Mum's The Word! The Parenting Podcast - The Best Food & Kitchen Life Hacks - with Food Safety Mum's Jenna Brown

Episode Date: June 9, 2024

On This Week's Mum's The Word:Kelsey Parker is joined by Jenna Brown, better known as Food Safety Mum, on this week's podcast breaking all the myths surrounding the kitchen, cooking and being a busy working mum.They'll Discuss:How to make meal times less stressful?Jenna's game changing tips to make cooking for a family a quick and easy processThe importance of home cooked food for your childrenGet In Contact With Us:Do you have a question for us? Get in touch on our WhatsApp, that's 07599927537 or email us at [e-mail] for Listening---A Create Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to Mum's The Word, the parenting podcast. I'm Kelsey Parker and I'm your host this week. So I feel like my story this week falls in nicely. In my house it's all about packed lunch. Neither of the kids want school dinners, they all want packed lunch. So my morning routine is absolutely a juggle. It is hard work in the mornings, but I'm sure I'll talk more on that later with our amazing guests. So today's guest on Mums the Word is Jenna Brown, better known as Food Safety Mum on Instagram. She's a fully qualified environmental health practitioner specialising in food safety. She says her mission since becoming a mum of two girls is to give parents confidence

when cooking at home and when out and about. Welcome to the podcast, Jenna. How's your 2024 been so far? Good. Busy, really busy. Lots of work going on. Renovating as well. So yeah, really busy. Oh, what are you doing? What are you renovating? I love a bit of renovation. Well, we just finished our kitchen and we did it completely ourselves. So we was without a kitchen for nine weeks, which was always exciting with two young children to feed as well. So how old are your children? I've got a two-year-old or soon to be three and a six-year-old. Oh wow and what are they called? Let's talk about your

children. Mia and Chloe yeah so two little girls. So what's your motherhood journey been like? My motherhood journey it's it's been okay I, you know, life with kids, life with toddlers is hard. It's stressful. But, you know, it's been pretty good so far. I can't complain. What do you feel like the hardest part of the journey has been? Would you take a baby all day long? Would you take a six-year-old all day long? Or would you take... I'm actually loving the stage that I'm at with my three-year-old, you know loved the baby stage they're very full-on at that age aren't they you know you can't sort of step away you can't leave them my three-year-old two three-year-old is starting to come into her own be our own little person she's full of character and of course as they get older they

just get they just become more more themselves, which I'm absolutely loving. Not so much when they start to talk back, but, you know, new challenges. My four year old, I'm like, I actually have no chance because the answering back, actually, the three year old's probably even worse. He has an answer for everything. And you're like, really? And he's so clever, so smart. How am I being outsmarted by a three-year-old but I am so I think wow what's what's in store for me do you feel the same I find that on a regular basis yes with my with my with my youngest I think it's the second child my my first one was was really laid back Mia was so chilled but yeah Chloe is my husband always says she's just a mini me basically so a

lot more a lot more fiery so what made you create a social media account promoting food safety where did it all start tell me how how it began the journey of food safety I'm actually a fully qualified environmental health officer so I am a foodie through and through you know I've been in food pretty much pretty much all my life. So do you go around giving people stars? Yes I do yes yeah so that is that is kind of you know my I'll say my day job. Wait wait let's just go back to that I've got so many I've got so many questions about this so does that put you off going to some restaurants and do you tell your mates you're like oh don't go to that restaurant they've only got two stars? One of the things I always do someone

says oh let's go out for dinner I'm like okay where are we going to go you know has someone checked the rating you know that's probably my probably one of the first things that comes out my mouth when I'm looking at a new restaurant I mean even that it's still a snapshot but you know it kind of it kind of gives you a good idea on, you know, what's going on behind the scenes. I love that. Okay, so that's where you started. Yes. Yeah, so that's what I do. So that's, I'm an environment health officer. And obviously, since having two children of my own, I've kind of realized, well, I realized a few years ago, when I started the page, just how little information there is out there when parents

start cooking for their babies and toddlers, you you know and we do need to be careful with preparing food for babies and young children they don't have the same immune system as us or even older children so we do need to be that little bit more careful and obviously as parents once you start cooking everything you've always done yourself you start to question when you have a baby you know even when it comes to food preparation like you know what you're going to serve how long can i keep this for can i freeze this obviously you're doing you know you're talking about the weaning process you're then moving into toddler foods you're talking about exposing them to different foods that perhaps you don't usually eat all that good kind of stuff and yeah that's kind of where i zoned in so i look at i love to help

parents sort of actually spend less time in the kitchen believe it or not um and just get more confident in the kitchen itself you know with storing food freezing food defrosting reheating and ultimately helping them save money by you know knowing all of that helping to reduce food waste so love that so my daughter Aurelia has just started school I say I can't believe that she's going to be going into year one in September. I mean, where has the year gone? But she started off and she wanted the school dinners. I was like, oh, this is incredible.

I absolutely love it. She's having school dinners. And then she was like, oh, this person in my class has packed lunch. Can I have packed lunch? So I'm like, oh. So now she's my class has packed lunch can I have packed lunch so I'm like uh so now she's moved back to packed lunch and I've actually just bought the little firmer like so she has the lunchbox you know like the little firmer flask that you can put your hot food in so this has been my first week of doing that because I was like I want her to have like

you know sometimes with packed lunch it's so hard to actually give them all the health that they need and I know that when I was a kid I hated like sandwiches and stuff like that I'm such not a sandwich person I would prefer to eat the hot food so um she's gone in today with meatballs yesterday she had noodles I'm so proud of myself I'm so proud of myself that I'm doing this but obviously it's another job in the morning which you say you know less time in the kitchen now she's actually put giving me another job and I'm like you know that we actually get free school dinners it's actually free to get them I know the feeling my daughter also has um has packed lunch she wasn't keen on the school dinners she had it for about two days so what do you put in the packed lunch box what's your essentials what do you think they

should be having in their packed lunch so I kind of do obviously a mix we love the kind of bento style boxes you know where they've got the different compartments that's what I've got that's what I've got yeah so I always start off with you know um I say like the main which for us is usually something like a sandwich or pinwheels or even if we've got something like leftover pancakes we sent her off with yesterday we cooked uh cooked some sheep pancakes at the weekend and um didn't have time to make her sandwich so just pop that in the lunchbox and then just yeah just some fruit and a little bit of treat so yeah I think you've got to put a little treat in there and actually my auntie did a tray bake yesterday so they've got a really nice like blueberry cake in their packed lunchbox I just I know that the

school's covering obviously everything they should be having. So I'm like, I need to now live up to that, that we're now having packed lunch. So it's just pressure for parents, isn't it? I was going to say, I mean, I think it's just not about putting too much pressure on yourselves. I mean, it's just about knowing what your child eats. You know, I sort of pack her lunch and I'll put the little treat in and I know that that kind of, you know, she looks every morning before she sort of puts her lunch and I'll put the little treat in and I know that that kind of you know she looks every morning before she sort of puts her lunch box in her bag she looks every morning at what she's got you know and that little treat is what sort of you know that's what she looks for um and I love that as she opens her lunch you know when she gets the lunchtime that's what she's it's kind of a

little a little slice of home type thing isn't it so it was my birthday last week and she had some birthday birthday last week and it's thank you and it's it's just nice to have that sort of that comfort feeling you know when she's at school and what's been quite nice in my house is everyone's been involved in the pack lunch so they both sit there and they watch me what I'm putting in oh mum and we're talking about the food can I help so it's actually been nice apart from it being another job for me it's been nice to bring us together and that's what I love about food because food can just bring a family together 100% so we've kind of started a new thing you know my daughter's we're trying to teach my daughter how to cook she's now six you know she loves to make pancakes every sort of Sunday morning so I'm standing there making pancakes.

And then my youngest wants to get involved as well. And obviously the two of them cooking together is not always the best combination. But we've started making hers. She's been making orange juice the last couple of weeks, which has worked amazing. So we've got a little citrus set. And then she stands there holding half an orange on the citrus juicer while my other one's sort of cooking the pancake. So it's been quite nice, nice balance. I love that feeling. What tips would you have making meal times as stress-free as possible? What's your top tip? My top tip would be to 100% try and build a

freezer stash. Now, I'm a busy working mum myself you know husband's out to work often dinner time is so so rushed for us in the week when we can we try and eat together at in the weekends but you know in the week it's just it's just not possible and plus they like to eat with the two three-year-old she likes to eat about five o'clock which sometimes I'm not even home from work. Oh mine are starving when they walk through the door. They literally eat as soon as their foot sets through that door. They're like, oh, is my dinner ready? I'm starving.

I'm starving. Exactly. You can never gauge how quickly they want that dinner or how hangry they're going to be. That's one of my main tips and things that I talk about is just building that freezer stash. So I've got kind of two types of freezer stash that I'll look at is one is like the ready-made meals so for example I'll make my own sort of hidden veg tomato pasta sauce and you can either freeze it as like little cubes so that you can just reheat the sauce I do that in the microwave it takes a couple of minutes

and then you can either cook the fresh pasta fresh or sometimes I do also actually if I'm making a batch I'll cook up some pasta and actually freeze it as one so that I know that within a couple of minutes they can be eating something you know I don't even need to cook the pasta on them kind of nights which is brilliant and then there's the other side of it where I'll do I'll sort of build a freezer stash of things that I'll say like raw food so for example like chicken nuggets or some homemade chips or something that can just be bunged in the air fryer straight from frozen and cooked within sort of 20 minutes or so. So something like that how long do you leave in the freezer for? Ideally you want to be using food within say three to six months and

that's purely because of freezer burn so that's know, when you open something up and it's got full of ice crystals, or you look at a bit of chicken, for example, and it's gone a bit discolored, that's all sort of freezer burn. So the longer the food is in the freezer, the more the quality will deteriorate. But food doesn't become unsafe in the freezer. So you can leave it in there, you know, as long as you like, really. But it comes down to the quality. So, yeah, I'd try and use scoops in sort of three to six months if you can. But I certainly wouldn't be throwing it out if it was longer. Like, did you have any weaning hacks? Anything that you would say for when you're weaning children, little children?

Yeah, so I've done it. Well, I've done a lot. I've got a lot of resources on sort of weaning um you know homemade baby food meal prep all that kind of stuff all that good kind of you know how to meal prep for your baby how to make things easier and again it all comes down to you know knowing exactly what what you can freeze freezing in small portions and just again especially when you are freezing in you you know, if you've got purees or sauces, just knowing that you can cook them straight from frozen, for example, you know,

that was, that's a game changer for us. I mentioned about the tomato pasta sauce, for example, but yeah, it's literally within minutes. So you literally get that out, put that in the saucepan, heat it up. Yep, or microwave and it's fine. I do the same with pancakes, for example. So, it up yep on microwave and it's fine I do the same with pancakes for example so you know if we're making pancakes sometimes at a weekend I might double up and then I'll put a few of them in the freezer and then the next week or whenever whenever I'm short on time I can just get one straight out the straight out the freezer I don't even need to have thought about it beforehand and reheat it in the microwave or in the toaster and it's literally ready within 60 60 seconds sort of thing so because do you know what's quite crazy and and my friends me

and my friends discovered this but obviously some of the stuff that they say oh give this like you know the petty flu yogurts yeah that actually when you read them they actually say do not give them to children under the age of four because actually the sugar content is so high in them i was gonna say it must must be the sugar so yeah but again you can you can make your own so you can you know just greek yogurt with some pureed fruit um you can even freeze them we used to freeze them all the time um you know into the life the greek yogurt in my house doesn't even touch the sides that is like a snack they're like can we have greek yogurt can we get greek yogurt and honey?

Like they, mine, love it. Yes, the same. Which makes me happy because it's so good for them. It is. And it's perfect as a little, my two love dipping pancakes in it too as well. You know, the world gives us so much now. You have got all these like little pouches and stuff like that. But again, I just think there's something with home cooked

food and I know again it's like mums were all so busy and you know it makes life easy when you're out to grab a pouch of course and there's nothing wrong with having that convenience but I think it's it's just about balancing it and not and obviously you know yes we are busy as mums but equally you know when you're looking at food waste or you're looking at, you know, the cost of picking up one of them pouches versus the cost of you making it yourself and how many portions you'd get for the price you paid for that one, for example, and essentially you know exactly

what's gone into it. So, you know, if I'm making an apple puree at at home it's purely just apples blended up and then I'll freeze that you know ready for porridge that kind of thing whereas when you pick one off the shelf most of the time it probably won't just contain apples so do you have an insatiable fascination with the paranormal? Brace yourself for the supernatural world is about to reveal all of its secrets on the Paranormal Activity podcast. And who better to guide you through this hair-raising journey than myself, Yvette Fielding, renowned paranormal investigator. Every episode of Paranormal Activity takes you on an unforgettable adventure into the unknown. But that's not all.

The true heart of this podcast lies in the stories, evidence and questions shared by our devoted listeners. Will you dare to join me? Listen to Paranormal Activity with me, Yvette Fielding, wherever you get your podcasts from. When you look at the back of everything now, it actually scares me. And I'm not going to scare all the listeners on here. But it is just scary when you read the back of things. And then like that, like apple puree is so easy to do. Like if you were going to do a little blueberry puree, it is also simple. But I think because we have these things out there that you can just go and grab that you just think oh I'm just going to do that but it is so simple for you to do at home but I feel like I don't know if we lost the you know back in our grandparents day everything was

like cooked from like everything was cooked from scratch wasn't it yeah it was and obviously we have as a generation I guess kind of relied relied on more on the convenience side of it. But I think it's just taking a step back and actually realizing, especially with the rise in, you know, the rise in the cost of food, that there are so many different options out there. And it doesn't need to be to make it yourself doesn't mean you need to be laboring for hours in the kitchen, you know, making making every single meal from scratch. You know, it's it's more about using little pockets of time. You know, if you've got a batch of strawberries, for example, that are starting to turn and you think, oh, I need to use them up. Instead of just thinking, oh, I'll pop them back in the fridge for another day. And then actually, by the time you find them again, it's too late.

It's just a case of blitzing them up there and then popping them in an ice cube tray, something like that, and straight in the freezer. And I think it's just about making it a lot quicker, about using them, like I said, them pockets of time. It's just thinking, it's having that thought, I'm terrible at throwing things away. I'd be like, yeah, bit it. But now I'm now speaking to him like, right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to puree it down and I'm going to freeze it. Because it is, it's just food waste, isn't it? It is. And food waste food waste well food waste is a

massive topic i mean the figures that come out i think it was november showed that you know the average family of four with children can save up to 80 pounds a month just by reducing their food waste which is you know and listen we're talking about edible food we're not talking about you know stuff that is not edible we're talking about edible food waste and that's a lot of money for a lot of families you know you're talking over a thousand pound a year so just by reducing your food waste. Jenna I'm gonna admit to you what I've been doing those mines aren't even that bad so um I found that where it was just me and the kids and we eat at separate times that and every obviously I'm a busy working mum and it is just me I actually have someone to prepare my food now

so I'm on like a bit of a diet plan but their names are Pav and Antonio they're absolutely amazing and they live locally to me so I pick the food up like every two days but they make me dinners and now I've started to have the kids dinners made by them because I felt as well that I wasn't really mixing it up for the kids. But like, if I say to the kids, oh, I've got one of Antonia and Pav's meals, they're like, oh, they're excited. And they'll eat the carrot, the broccoli, everything that they put. And I'm like, so if I did this for you, you wouldn't do it. But it's made my life so much easier so I get five meals a week and I'm like admitting this to everyone I'm like I am that mum but I think sometimes you have to do stuff that makes your life easier and I know

that we're all eating healthy beautiful cooked food that's not cooked by me exactly and it doesn't matter who's who's cooking it at the end of the day it's like you say it's whatever works for each for each family that's fantastic and it is the novelty for children as well because you know it's like when your child goes to nursery or or to school and it's they'll try things that they wouldn't have actually tried at home because they get complacent you know and I'm always trying to shake it up, offer different foods because you do end up getting stuck in a rut. You know, you go through the phases

of the same cycle of foods every week. I think it's that like when you go to the supermarket, you know what aisle you're going in and you know what you're going to pick up. So you just sort of stick to the same food. You're like, right, skip that aisle. They don't like anything from there. Yes, exactly.

And it makes it easier at times, doesn't it? I mean, when you get home and it's late and they're already hangry you kind of want to feed them something that you know they're going to eat what do you think are the common safety precautions we often forget about in the kitchen what do we all need in the kitchens to keep it safe in terms of obviously this comes back to one of my top tips when I talk about sort of you know cooking things quickly from frozen and things i think a probe would definitely help you know i think that would give you a lot more confidence in the kitchen because you know as long as it's thoroughly cooked you know i cook chicken nuggets straight from frozen you know ones that i could make myself cook the straight from frozen have no worries because i know that they're

above 75 degrees yeah I panic when I cook chicken I really panic and I'm like am I going to poison the kids am I poisoning the kids I'm actually quite a good cook as well but I just get nervous because I'm feeding humans exactly and that is such a common thing because like I said it comes back to the fact that they their immune systems aren't as developed as us so So, you know, and the chances that we might take as adults are different when it comes to when we're serving our children. And we do become a little bit more anxious about the food that we're serving them. For me, Aurelia, she was like the choking hazard child.

She choked on everything, but I've actually discovered, not that anyone's even looked down her throat but i think she's got a really small esophagus oh okay that's really would it be your esophagus or your the back of the throat i'm like really guys listeners don't listen to me but she's always choked like she can choke on her own like spit she is a bit of a choker and bodie has never ever i never have had a choking episode with him honestly with her there's probably been about 10 times in her life that I thought oh my god she's gonna choke oh my god is this it is she gonna choke she always gets it up I think that she needs to chew her food

a lot to get it down have you ever heard of a child like that no I haven't personally um but it does make you more anxious doesn't it just? Just, you know, when you're feeding them. And again, you know, the types of foods that you're offering them, you become a bit more complacent because you're a bit more anxious about what the foods that you are offering. What would be your top three favorite tips or recipes for our Mums the Word listeners? What would you say would be your top three tips? I've mentioned my tomato pasta. The reason that I love that is because you can either freeze it as little cubes. Again, you reheat them straight from frozen. You can serve it with fresh pasta. I've got loads of them in the freezer as we speak. But also I do also cook it with pasta and freeze it as a bulk. And again, I cook that straight from frozen. So that's my top one. So what would you do there? Okay, right. so talk me through that so you you cook it all and then you just freeze the whole

lot but do you mix the pasta the pasta sauce in or you do it all separate so I'd make it into portions so the easiest thing to do is if you want to freeze it a sauce you can freeze silicon food cube tray that's one of my top things if you're weaning. And to be honest, I'm no longer weaning. I'm a long way past that. But I still use my food cube tray, probably on a weekly basis, to be honest. I just love it. It just becomes small portions of usable food. And yes, they end up like little cubes, which is fantastic. And then if I want to freeze it, I'll take them, obviously pop them out once they're frozen solid put them in a freezer bag if you want to freeze it with the actual pasta you'd only want to freeze it in sort of the usable portion so for my two I know it's it's something

that they both eat they absolutely love it so I will freeze it as a portion that I would cook for them so for the two of them and obviously you don't want it taking up massive amount of space in your freezer so you want to be freezing that flat as well hey I feel like I want to come around to look what your freezer looks like I did post something on my social media actually about you know how to save space in your freezer because when we was doing all the tips all the tips when we was doing our kitchen we've got like an american style fridge freezer and on one of the you know the small shelf we had a total of 17 meals ready to go and that was purely because they were all frozen flat and we're talking sort of family meals good family portions of spaghetti bolognese yeah and it literally it you you put them like like books i guess, and then you just stack them up.

So I freeze flat things like you can freeze sauces, anything, like I said, spaghetti bolognese, chilies, curries. And again, I did it with the pasta as well. So I just put it in a freezer bag, which is big enough for the, you know, as a portion size. Put it on a baking tray, freeze it for a couple of hours, and then it's just frozen flat so in the morning do you get the frozen food out so for the dinner that night or do you so you cook from frozen a lot of the time because that is one of my tips as well is is just about knowing what shortcuts you can take so know what foods you can cook from frozen and what foods you want to defrost but I will admit I'm obviously I'm busy

I'm working and a lot of the time I will sort of maybe leave it a little bit too late so there's certain things you can do I'll either cook from frozen so something like the pasta or things I can cook from frozen um either in the microwave or on the hob start them off on a low heat and then reheat a chili could you do a chili from frozen when we was renovating the kitchen we i had like a bolognese it was it was frozen flat which means it defrosts much quicker anyway which is another benefit of freezing it flat yeah kind of broke it up i let it defrost in cold water for about half an hour which is amazing as well um i do that all the time defrosting in cold water change water every half an hour and it's defrosted

within about an hour so you can defrost yeah my mother-in-law taught me that one yeah the defrosting in cold water just means you don't need to plan the night before because we don't always think the night before what we're going to eat or things change at the last minute and but yeah if you've got something like a you know I said like a flat block of spaghetti bolognese I broke it up and let it defrost in cold water broke it up in the pan put the pan on a low heat and then let it defrost because obviously what you don't want to do is cook it too fast because you'll end up with clumps of still frozen food so you let it defrost in the pan and then just reheat it until it's piping hot I love that I

love these tips I'm just here for it so give me another one give me another one Jenna so other things that I make are so my other favorites obviously mac and cheese is another one that's really similar to the smart pasta but homemade chips that's that's one of my favorites because I make a batch of potato chips I guess so boil them up about five minutes in the pan cut them up as chips boil them in the pan let them sort of cool down for maybe half an hour and then coat them in oil pop them on a baking tray again that's lined with baking paper pop them straight in the freezer and then once they're frozen solid maybe about two three hours again pop them in a sandwich bag I've got a massive bag of chips at home and And it just means that no matter what I'm serving, no matter what I'm cooking, it means that I've always got that

convenience food that's the same as me cooking it from fresh. You know, I know exactly what's gone into that. I'm getting on it. I'm going to literally make them chips because that is great. Instead of going out and buying, and also you just, if you're not doing roast potatoes, you just waste potatoes, don't you? Well, exactly. Actually, now you say that, potatoes are actually the most wasted food in the UK. Are they? Yes, they are.

The amount of potatoes that we waste is ridiculous. I think it's 2.9 million potatoes that we waste every day in our homes. Right. This is a message to all the Mums the Word listeners. All right. Don't waste your potatoes. Bin your McCain's chips that you've got frozen and make your own frozen chips. I'm going to do it. You need to do it. Jenna's already doing it. Jenna, what is your Instagram handle for people to find you? Food Safety Mum you go go over follow and the tips are there i have absolutely loved this thank you so much jenna thank you do you have a question you want me

and my guests to answer get in touch by emailing askmums the word pod at gmail.com or leave us a voicemail on WhatsApp. Our number is 07599927537 or leave it as a review on Apple Podcasts. Make sure you hit the subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, then please leave us a review and a five-star rating it helps others find us and talking of spreading the news please tell another person about the podcast and

help us reach more people so i've been kelsey parker you can find me on being underscore kelsey on instagram where i'm just being me we'll be back with another episode same time same place next week. Thanks for listening.