Your chance to win a Steiff bear!
 Those nice kid's cutlery people at WMF have very kindly given us a fantastic Steiff teddy bear to give away to one lucky purchaser of any of our children's cutlery sets. Here's a picture of "bobby" and what a lovely bear he is! If you know about these things you'll know what a great reputation Steiff have. Its always a Steiff bear that gets valued at £20,000 on the Antiques roadshow and, whilst we can't promise that this one will ever be worth that sort of money he is sure to become a treasured member f the family for one lucky winner. All you need to do is buy at least one set of children's cultery from the six WMF designs in stock at kiddies kitchen and we will automatically enter you into the prize draw. The winner will be drawn from a hat on 30 Spetember 2007. The bear is a "bobby" by Steiff and measures about 50cm in length.
New products - even more children's cutlery
 All of them are made from solid stainless steel and are dishwasher proof. They are ideal for that tricky age around 3-12 when your children are too big and grown up to use first cutlery sets but still find adult size knives and forks too big and unwieldy to use properly or easily. Manufactured in Germany by respected cutlery firm WMF these childrens cutlery sets are brilliant quality and will last for years. They are packed in excellent presentation boxes and would make a lovely present either for a christening (to put away for future use) or for toddler/young child's birthday. Prices range from £10 to £20 for a four piece set and there are choices of contemporary or traditional plain designs, plastic handled sets and some with fun characters engraved on the handles. Why not visit Kiddies Kitchen for the widest selection of organic baby food and feeding accessories available anywhere in the UK?
nappy disposal systems
its been a few years since companies like tommee tippee introduced home nappy disposal systems like the sangenic. There were many variations on the theme but the one thing they all had in common was the use of a special cassette system to wrap individual used nappies in a plastic coccoon. They work but the main drawback is the cost of the wrappers. the recent introduction of the daiper champ (also marketed as the vital baby nappysafe) removed this problem. These are the only cassette-free odour free systems on the market and to minimise the running costs all you need is a roll of standard bin bags. Couldn't be easier really and the ingenious airlock system for binning the nappies really does keep in the smells. You can buy the diaperchamp on the kiddies kitchen website now - its in stock and could be with you in just a couple of days - say bye-bye to that awful smell of scented nappy sacks and dirty nappies.
Rice cakes and rusks from organix - perfect finger foods
the very first brand of baby food we put on our stock list was Organix - I honestly don't know how we would have got through the first two years with no.1 son. We love the fact that the entire range is free from any added salt or processed sugars, additives or preservatives. We also love the fact that our son can't get enough of them. Rice cakes are a great first finger food. Suitable from about 7 months you can choose from plain, apple or orange flavour. Apple are our best sellers, but i'll admit to a soft spot for the orange flavour myself. The rice cakes are an old favourite, but a newer and almost as popular addition to the organix range are the organic soft rusks. Also suitable from 6-7 months they are soft and lovely (according to our customers). No.1 son was too old to enjoy the rusks, so we're looking forward to no.2 son putting on a couple of months so we can try them ourselves. We've organised the website so that you can navigate to a category containing all the baby food suitable for your baby's age or stage of weaning. So we have categories for stage 1 weaning - from 4 months, stage 2 weaning - from 6/7 months, stage 3 weaning - from 9 months and finally stage 4 - from 12 months. Of course, if you know what you want you can shop by brand to browse organic babyfood from all our suppliers, or even just browse all our organic baby food in one category.
First cups, now beakers (part1)
Oh dear, where to start? So yesterday I posted on the subject of trainer cups, describing the two most popular open cups that we sell. I promised we'd have a quick run through the alternative world of beakers. But there are soooo many it might take a couple of posts to even scratch the surface. OK, so we have some fundamental decisions to make: Do you want a valve or not? Put it another way - do you mind water/juice/milk being split over your designer sofa? If the answer is yes then there are several slightly different systems on the market. The all conquering anyway up cup is probably the best known and now there are several versions that have been designed by Conran & partners I believe. These available in the Kiddies Kitchen shop and I will upload them on the website very very shortly. In the meantime if you want one - give us a call in the shop or email us. There are other valve cups - avent magic cups, tomme tippee do one aswell. From personal experience our first son never really got on with valves as he didn't suck hard enough. this lead us first to the tommee tippee first cup which has been around for decades and still is a great seller. The next great discovery was the vital baby range. These do have a valve but you can take it out! Simple but it really worked for us. No 1 son still used one of their 6 months beakers now for a drink of milk in the morning (he's two and a half). A good note to end this post is the award winning vital three stage trainer cup (bottom of this page) which neatly straddles the two worlds of beaker and open cup and also has a foot in both the valve and non-valve camps. No wonder its our best selling beaker and has been heavily recommended in the press. Its too tricky to explain all its wonders so just take a look at it on the website.
cups,cups, cups and more cups
There are so many cups on the market its often difficult to know where to start when weaning your baby of a bottle. Indeed most of the parents I see in the shop are steadily working their way through virtually every bottle on the market. I suppose the main shoices to make are whther you want to go straight for a open cup or transition through a beaker. If you go for the former option then the two most popular cups are the doidy cup and the steady cup. The doidy cup looks like a cup drawn by salvidor dali - its all on a slant. The theory behind it being that the slant means that your baby only has to tip the cups slightly in order to drink from it and the larger surface area means that they can see the surface of the water more easily. Many health visitors are recommending doidy cups and it is one of best sellers. For more details and to buy a doidy cup go to the kiddies kitchen shop. The steady cup is a more traditional shape: its basically a normal cup but the base is wider than the top making it - you guessed it - more steady. For more details click through to our steady cup page. Tommorrow I'll post about beakers and the thorny issue of valves!
weaning - full steam ahead!
At the risk of sounding like the geordie guy off big brother its Day 3 and Nathan is 'aving pear (OK, so you have to imagine the accent) mixed with his baby rice. Well its going OK - but he's a bit sniffly today. This might have something to do with his sucking his brother's nose whenever he is hungry (don't ask - its difficult to explain). Anyway, because of the cold he's a bit off his milk and food today so its difficult to say whether he's into the solids thing or not. So, the point of this post was to say that that I had forgotten what a faff all that steaming and pureeing was. We've been enjoying road testing some of the frozen purees from Kiddies Kitchen. The Goodness Knows range has been particularly useful as the pot sizes are nice and small and they come in single flavour pots. At 99p each they are more expensive than pureeing your own but for convenience and speed they can't be beat. Other alternatives are the Truuuly Scrumptious purees which have won many awards over the years and are still a real best seller. These are more expensive but come in bigger portions and so can be really useful for slightly older babies. If you're goign on holiday in the UK this year why not treat yourself to a week off from steaming and pureeing and order some frozen organic baby food for your little one. We can deliver overnight throughout the UK - just tell us when you want it to arrive and we'll do the rest.....
And another thing...
Besides Mrs T's birthday we've reached another milestone this week: Weaning no 2 son. Little Nathan was born on the first of February and has always been big for his age (now 98st centile length and 75th centile weight). Just recently we've been watching out for the tell tale signs of readiness for weaning: getting hungry between feeds, waking early, deep interest in our food. Well, all signs have been present and correct for a few days now and so yesterday we broke open a new packet of organix baby rice and tentatively offered up a vital baby baby's first spoon. It was wolfed down, followed by another and another. So there we are - back in the wolrd of steaming, pureeing and freezing along with most of our customers, I suppose. Still at least we'll be able to try out a few more of our stock lines like the Truuuly Scrumptious frozen purees or the Goodness Knows range of single flavour purees. Visit the Kiddies Kitchen blog for regular updates.
Birthdays, cakes and candles
Mrs T's birthday today and galantry forbids me from saying how many candles were on the cake at elevenses! No such reluctance about singing the praises of the homemade chocolate cake that was under the candles though. Made from my mothers recipe, in one of our kid-sized cooking bowls by number one son looking the part in his mini-butchers stripe apron, wielding the whisk and wooden spoon as if they were medieval weapons. It actually turned out pretty good. Here is the dilema though - we try to eat organic when possible and give natural foods to the boys but mum's recipe uses some very non-organic margarine! By god it tastes good though. So what to do? Use butter instead or stick with the marg. Well, at the end of the day the taste is the thing - so we used the marg! My other great tip for fantastic cakes is to use the right sized cake tin. There is nothing worse than a biscuit thin crispy cake...I might even share the recipe one day on the Kiddies Kitchen website.
New products - kid sized organic burgers
The fantastic weather over the weekend put me in the BBQ frame of mind. And reminded me that our organic kid's burgers (which fly out of the shop on a hot day) weren't yet on the website. Well, now I've rectified the position. The burgers are exactly the same quality as your favourite organic quarterpounders, just made a wee bit smaller to fit in your hungry kid's mouth! 4 burgers weigh in at 250g. With thanks to Eversfield Organic farm in Devon for making them specially for us! Of course whilst you're at it you could wang some of our kids organic sausages on the old BBQ as well.
french bull on the website now
Finally, as promised, I've managed to upload some of the fantastic French Bull melamine tableware onto the kiddies kitchen website. I particularly like the ring range - sandwich platters, plates and matching tumblers. The set of three storage bowls are particularly funky. For something with a little more Aah factor you could go for one of our animal plate, bowl and spoon sets. Choose from the dog, cow or dinosaur set, all in shatterproof, dishwasher proof melamine. They are great value at only £9.99 a set.
phew - what a scorcher!
70 degress in the shade - number one sun fully sun creamed in green people organic kids sun cream (SPF 25), and running screaming through freezing cold water spraying from the garden sprinkler in nothing but a new pair of big boy pants (no more moltex nappies - we're potty trained!!! For tips see Gina Ford's potty training in a week, available in our books section). Number 2 son sitting in a bouncy chair mesmerised by the leaves of a silver birch rustling in a gentle Devon breeze. All this summer fun reminds me that we have some great ice-lolly making sets in the shop at only £2.99. One great tip from Mrs T is to try making lollies out of kid's drinking yoghurts as a change from fruit juice. Very refreshing.
New products - Sauces For Kids
New arrivals in our convenience food department are four superb ready made stir-in sauces made specially for children by Sauces of Choice in Somerset. The range consists of Bolognese (does not contain meat), Tomato and herb, mild and creamy Korma and mild and tomatoey Tikka. Each of the recipes is gluten and wheat free, and whilst the Korma and Tikka sauces do contain dairy the other two are dairy free. What is so great about these sauces is that they are literally packed with "hidden" vegetables and fruit. To give you an idea, the Tikka sauce is about 70% hidden vegetables. Whilst not certified organic the quality of these sauces impressed usd so much we had to stock them. They are guaranteed free from: - artificial preservatives
- articifical additives
- nasty E numbers
- hydrogenated vegetable oil
- genetically modified ingredients
- processed sugar
With very low salt levels (equivalent to aroung 0.4g of salt per 100g) these sauces are ideal for a quick but healthy after school tea. You could stir fry some slices of chicken breast add the sauce and serve with rice for an almost instant healthy tea. Sauces for Kids are priced at £2.39 for a 350g jar, available from Kiddies Kitchen.
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