's actually nothing to do
with you. You can have two children, one who eats
well when he doesn't eat well in the same family.
That's not to say you can't do anything about it,
but you are born that way. It's not your cooking.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Oh well, I'm very but I mean already in our household,
you've been just such an incredible You've empowered us so
much to minimize the trauma of meal time and to
be able to I mean the way that you have
recipes that hide veggies, like you're targeting every parent's problem

(15:18):
area and making it easier and removing obstacles.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
When I read my book, every said babies really like
bland food. And I put that to the test because
I'm thinking, I don't like bland food. Why would they?
And you know what, they didn't. They like things with taste.
And we have like one of our most popular meals
here as a butter chicken, which is, you know, a
curry chicken.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
But they love that.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
And in a way, making meals like that are good
because you can't really add salt before one year, but
then garam masala and a bit of like curry paste,
which is delicious. You don't need to have salt. So
it's a good way to get children to eat something tasty,
and they do like tasty food. So all of my
recipes can be eaten by the whole family. Really, yeah, well,
I don't have to cook separate meals.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
We're also in that chapter where I mean, he absolutely
adores your bolonnaise, but he won't eat the full serving,
Like I'll warm the entire thing up, and so I
just finish it. Absolutely, it's delicious.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's my hidden bolonnaise has got mushrooms, capsicum like, coushat like,
it's got so many different vegetables. Now we make that
embark at home. I absolutely love it. It is the
best bolonnaise ever. But it's like vegetables. It's fantastic. Yeah,
but they're all blended, and what.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
You can't see you can't pick out. It's great.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
I know.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
I love that. Half your technique is a hiding things
from the toddlers, which is amazing. But before we get
into the practical questions, of which I have many for you,
I do just want to highlight the fact that this
is a show about joy and we don't often speak
about the interaction that has with grief, and the fact
that tragedy and grief can be worked through and you

(16:44):
can find moments of joy and obviously an incredibly purposeful
journey that helps so many others. And now it's easy
for you, easy one. Not easy, but I mean now
you can speak about it in hindsight. But I'm sure
at the very beginning, before you knew that the book
will be successful, before you were a multi million best
selling author, it was very hard.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
You were taking break.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
I can't even explain what it felt like. Was it
felt like something pressing on your head, It was a
physical I don't know. It was just hard to function
at all, and you just imagine you'll never have children again,
or whatever happened to Natasha would happen to another child.
And it's a very bleak, dark period and it was
really really hard, and I just felt They offered me
counseling and I said, no, I just want to hold

(17:27):
a baby in my arms. I knew that that was
the only thing that would help me. Know amount of
counseling would help, and more parents than you imagine have
lost children or had a miscarriage, which is also incredibly
emotionally upsetting. And I think you either drown in it
or you think I'm going to do something to mark
the fact that I had this child and make something

(17:49):
happen from her short life. And I think that she
will have helped many children to have better quality lies,
because without Natasha, without what had happened to me, I
doubt whether I'd ever written my first book and done
everything that I've done. She was a driving force behind it.
And very often when something like that happens, when you
lose a child, you do end up doing something that's.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Very meaningful in their honor. Yeah you do.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
I didn't do it for money. I never did it
as a career. It just happened to be a career.
It was to write this one book as my kind
of my way of like remembering Natasha and always, you know,
always rumbing that she was there and making some sense
of her very short life.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
And I love that. I think there are many parents
who do experience grief in different forms and for many
different reasons, and it's still not really spoken about as much.
It's still quite stigmatized.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
As a parental there are other things I do because
the reason she died, So the reason she died was
she was kissed by somebody with a cold saw. And
now I do talk a lot about the fact that
when babies are very young, they're very vulnerable and they
don't have the antibodies that we have, and that it's
not a good idea to let them be kissed by people,
in touch by people like let people see them. But

(18:56):
kissing babies is not a good idea in the very
very early stages. And that's what happened to me. Somebody
kissed her with the early signs of a cold salt.
It developed into en capolitis, slowing of the brain, and
it was irreversible because she was a healthy.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Normal child.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
And I never knew that something like that could happen,
but I was told when I left the hospital by
I remember the consultant said, I'm going to give you
one piece of advice. Next time you have a child,
you know, take into the park, but don't let them mix,
don't take them out, don't let them mix.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
With other people. They're very vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
And I talk about that because I think that many
parents don't understand that or if somebody comes to kiss
them or touch them, they feel embarrassed that if you say,
don't touch my baby, I'll think you're really fussy, crazy mother.
But we're doing it for a reason to keep up
babies safe.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
And I think also that is why it's important to
talk about the areas of parenthood that are a little
bit more shrouded in shame or secrecy or taboo, because
you have to have heard that to take it seriously.
Unless you know the consequences, it is easy to go no,
it's fine, you just do it. So I think, yeah,
the more aware you.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Are of or can happen.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean you don't want to live in fields,
I know. But awareness I think is such an important
part of you know, making choices. But you have gone
on to turn it into such an incredible career and
become such a pre eminent authority and in everything that
I need you for right now.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Well, the thing is that we can't always scratch cook
and there are times when you know, even peanut carrot
feels really ambitious.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Showering feels ambitious, so carots on the list.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
So yeah, when I was approached by I was a
number one Frozen few company in Australia to design a
range of meals for children. I'd already done that in
the UK become really really successful, and we developed this
amazing range. It was originally for coles of like just
delicious meals that had lots of vegetables, no artificial flavors, colorings,

(20:49):
and snap frozen so everything was locked in, all the
goodness because let's face it, like when you go down
the baby ail in the supermarket, there's no electricity, so
it's all long life, and in order for it to
have a long shelf life has to be heated to
a high degree, which actually destroys a lot of the nutrients.
And there's a program on television looking at some of

(21:10):
these baby food pouches and like there was a mango
pouch actually contained zero vitamin C in it, or if
it happened meat, it was such a tiny amount. Whereas
you know, if you freeze something, you've locked everything in
and it's just as good as when you cooked at
the first time. So that's what I wanted to do,
like give mothers the opportunity to give their children something
that was like a freshly cooked meal, but they could

(21:30):
take it home and book it in their freezer for
days and they don't have time to cook. And at
the beginning, people didn't even know to go to the
freezer to find a children's meal. It just you know,
they weren't looking there. So it took about a year
for it to catch on. But after that it became really,
really popular. And I think it's amazing because you know,
we're developing another range now and it's been ten years
now since I developed that range, and so many people

(21:51):
come up to you and say, well, it's a lifesaver.
It's a lifesaver because you don't feel guilty about giving
it to your child. You don't because you know it's
good quality.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
And there is a lot of guilt. And I mean,
we put so much pressure on ourselves to do it all,
and like the expectations. I actually posted a video the
other day about the modern motherhood riddle, which is that
women in twenty twenty five are expected to work as
if they don't mother mother is if they don't work,
and look as if they do neither working or motherly.
True exactly, And the pressure you put, either externally or

(22:22):
internally to do it all and cook from scratch but
also be one hundred percent of your work and maintain
or your friendships, and something's got to give somewhere. So
being able to do it knowing that there is nutritional
value and that it isn't full of preservatives, and that
they love the taste it is, you are actually yeah,
and it's actually saving lives, Anna Belle.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
It's even also about like what if I did spend
time in the kitchen cooking something, is my child actually
going to eat it? There's always that worry as well.
At least here you can experiment with lots of different
flavors and see which one your child likes without having
to buy the food, chop the food, cook the food.
I mean, it's just it really is like so easy,
and we work really hard to make sure that all
the nutrients are as if you cooked it at home,

(23:04):
and it will be as good and it's tasty. And
they're based on favorite recipes from my book.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah, I was going to say so.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
I've just come from developing a new range which hopefully
we will launch next year, and there we just launched
a new bolonnaise mac I call it really two childhood
sweethearts meeting each other. The macaroni, cheese and the bolonnaise
is an absolute winner, and I think it's become one
of my most popular meals. It's only been out for
about ten days, so I think it's adults.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Eating that because that sounds like my favorite meal.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
I just tasted and it really is good.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
Well, that brings up I mean the whole idea that
the other day I cooked a twelve hour slow cooked
brisket thinking this would be a really good way to
get some more iron into him, and he doesn't love tough.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
Beef, so of course it sounds good to me.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, I mean it sounds tasted great to me. I'm
glad I could eat it, but wouldn't have a bar
of it. And so there are lots of behavioral questions.
I'd love to ask you for any parents listening, because
I know it is such a hard time. So the
million dollar question is volume. Yeah, I mean it's really
hard to work out how much they should be eating,
how often, and when they are sort of throwing half

(24:05):
of it and playing with it in their face, Like
how do you deal with the volume question? Are they
eating enough? And if they are leaving a lot of
it on their plate, do you keep persisting? Do you
take it away and start again. Like in your experience
of seeing probably millions of families go through these.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I think is less about volume more about the quality
of what you're giving them. And I think there's a
stage where children eat pretty well in the first eleven months,
and then something has clearly wrong and you're snarled into
this sense of false security that my child's a good eater.
And that's because in the first year they grow more
rapidly than any other time in their entire life, so

(24:43):
their growth rate slows down, and also life becomes more interesting.
They're not stuck in a high chair, so it's quite
natural that they will not want to eat as much.
And also basically they prefer to eat things that they
pick up and put into their mouth themselves. So I
wrote a book all about fingerfoods, my latest book, And
what I did was I would put all sorts of
ingredients into a food pressss so chop them up. Maybe

(25:03):
it's chicken thigh which is twice as rich as the breast,
with lots of vegetables, of breadcrumbs and some herbs and
things like that, and then I'd roll it into balls
and either cooked in the alven or an air fryer
and they would pick it up with their fingers and
that word wanders. And the book is all about that
sort of thing where you put all of these delicious
like superfoods together to make really tiny food that they

(25:24):
pick up with their hands that works really well and
they don't drop it because they like it. Yeah, And
also in that book are like homemade fruit and vegetable lollies,
so you can make lollies out of like berry fruits
and beet fruit, so it can be vegetable and fruit
lolly or oranges and mango and carrots, and they sounds strange,
but children love them. And also like you can do

(25:48):
like your own homemade fast food. So I make things
like my own burgers which are delicious but they've got
lots of veggies in them, or my own pizzas with
also hidden vegetable tomato sauce. So there are all sorts
of things you can give your children to eat that
they will like and they don't take too long to make.
And also that you can make in batches and freeze,

(26:09):
which is good.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, the bulk, but I just love how all of
your sneak something in there that otherwise I mean, if
I put a piece of brocoli in front of him
that's just steamed with nothing on it. It's probably not
going to be thrilled with that. But I love the
way you sneak ingredients in because I think that's half
the battle. What about if their You mentioned that your
son was quite picky eater, when they are very finicky,

(26:32):
like just won't even try new foods. I have been
told that it can take twenty exposures before they will
like a food. But you know, do you persist that long?
What did you do to kind of.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Get one day?

Speaker 2 (26:45):
And they eat it all up? And then you think,
this is great, I'm going to make it again.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, make it again. It did like it once, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
So I think that I would give it again, obviously,
but I would try giving it in a different way. So,
for example, my children did not like boil or steamed cauliflower,
and then I roasted the cauliflower in the oven and
it gives it that lovely sweetness and they love that.
So there's other ways of doing it. And I mean
they do say you have to try ten to fifteen times,
and I would try quite a few times, but also
I would give it a rest sometimes if you find

(27:15):
something they like and keep on giving it to them.
You can overdo it and then they don't ever want
to eat it again their entire life. So I think
it's about variety, about making sure there's not too much
on the plate, about making individual portion sometimes. So let's
say you have a chicken potato pie and make it
in a small ramkin, so it's that individual portion rather
than slopping it onto a plate. Because they eat with
their eyes as well as their tummies. Cut up through

(27:38):
this colorful you know, cut like a pumpkin into a star,
make things into balls, and there's just a way to
entice children to eat. I do these like stars, where
actually I grat carrot and cogette, I mix it with
egg and cheese and I push it into a star cutter,
and then I bake these stars in the oven. And
they absolutely love them. But if they were like all

(27:59):
mushy and didn't look like a storied out or they'd
even give them time of day. But they say they
didn't like something they've never even tried it, I mean
that's hopeless. You've got to get them to eat the
first tiny bit of something new. And I also don't
think that you should give attention for not eating, but
you give loads of attention for eating an infinite testinary small.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
Thing is something new.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
So if you ignore the bad eating habits, it's not
so much fun for them to actually make a fuss.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Yeah, because they know they're.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Not going to get a reaction from you, but they'll
get the reaction for eating something. And eating together is important.
Who likes to eat alone? You know they don't like
that just spooning food into a child's mouth in a
high chair. So if you eat together with them, I
think that also helps, or bring a child over is
a good eater. That's why a nursery they often eat
better than they eat at home because their friend Johnny
is eating that, so they're far they'll eat it.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
I've actually heard a lot of babies who have nap
time problems at home with sleeping. They sleep absolutely fine
when they're a kinder because every other baby goes to sleep,
they just copy. I'm like, what do you mean, it's
so contrived. They're very clever.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
They are clever. I guess they're very very wily, these children.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
But they are gorgeous, absolutely, and they has to be
otherwise it's too hard.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
But it's such a lovely thing that when you have
me something and you've come cut something that they eat
is a really good feeling.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, oh, you feel like a queen. Achievement. It's unbelievable.
But that's a really interesting suggestion to mix up the
form factor and that they eat with their eyes, because
I didn't think about that. If they do look enticing, yeah,
why would? I mean, we don't like things if they
look gross, we wouldn't give it a chance. So is
very good at that they present everything so well. And
I love the idea of cutters, like the shapes.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
I do cut things in shapes, yeah, which it does
make it a difference.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
What about new foods, So if you are introducing I
think I watched one of your videos the other day
about spices, which are you know right now at Teddy's palette,
he hasn't really had too much. Like we've introduced a
lot of things broadly, but he hasn't had curry, for example,
he hasn't had chili or like. There are lots of
spices that are quite pun and or potent that he hasn't.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
You can make them a bit more mile So I
made up a feated chicken which was absolutly delicious and
had a bit of cumen in it, and it's not spicy,
but it gives it a lot of flavor, and children
absolutely loved it. I'm thinking making it into a ready
meal because it was so delicious. Gara masala is very good.
I use a lot of time and herbs like that
because you can't really add salts. You've got to add
flavor otherwise it's really boring. So I think it's really

(30:24):
good to use herbs and basil and all of that
is something that children really enjoy.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
What about treats? So I have a couple of friends
who had very, very fussy eaters, and their original hopes
and dreams of how they would feed their child had
to go out the window because it was like, if
I can get him to eat this packet yogurt and
that is the only calories I'm getting hit him today,
then I'm just going to have to deal with that.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
That's okay. I don't believe in banning treats.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
My children have chocolate and whatever they wanted, really, because
as soon as you ban them, they become the forbidden
fruit and they want it all the more.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
So there's still.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
So basically, my children, I just made my healthy food
taste so good that they weren't particularly interested in the
chocolate and the biscuits, but it was always there for them.
And there isn't such a thing as a really bad food.
It's how much you eat.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Of that food.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
I mean, my children would go to my dolls have
a chicken nugget, and I wouldn't say anything, that's fine,
But then I would make my own chicken burg as
we were delicious. It's just what you eat in a
week that matters, really, not what you eat in a
particular day. And actually it's the frequency with which children
eat sugary food that is the worst thing. That's what
damages their teeth because then the sliv never has a

(31:34):
chance to wash it away. So if the child are
going to have chocolate, give at the end of a meal,
but not between meals. Yeah, And even things like raisins
they stick to teeth as well. And a lot of
these fruit snacks it says one hundred percent fruit, that
doesn't mean it doesn't tack your teeth because fruit sugar
is also sugar. So I think that a lot of
the things in the supermarket that are like healthy snacks

(31:54):
are not that healthy and can do a lot of
damage to children's teeth. And in the UK a lot
of children are going under general anstatic before the age
of four to have teeth extracted, mostly because of these snacks,
you know, like fruit leather. That's so bad for children's teeth. Wow,
you have to be careful.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Yeah, And I would never have thought of the order
of offering chocolate, like I wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Have spend of a meal between meals.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
What are some other tips like that that you wouldn't
think of until you get to speak to sit down
with someone like you who's such an expert, or things
that you know parents have asked you that your surprise,
they don't know.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Well, actually a lot of it is early on. It's
all about like what foods could cause choking. So if
you're in a cut a carrot and you cut it
into round shapes, that is a choking hazard. You need
to cut it into batons. If you're going to have
a large strawberry, that's fine, you can suck on that.
But a small strawberry it is a choking hazard. You
have to cut it into quarters. And on the app,
we show every single food and vegetable and how to

(32:51):
cut it so that your child doesn't choke. But the
thing that a lot of parents don't realize is that
gagging is a natural reflex and that's how children learn
and not to choke, and that they will gag. They'll
all gag, and nature is very clever and the gagging
reflects and a young child is very far forward in
their mouth, so gokough, cough, cough, and they go red
in the face, and the best thing is not to interfere.

(33:11):
But a lot of parents then stop giving their children
any finger food choking and they have the other hand
is when they go blue and they go silent and
their airway is blocked. So you've got to understand the
intertween gagging and choking. You've got to let them get
on with the gagging, because that is how they learn
how to swallow. It's a hard thing, but if you
know that's natural, then you understand that just let them
get on with it. They sort themselves out. They're pretty

(33:33):
good at that.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yeah, that's actually fascinating because I think, I mean, choking
is a parent's a worse night mare, of course, like
literally the worst case scenario. And I think it's also
because it's something unlike all the other risks that you face.
There are a million risks that children and parents face,
but it's the one that you feed them three times
a day, so it comes up more.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
You do worry about it and never leave them alone, obviously.
And the other thing is about allergies, Like specific allergies
are not inherited. So let's say you have an allergy
to peanuts. It isn't necessarier that your child's going to
have that allergy. What is inherited, however, is the propensity
to have an allergy. So that means if you have
exma or asthma or hay fever, your child may have that.

(34:10):
And it's the children have EXMA who are most at
risk of having a food allergy. So in fact, if
a child has very severe X march an early age,
they're very likely to have a food allergy. And in
some cases, and this sounds really odd, in some cases
you need to give them an under medical supervision peanut
butter at four months, not six months, because you have
this window of opportunity we're giving this potentially allergenic food

(34:33):
can help to actually stop them getting their allergy. And
when I was a mother, they would not give babies
peanut butter until nine months, and the instance of peanut
allergy went right sky high. And then they did this
trial with giving children peanut butter very early on, and
the ones who had the peanut butter early on were
the ones who didn't develop the allergy. And the other

(34:54):
thing is that in England the common asalergies actually to eggs,
not dairy, but eggs. Really in my day that meant
you could not give any eggs, no biscuits, no cakes,
no nothing. Now they know that you can have baked eggs.
Some children who are allergic to like omelet or scrambled eggs
can actually tolerate eggs in a muscle or something a
muffin or in a meat ball, and by having a

(35:15):
small amount of egg in whatever form may well help
them grow out of that egg allergy. So all these
things are really important to know because it may not
be forever. Not all allergies are life threatening allergies well
also like peanuts are more life threatening than egg or dairy,
but you know important And also a lot of parents
like they think their child has an analogy when they
actually don't because often gastroentritis is followed by a period

(35:36):
of intolerance to anything dairy, and then they think, oh,
my child's got a dairy aalergy. I have to take
everything dairy out of their diet, which is quite difficult actually,
so it's best to get it properly tested. I think
when you think your child has an analogy, and after
they say eighteen months, two years, try again. And there's
a milk ladder where you give a biscuit with a
small amount of milk and see if they can grow.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Out of it.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Because allergies are not that common and it is more
difficult to give your child a bounced out if you
have to avoid a common food group.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
It's so fascinating how something seem really counterintuitive, Like I
know there's you know, we all go through the allergy
testing at the beginning, and then the instructions are make
sure you re expose them regularly.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Isn't given peanut right, that's great?

Speaker 2 (36:17):
My child would have an argue, no, no, no, You've got
to give it like twice a week, and you just
wouldn't think of that.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
No, gosh, there's so much admin to feed his children.
But also another thing that you said that I'd actually
saved this post on your page the other day that
you think that the bigger the food, the more likely
it is to be a choking hazard. But actually the food,
as you mentioned, needs.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
To be bigger, smaller, ash it is or you cut
them in.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Half and again choking and gagging. Like, there are just
so many things that it's so valuable to have this information.
I love that your page is constantly reaffirming these messages,
so it's just giving you're getting the reminders.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
It's giving you this what you need to know in
order to be able to feed your baby and feel
confident and feel in control. But there are two critical
nutrients that babies often don't get enough of, and one
of those, and you were talking about brisket, is iron.
Iron is so important first of all, like particularly for
a premature baby hasn't got the iron stores that a
full time baby has. But iron really you need to

(37:14):
give iron rich foods twice a day, which sounds like wow,
that sounds really difficult, but it's not. Because you can
give porridge which contains iron. However, if you give a
meat source of iron, like red meat or the dark
meat of the chicken or egg, that is well absorbed
by a baby or a child or an adult. But
if you give spinach or porridge or something contains iron

(37:34):
which is plant based, you can't absorb it unless you
have written and see at the same meal. So you
think you're giving you a child iron, but you're actually
not because you're not absorbing it.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
So it's the.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Combination of things that children eat that is really important.
So if you're going to have porridge, put it together
with berries, and the other thing is essential fatty acids
omega threes. Our brain is made up primarily of omiga threes,
so it's very important for the development of a baby's
brain to have oily fish and also for their visual
development and to boost their immunity. And a lot of children,

(38:04):
especially if they're brought up on like package baby food,
do not get oily fish. You really have to cook
it yourself. And salmon is such a great food and
they should have it twice a week.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
It's really important.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
I make this really delicious meal, and it's just you
can cook the salmon in a microwave and then I
saute tomatoes with a little bit of cheese, and then
I add some steam carrots, and I put the salmon
and the steam carrots, tomato and cheese sauce together and
I blend it and it's absolutely delicious and I want
to eat it.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
I love how many of your receipes I save all
of the words. If they're lessen five ingredients, I'm.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Like, that is me.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
That's doable. And it feels you feel so accomplished when
you make something at home.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah, as well, you can't go on it's like step
by step.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
It's so easy.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
I mean, I think the app like and you have
it in your pocket so or in your bag, and
so when you go into the supermarket, you'll never be
at a loss of what to cook. You can just
put in broccoli, chicken six months old, or I want
to make something for my family's dinner. And there's just
so many recipes there that are simple and quick, will
be delicious and you can freeze. You know, it's been
my life's work that out.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Really.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
I think it's just so easy to use it in
a way, it's better than the book because you can
do can't do with a book. Yeah, it's always with.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
You on what are the most popular recipes? Are you
surprised ever by the ones you put out and then
the deck like do you say the downloads.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Of specific Yes, I mean they are the really simple ones.
So also is really popular anything really? Yeah? I mean
like I do a carrot tomato cheese sauce with orso
that's really popular. And then I created because my son
would not eat chicken. I made these chicken and apple
balls because you liked apple, so I thought if I
put the apple with the chicken, that might get them

(39:44):
to eat it. So I took chicken thigh because it's
really rich and iron, and I mixed it with some
bread crumbs, some chopped onions, some thyme egg, and the
chicken and grated apple and mid into little balls. And
again you can bake them in the oven, you can
cook in the air fryer. He absolutely loved them. From
that day on, he loved chicken. So my chicken apple

(40:05):
walls are like one of my signature recipes. They were
in my first book, The Complete Baby and Tittle Meal Planner,
which is still a huge best seller. It must come
into nineteen different variations of that book. Nows. I keep
on updating it recipes to it, but it's a really
really popular book. And my lentil pures are really popular
that babies like lentils, and nobody would think of doing that.
And then strange combinations like my avocado and banana mash together.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Oh have we do that? And that was by accident.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
I know. It's so good that and it's also something
you can take with you. And there's one recipe which
sounds like wow, that sounds awful, but actually babies love it.
It's whitefish. I use cold and then I put orange
juice on it, and I put grated cheese and crushed
corn flakes and I put it in the micrave and
it takes like two and a half to three minutes.

(40:52):
And the orange juice and the cheese and the corn
flakes they mix with the fish. It's absolutely delicious and
it's so quick and easy, and people go crazy for it.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
But now it's in the pallet.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
It's an amazing it's an amazing recipe.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
And in this book, which is a fun, fast and
easy cookbook, which is a cookbook for teaching children how
to cook, I do these cookies. They are unbelievable. They
oat and raisin cookies. They only have like six ingredients.
We make them every week at home. They are the
best cookies you'll ever have, and you cannot go wrong
with them. You just put all the ingredients together in
a bowl, roll them together, flatten it onto a baking dish,
and ten minutes later you've got these homemade oat and

(41:28):
raisin cookies. The whole house smells so inviting and incredible.
They're so good, it's amazing. And I'm doing an influencer
event tomorrow and I'm making my carrot cake energy balls
and they're really good. They've got no sugar in them.
They're made with dates and oats and some raisins, some
grated carrots and they're just like all put together and

(41:49):
you don't need to cook them at all, and some
desiccated coconut. They're absolutely fabulous. Again, great stack. And that's
in my finger food book.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
This is a whole wanting so many recipes.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
It's so quick and so easy and like, just make
your life. I mean, I think food is so important.
Can you imagine life without food?

Speaker 1 (42:06):
I honestly think about.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Food all the time.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
I think about what I'm going to cook, what are
I going to eat? What am I going to make
for dinner? And what Michel and are going to eat.
I mean, I'm just I'm sassive food. That's my job.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
That brings up another question I selfishly have with the
balance between things like cookies or balls or muffins. I
find it's, you know, pretty safe to assume Tady will
love a muffin or he'll have a bit of banana bread.
There's a certain form factor that's kind of soft and
caky that he'll almost always love. But I want to
get my iron, my veggies into him. So when it

(42:40):
comes to the main meal versus dessert or main meal
versus treat balance, do you sort of offer them both
in one meal like you would an adult. You'd have
your main meal, then you'd have dessert, or would you
do main meal savory and then the cookies would be
for snacks in between? Is there like a system that
we should be being guided by so they don't get,

(43:00):
you know, expect the cookie and then not eat their
their savory food.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
I think this thing that children need loads of snacks
during the day is actually not great. And actually, if
you're going to you've got to think about your snacks
as being part of their overall good nutrition. So like
having cut up fruit, because whole fruit and a fruit bowl.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
They just walk past.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
But cut off fruit is very inviting and looks very
colorful on a plate, So that is a good snack.
And all these snacks in the supermarket that says it's
got carrot in it, and when you look on the
back it's like three percent carrot, which is why eat
a carrot?

Speaker 3 (43:27):
What's wrong with a carrot?

Speaker 2 (43:29):
You know? And like cut up carrots have a hommer step,
and you know, these kind of things are great snacks.
Or cheese is a great snack, or make a pasta salad,
that's a great snack. I don't think these packaged snacks
from supermarkets. They're just like they're puffed up corn with
a spray of carrot on them. For me, there's no
place in them. It just fills up a child's time,
which is already very small with calories that are not

(43:50):
giving them any nutrition. So I think snacks should be
a good part of their diet and think of them
as fruit and veg cheese, that kind of thing. When
they have a good meal, yes I give them a
cookie or something, or an ice cream or something afterwards,
because that can be it's a good food. Ice Cream
has dairy and it. Cookies have the good things in it. Muffins.
I do an apple and carrot muffin and they're good,
and we all like this, you know, finish with something sweet.

(44:12):
But as I said, like sweet things between meals attack
children's teeth, and the more like sticky they are, they
tax teeth even more. And children are going to have
teeth extracted at very young age because we're giving them
too many sacks in between meals.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, so join them to the meal, like at the
end of the meal.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
And give them like healthy snacks that won't damage their teeth.
Cheese is one of the best things to give cheese cheese,
So do we do that? Yes, cheese cheese e morcializes
the acid on children's teeth. No way to give us
apples at school, and that's the worst thing because apples
are acidic and they're not good for your teeth at all.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Have you found over the years that you've been doing
this that I mean, I feel like the literature on
parenting generally, but food specifically changes so rapidly that there
are some things that we used to do and then
suddenly it's like do the opposite, like allergen exposure and
things like that.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Things changing. Yeah, we're learning all the time. There's so
much we need to learn. I mean, we just to
make all our bottles up and just put them in
the fridge for the whole day, and I can't do that. Yeah,
I mean our babies lived, they were fine.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Yeah, I just.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
You can worry too much sometimes.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
And also like breastfeeding, Yes, I mean breastfeeding was great,
but if you can't breastfeed your silk child's still going
to do well. You formerly don't have to feel guilty
about it. Yeah, it's too much guilt put on parents.
But I think you know, home cooking is a joy
if it's not too complicated, and I try to make
it so easy that you want to do it and
you feel good about your child eating something you've made.
But I also think there are many times in your

(45:37):
week when you just can't cook. And then what I've
developed in my ready meals, which are frozen and locked
in goodness, are a life saver for parents and they
know that they're child's eating good meal and the child's
enjoying it. And it's a great pleasure that I've been
able to do that I've been able to create something
that wasn't there, that there was only long life food
for children. There was nothing frozen, nothing as good as
this in Australia and it's really coolt on and I'm

(46:01):
I'm really happy. You know, if Natasha hadn't lived and
hadn't died young or doubt whether any of this would
have happened.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
I mean, what a legacy for her. She couldn't hope
to have had a more incredible No.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
I didn't really understand when I was writing my first
book what it would actually global food business. I would
never have believed that because I couldn't get the book
published for life, you know, at all. And so this
has been a dream of mine. And I'm always doing
new things. So I'm going to bring out a tablewear
range in Australia probably later this year. So we just

(46:31):
developed it and that would be lovely. And you know,
I'm always doing new restes for my app has new
recipes every single week.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
There's always a lot going on.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
And I work with a lot of hotels over the
world and do children's menus, I do cruise liners, so
you know, all sorts of weird places.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Well, I mean that is a wonderful place to finish.
We weren't recording when you first told this amazing story.
But this journey has led you not into all of
our households, and if any parent listening hasn't already been
introduced to your frozen meals, I mean you will have
seen in my stories how much they say of our
lives weekly. So I will include all the links, of
course to the resources in the show notes. But what
are some of the crazy, crazy experiences that this has

(47:12):
led you to? You mentioned you were in a downing
street with some famous actors, Like, what are some of
the craziest rooms you've ended up in that you never expected?
And tell us about your charity work.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
So I was asked to present paul Charity of the
Year and the winner was a charity called Julia's House,
and it was a hospice for children who have life
threatening diseases and will probably die by the age of thirteen.
I've never heard of it, so I thought I would
go and visit them. But I thought me going to
visit them would be quite boring, but me going to
visit them with my dogs would be much more entertaining.
So I brought my dogs and the children had the

(47:42):
best time, and then I just thought they don't get
any public funding. What can I do to help them?
And I'd been to a few cocktail parties at Downing Street,
which is the government okay, number ten.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Number ten, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
I wrote a Samantha Camera at the time, and she'd
had a child who had been to a hospice. I
even know she died very young as well. And I
wrote her and I said, like Amnuel Carmel, I sent
us some of my books. She said, oh, I know
exactly who you are, and I used your books.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Everyone knows you never need to introduce yourself.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Anyway, so she said, yes, you know, you pick a
date and we'll host it. And then the original hospice
was in Dorset in the country, and I looked up
all the people that lived in Dorset and one of them.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Was Guy Ritchie.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
So I invited, well, we invited him. Most people don't
turn down an invitation to Downing Street. And he came
with his wife. Was very stunning, and he was very
taken with the charity. And he then said he wanted
to go and visit the charity where they have this
beautiful building and the children can come there and be
looked after. And also like when it comes to the

(48:46):
end of their life they can actually be there with
their parents.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
It's a beautiful place and he.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Was so taken with it that he decides that he
would do an event in his country house in Dorset
and invite a few of his friends. And his friends
happened to be Robert Downey guy, so this is quite
an event and he had a shoot I think it
was Clay pidge and shooting, not actual live animals, and
a lunch and he raised one and a half million

(49:12):
pounds and with that we built another hospice in Wiltshire
and Robert down Junior was kind enough, he was doing
iron Man at the time to give a lot of
the props from iron Man to the hospital, so when
you walk in it's like this huge iron Man, like
all the whole thing and like and there's amazing and
it was just amazing what they did. And yeah, so
they have two hospices now and I think people don't

(49:33):
realize that it's a massive pressure on the family. Very
often they have one child who's terribly sick and two
other children and then the hospice will take the sick
child for a day so they can spend time with
the other two children and very often, like parents split
up because of the pressure and the stress, and it's
just a wonderful thing. And I felt so like akin
to it because my child died in a cold hospital

(49:54):
and I know what it's like to lose a child,
and also like, you know, helping them get over the
death of their child. And you know, I go there
and I see the children and I do a lot
of work with them, and recently we had a lot
of fun. We've got a lot of like these beautiful
statues and I have lots of different people painting them
and they're all over at the city. And then they

(50:15):
went for auction and we raised hundreds of thousands of
pounds for the hospice. So I've been very active with them.
And it's nice to put something back and see the
children's faces light up, because even though they have short lives,
they can have happy lives. You know, every day really
counts when you know that you've have a limited life.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Absolutely well, what a beautiful way to finish and a belle.
You are truly an incredible human being, and it's just
been a you. I mean, you're in our house every
night anyway.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
In your kitchen.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
I know I say it all the time, but especially
in this chapter of my life. Gosh, I feel so
lucky to have a platform that just gives me an
excuse to sit down with people as clever as Annabelle. Literally,
her brand has been all over our home for months now,
and then I use she's coming to Australia and would
be open to jumping on the show. It just doesn't

(51:06):
get more exciting than this. I'll share the link to
her meals, her books and her incredible app that we mentioned,
And if you did find this episode useful, please do
share with any takeaways or even any questions, tagging at
Annabelle Carmel and us to thank her for her time
and wisdom and keep growing the neighborhood as far and
wide as possible. In the meantime, there are so many

(51:28):
more sees of bebe episodes brewing and coming your way
on single motherhood, modern working motherhood, expectations, weaning, and so
much more. If there's anything that you'd like covered, or
any experts you'd like to hear from, please also never
hesitate to send a DM. It may take me multiple
business days slash business weeks to get back to you,

(51:49):
but I will get there eventually. I hope you're having
a wonderful week and are seizing your yea. The h