Ever since way before I was pregnant and indeed way before I even knew if I’d ever want to or would end up being a mother, I always knew that if I did, cooking with my child would be one of my favourite things.

Today, I felt like we edged one step closer to really cooking and eating together.  You see until now, there’s not really been much cooking involved in Mabel’s food.  Sure, I’ve had to boil, steam, roast and, in some cases, microwave.  But it’s been one food at a time, ensuring there’s batched food for the week ready for Mabel in the freezer.  She’s not yet had anything that really closely resembles what we’ve been eating that day.

Until today.  This morning, I prepared green lentils.  Green lentils for Mommy & Daddy, green lentils for Mabel.  You can view the recipe for Mabel’s here, but a very quick breakdown is:

The parents’ lentils were simmered in red wine, red wine vinegar, beef stock, thyme, parsley, garlic, onions, carrots and celery.

Mabel’s lentils were simmered in water and carrots.

She spent the day unaware of the treat we were going to enjoy as a family for dinner later (note that, of course, we didn’t really get to all sit down and enjoy it together. On a normal night, Mabel goes to sleep by about 7pm, but tonight, while me and her daddy ate ours, she was going mental in her crib upstairs fighting sleep like the party girl she is).  Nonetheless, I spent the day unable to contain my excitement that we would all be eating something similar at some point that evening.

And as if all of that wasn’t enough to make this Tuesday feel momentous, Mabel also ate an entire large ice cube of mushrooms I had prepared for her over the weekend.  I was unsure how mushrooms would go down.  After all, I know plenty of grownups who are funny about fungi.

Well, not Mabel.  Mabel ate her entire serving and still had room leftover for avocado and pretty much an entire pear for dessert.

To prepare her mushrooms, all I did was steam 250g chestnut mushrooms in a bamboo steamer for about 15 minutes, then blitz very quickly in the Nutribullet.  The texture was that of a very roughly chopped pâté – the kind you encase the beef in a Beef Wellington in.  Wellington next?  Well, maybe as a Christmas treat.  Today was gift enough for the time being – at least for Mommy.