How to Make Yogurt at Home

I love yogurt specially fresh home made one. This is a very basic but long process. I love making my home-made yogurt which I learnt from my parents. My dad buys  3 kilos of raw milk from local farmer every Friday. Split that up between my sister in laws so everyone can make their own yogurt.

I will try to explain step by step

1-      Buy 1 litre milk. We use full fat whole milk. You can choose any kind.

2-      1 full spoon of yogurt. I use of my favourite brand fage

3-      Put your milk in saucepan bring to the boil and then turn off the heat

4-      Let your milk cool down until room temperature

5-      Take cup of milk and mix up with one spoon of yogurt together.

6-      Mix this gently with your milk. Make sure the milk is at room temperature. I use wooden spoon to mix.

7-      After you mix it up gently and thoroughly, cover the pot with a lid. Then wrap with kitchen towel or hand towel.

8-      Leave in room temperature for at least 16 hours.

Ta-da! your yogurt is ready. If you want you can stop here and enjoy your yogurt or you can use cheesecloths or muslin to start draining your yogurt to get rid of excess water. You will have creamy tick delicious yogurt.

Homemade yogurt tastes different compared to readymade one. Some people put one tea spoon of sugar or salt when they are cooking their milk to make it tastier. Based on your preference and taste bud you can try one of them.

Next time you don’t need to but yogurt to make your yogurt. You can simply use couple of spoon from your own yogurt to make the next one.

If you have any question, please leave comment below.

Thank you and Happy Sunday!

How I weaned my baby

This is one of the most exciting times for parents. Your little baby is going to start testing different types of food. Their face expression and reaction can make you laugh and be so happy as well as can frustrate you.

If you have seen some of my previous posts Rosie had cow milk, soya and multiple food allergies. Therefore, we had to be extra careful what we were giving her when we started weaning her. First of all, she was exclusively breastfed for first 6 months.  Some parents start from 4 months we weren’t one of them.

Before you start your baby weaning you must look for the signs such as your baby can put objects in their mouth, can hold their head up and watch you carefully when you are having your food.

Secondly, based on my experience get a high chair find the best one for your baby. Your baby will get used to eating on the table which will be easier for you in the long run. We used 3 different high chairs and at the end kept the Joie which we got from John Lewis. She loves it, I love it. It has really good reviews and very comfortable. We also love Chicco which my niece has. It’s very similar to Joie what we have. Also, get a toy for your high chair which helps your baby feel comfortable.

Get some plastic BPA free plate and spoon to use. We’ve done both self-weaning and we feed her as well What I will list below can be used for any babies but its more relevant to allergic babies like Rosie.

·       Leave all the allergic food to end to try. Start with the non-allergic easy vegetable such as carrots, sweet potatoes and parsnip

·       I used to steam them to keep the goodness and mash them before I gave it to her

·       We gave each food individually for at least 3 days in row to understand if she would be reacting. If you mix food and your baby give allergic reaction you wouldn’t understand which one your baby is allergic to

·       We had our food diary as you can see in the picture below to see which one she loves

·       We didn’t try any of the highly allergic food until she was about 9 months old such as mango. I kept them away from my diet as well.

·       I put food in her plate and left her to experiment. She tried to eat by herself, made a mess everywhere. If you try self-feeding you must be very patient. It will take some time for your little one to get used to. If you obsess with cleaning, you can put a cover under the high chair. Rosie loves feeding herself which make my life easier now.

·       We introduced allergic food to her diet through breast milk first. If Rosie didn’t reacted, we introduce to her diet.

I hope you find this helpful. Every baby is unique and we all have different experiences. Trust your instinct as a mum and your baby. Try to enjoy this exciting time of your baby’s life time and them experiment and enjoy as well. 

If you would like to see some of the products I used for Rosie please follow the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/deryatopcusuter

If you have any question or feedback please leave a comment below.

Silver Cross Wayfarer Pushchair, and Car Seat Review

As soon as I found out I was pregnant the first thing I did was search for baby products. The very first product I started reading about was baby travel systems.

After months of researching and testing, at the end we decided that the Silver Cross Wayfair was the best buggy for us. After 14 months I can say it was the best decision we made. What is particularly special about the Silver Cross is it is stylish, easy to use and durability.

This buggy had four international travel with us within a year. I was almost out and about with my baby girl every day. When I did my shopping, everything end up in the buggy basket. I used in the city, country side even I took to the beach. I listed all the pros and cons below If you are trying to decide what to buy I hope it can help you to make your decision.

Pros

  • If you buy as a travel system you can use from birth to up to age of 3. You don’t have to worry about getting new buggy after 6 months. You just need to swap them
  • Easy to carry and manoeuvre
  • Doesn’t require assembly
  • Easy one system fold
  • Large storage basket. I used it almost every day for my shopping
  • Extendable handle. It was very handy for my husband who is much taller than me
  • It has great durability. We heavily used this buggy and it still in good condition.
  • Apron and hood comes with sunshade with a UPF50+
  • You can add all your essential as a bundle and make a pack such as carry bag and car seat
  • Public transport friendly. If you are living in the middle of the city and using public transport. It’s a perfect option for you.
  • You can convert to a travel system by getting a car seat which is sold separately
  • The reversible seat unit has 3-positions.

Cons

  • Its price! There are cheaper alternatives available.
  • It’s not very lightweight for international travel

Car seat is easy to fit and use. The biggest advantage is If your baby has fallen to sleep in the car seat you can just take out the car seat with baby and attach to base of your buggy without disturbing your baby.

What comes in the package.

Footmuff, rain cover, shopping basket, infant carrier adaptors, coffee cup holder, simplicity car seat adapter.

I hope this review will help you to make your final decision. Any question please put on the comment section. Thank you x

How it’s all started.. big change..

Recently it was my birthday the whole year has gone great. I had my baby girl, I graduated from master degree. But, when I look back one thing was missing, something I always wanted to do. It was about writing a blog! This is how I started writing this article. However, honestly when I look back it wasn’t all great. 

It was about 3 years ago I was working in retail. I was transferred from Kingston to Kings street London store as a section manager. Less than couple of months in my new job I was thinking the same thing “this is not the job I wanted do”. The reason I took the job in the first place was to have a management experience. It was more than 3 years and I was still doing the same job.

After few months I lost my uncle from cancer, the same time my mum diagnosed with dementia and one of my close friend diagnosed with cancer and started to have a chemotherapy. All these unexpected sudden tragedies gave me a big wakeup call. It was one of the lowest moment I had in my life. I felt upset, angry and confuse at the same time. All of these back to back bad news made me realised one more time the life has full of unexpected events. We can’t plan everything. But I felt like if I didn’t act that moment I might never had a chance to do what I wanted to do. As you can imagine I decided to change my life for good. 

I started to ask myself “If money wasn’t the object which job I would do?”. This question was circling in my head day and night. First thought was I wouldn’t be doing what I was doing which made me feel even more down. I felt like I was wasting valuable time in this beautiful planet earth.

Then, I started making a list what would like to do to enjoy with my life. First thought came to me was having a baby, secondly doing my master’s degree at King’s College London. They were the thing I always wanted to do so they were good enough reason for me to leave my job.

Of course, I heard all different types of comments from people around me “you worked so hard to achieve this position are you just going to let it go? Kings College London are you sure you would get the place? Master would be hard how can you be committed?” This list goes on and on. Having said that, I had some encouraging, lovely comment like “do it”, “life is too short don’t delay it”.

I remember when I was much younger girl with the full of energy, ambitious and wants to do well. Okay I’ve done well in my life in general. Expect being happily married nothing was going to the direction the way I wanted. I realised I was getting in stuck in being feeling comfortable trap.

Anyway, I put my application forward to Kings College London with one of my friend Pooja’s help. It was nerve breaking few weeks. When I got my place, I couldn’t believe it. I woke up twice that night to check my offer letter to make sure it wasn’t a dream. Well it wasn’t all perfect again. I had an unsuccessful IVF treatment. I was heartbroken plus all that hormone I took was driving me crazy. It was another lowest points in my life. I was thinking what if it doesn’t go as I plan! I was scared to leave my job. It took me about two months to put myself together. My husband said just do it, don’t think about it so I resigned then the good news came I was pregnant. That day only one think was circling in my head “dream it, believe it, achieve it”. We can make it happen anything if we put our energy, mind and effort in the right place which I will talk about in another post. This is what I learn from this experience. From that point it was a new era in my life. Having said that as usual not everything went as I plan again. I had so many obstacles and problems which I will talk about in another post. Thank you for taking your time to read my first post. Its bit long but I wanted to give you a background of my story. That how it’s all started and it took me 3 months to put my first post.