The International Gourmand Award winning Cookbook – Munch seasonal cookbook for baby and family began when Anna had her first child. Initially I decided to produce a baby-food cookbook featuring foods that were seasonal, healthy, fresh, and inherently cheap. Buying foods in season is much cheaper than buying imported goods out of season, and it often helps reduce our carbon footprint.

As time went by, I had more children and realised that time was a problem when preparing food for both a baby and the rest of the family. I thought it was too easy to just reach for a baby tin (which can be useful sometimes, of course), and I wanted to make it easy for mums to undertake home cooking for babies and families.

Time is so valuable to parents, so I decided to extend the cookbook to include recipes that could be used for both babies and families in other words, just one recipe for the whole family. Why waste time cooking two separate meals when time is so precious? However, I have also included a couple of simple baby purees in each seasonal section.

I also wanted to make a cookbook that was fun and vibrant. To this end, I decided to name all our recipes with the names of familiar childrens books, songs, and characters, as well as include a bit of trivia to enable the whole family to chat about those topics. The recipe names and trivia give families a chance to sing a particular song or talk about a character or book over dinner and learn about them.