Home made teething rusks

One thing I found impossible to find in the shops was a good, organic teething rusk with no salt and no unnecessary ingredients. My daughter had only started on a handful of simple foods; I did not want to start adding rubbish so early. What to do? Make my own of course!

The easiest way to make rusks is to buy some really high quality organic sourdough, cut it into sticks and bake in a slow oven. I didn't love this idea, as most breads still contain salt.

After searching for a recipe, I ended up just making something up. This recipe requires two ingredients! Simple and cheap :)

 The Natural Mum's super easy rusk recipe

-1 cup of cooked vegetable or fruit puree. I always used sweet potato.
-Approx. 2 cups of spelt flour

1. Preheat oven to 140c
2. Place the puree into a mixing bowl and gradually mix in the flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until you get a stiff dough you can knead.
3. Turn onto a floured board and knead lovingly until smooth
4. Roll dough out until 1cm high
5. Cut with a large, sharp knife into fingers.
6. Arrange fingers on a baking tray, and bake in the oven until they are quite hard on the outside. They still need to have some give inside though, so your baby can chew them.

How easy is that! I used to make big batches, and keep them in the fridge. They last for ages, and taste heaps better than the commercial rubbish

I'd love to hear your flavour combinations.

Approaching teething naturally

My gorgeous angel did not pop a single tooth out until she was nearly 12mths old. She then proceeded to pop out 6 in a relatively fuss free 2 months. Cue a deep sigh of relief from hubby and I, as we assumed we had a 'good' teether. Damn fools we were.

Little miss then started to cut her last two incisors, and all hell was let loose in our house. Screaming tantrums over everything, poor sleep, constant grumpiness and two overwhelmed parents who were not prepared for this. One day I was holding her while she writhed around in pain, and I realised if I was in this much pain I'd take some nurofen! I dug out the bottle, dosed her up and 20 minutes later we had peace again! Blessed relief. Three days later I realised I was constantly reaching for the nurofen and decided enough was enough. It was time to seek out effective natural remedies.

Still around, and still blogging

I know I have been really quiet lately, but I can assure you that I am still blogging away. A combination of things, mostly revolving around the typical busyness of life and a shoddy laptop, have prevented me from publishing posts recently. I have a ton of draft posts though, that need basic polishing and will be ready to go.

To help you follow my blog, I have installed the 'follow by email' option. I have been reading lots of awesome Mummy blogs of late, and find myself frequently using this option to stay involved with their blogs. I thought I'd do the same for you.

Looking forward to seeing all your lovely comments again soon. Now, off to choose one of these draft posts to polish...