Weaning with Exotic Fruit.

Our Tesco Orchard Exotic fruit vouchers came through the post at just the right time. Since we have been weaning Leo for a few months now I was starting to struggle to come up with different meal ideas that was fresh,quick,easy and exciting.
At Tesco we picked out some Mangos, a fruit we have eaten before but normally buy pre cut. Papaya which we have never eaten before and blush pears which have a red tint to them. I also grabbed a few extra bits like cod from the counter and frozen peas and chicken.

Mixing in fruit with Leo’s meals is something I have tried before and has been a hit so I decided to make Cod,Peas and Blush Pear. As Leo has not had Fish before I wanted to add something sweet to keep the meal exciting for him.
cooking the meal was very simple and took less them 15mins. The Cod came in a ready to cook bag which I chucked in the Air fryer, While that was cooking I put the peas in the microwave and peeled and cut the Blush Pear. All 3 items was then put into the NutriBaby and blended to the texture I wanted.

Before adding the Blush pear I tried some myself and was surprised it had the taste of a over ripe sweet pear but without the softness/mushy texture. It was a nice and firm texture.  The ingredients made enough food for 2/3 meals and Leo despite being ill and not eating much very quickly wolfed the whole meal down.

Moving on to the Mango and Papaya I decided to cut them into fingers and let Leo feed his self they was both soft enough for him to bite/suck bits off but firm enough for him to be able to handle.

My ideas of fingers didn’t quite work out as I had trouble cutting the mango but a quick Google showed me where I went wrong. The papaya I cut into 1/4’s, scoped out the seeds and removed the skin every much the same way you would a melon.
Both fruits was very sweet and juicy although the Papaya has a musky undertone. Once again Leo couldn’t get enough of the fruit and cried when he had finished them so it’s something we would be adding on to our weekly shop.
Papaya and mango are great first weaning fruits that can be easily mushed with a fork for a quick and simple dessert that’s different from the normal banana and apple. The next meal I’m hoping to cook for Leo is mango, chicken and vegetables (I have not decided which ones yet).

This post is written by my wife Keighley for Orchard at Tesco, a product testing group available here.

Product Review – Tesco Branded Ice Cream

A short time ago I joined something called Orchard at Tesco, soon after I received an email asking if I would like to participate in a campaign they were running involving Tesco Branded Ice Cream in exchange for a review.

The nice people at Orchard at Tesco sent through a pack for the campaign with a £3 coupon for myself to use and three 50p coupons to share out to family and friends, once that had been done we went on our usual family shop to our local Tesco Extra in Southend and carried out our shop as usual until we got to the ice cream department. We spent a bit of time trying to decide what flavours to try as they all sounded lovely and with an offer on as well that made it harder to choose. We soon however decided on one for us big kids of the house and one for the little kid of the house.

For us big kids we chose Tesco Chocolate Brownie ice cream and for the little kid we chose Tesco Neapolitan Ice Cream. The two came to just over the £3 coupon but we were confident it was going to be worth it.

First up was the Chocolate Brownie and the wife and I had a small bowl each once the kids were asleep in bed and throughly enjoyed it. I have to admit it tasted a lot nicer then I was expecting, there was a nice smooth ice cream part (close to cornish ice cream) intermingled with it was these soft chocolate brownie bits. I was expecting it to be sickly,  but was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t.  Keighley is not an ice cream fan, perhaps it’s with myself being a born and bred Southender that I love it so much, you know seaside towns and all that, however even she thought it was really nice and was just right.

The Neapolitan Ice cream we bought was with our eldest in mind. A couple of days after the previous ice cream. Keighley and I thought it was Ok but nowhere near as good as the Chocolate Brownie but certainly nice enough for us to buy again in the future with the price being £1.70 for a 2 litre tub it certainly is good value for money.

Our two year old however loved it and asked for more!  No pun on the story of Oliver Twist. He said it was yummy and was even using his hands to eat it so for that reason alone we will be buying it again.