Blue Casserole and Baby Mash

I never thought it would come to this, but I've become a fan of casseroles. Not so much because I'm in love with eating them, but because you can throw them in the oven and come back an hour later and dinner's ready! Well, pretty much anyway. I used to hate casseroles passionately, so this is quite an impressive turnaround. I made this for lunch a few days ago, following a recipe for a beef with red wine casserole, but had no beef or red wine or really any of the other ingredients except for flour and milk to make the dumplings. So I made it with lots of Maitake mushrooms, bacon, pumpkin, sweet potato and white wine instead. Endless variations, just make a stew with all the ingredients on the stove, then make the dumplings (2 cups of self raising flour, 50g butter, 3/4 cup milk and cheese/herbs to your liking), put them on top and into the oven for 20ish minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

And...in the background can you see the orange splodgy-mush? It's destined for baby M! I'm feeling quite proud of myself for sometimes being able to coordinate parallel menus - he's got mashed veggies from the casserole before the wine and other non-baby-friendly things went in. I'm also very proud because one of my recipes is now on a baby food website! I was trying to win a book voucher, and very narrowly missed out. Oh well. My almost winning recipe and another one too is here at Homemade Baby Food Recipes. Hooray! I was really stressed out about feeding M. until I found this site. It's so nice to know that I can put garlic and turmeric in M's baby mash if I want to!