Welcome to My Daddy Cooks! My name is Nick Coffer and I am the 38 year old dad of a wilful, funny blur of perpetual three year old motion who goes by the name of Archie.
I set up this blog in Novemver 2009. I had lost my business earlier that year and found myself at home as a stay-at-home dad. Although it was in many ways the worst year of my life, it was also possibly the best as I was lucky enough to spend my time with my growing toddler. The blog was initially just a creative side-project to give me something to focus on but, 18 months later, it has now become my full time activity and spawned a whole new career.
The My Daddy Cooks book has just been published by Hodder & Stoughton, featuring 100 fresh new recipes for the whole family (including nearly 90 brand new ones) and I also present a weekly food show, Nick Coffer’s Weekend Kitchen, on BBC Three Counties Radio (available online if you are not in the area).
I set the blog up to simply document what and how we cook in our house. We try to eat fresh, healthy and interesting meals, using all manner of herbs, spices and ingredients, all cooked on a very modest budget.
We always wanted to help Archie have a good relationship with food and when he turned six months and we began to wean him onto solids, we followed an approach called “baby led weaning” whereby he ate at the table with us and ate what we were eating, when we were eating it. For sure, in the early days we had to ensure that his food was soft enough to chew but the principle remained the same. By no means at all does Archie eat everything but he does engage with food and is curious about what he cooks and eats.
In reality, Archie has been “in” the kitchen since pretty well six months old, when he was hanging off my hip while I cooked. Once he was old enough to stand, we put him in a FunPod and he was more than happy to help. This help takes a number of forms. Some days he is really interested in the preparation, other days he wants to cook – and on many days he just wants to do his creative play in the sink and on the work surface. The key is that it is not about the “cooking”, it is about spending quality time together. Yes it can get very messy indeed but, for me, that is all part of the fun too!
Although the videos may appear relaxed, in reality I am extremely vigilant at all times and constantly talk to Archie to ensure that he is concentrating on what is going on. I never leave him near hot pans unattended and never leave sharp knives in a dangerous place. I just try to apply common sense in the kitchen and I know Archie responds well to my relaxed demeanour.
The time I spend together with Archie in the kitchen is true quality time. We talk, we laugh, we make a mess, we create, we argue, we break things, we sulk. But more than anything we just have fun
Before setting up this blog, I had no experience of film making, nor had I ever been on television. You will also notice that our kitchen is barely big enough to swing even a toy cat in. It is not professionally equipped and I am no trained chef. But we do eat fabulously tasty meals in spite of our financial limitations and lack of space and I hope you will enjoy watching, reading – and of course making and eating – some of the dishes we eat.
Thank you for coming by and I hope to see you back here often…
Nick!
This is a truely brilliant idea. I'm particularly taken with the muffin recipe. Must try. Archie is an excellent sous-chef. And so keen on tidying up! A rare quality in a chef.
Best of luck with the site, it's inspired.
Much love,
Kate xxx
(Puppini!)
I heard your interview on BBC 3 Counties and had have a look at your website. I've got a very close to 1 year old and we give her everything too, she's just not that keen on everything we give her. I eat lunch and breakfast with her but dinner is just too early for us, but I agree meal times together are the best thing and we'll aim for that in the near future. Good for you being able to manage that so early on and lucky wife for having you and Archie to do the cooking.
I'm interested to know what Archie ate for breakfast if he was never spoon fed, and what about risottos, yoghurts and other soft foods that you can only really eat with a spoon?
Hello Lisa,
sorry for taking a few days to reply. It's funny because Archie as a one year old just seems like a lifetime away!! Remembering back, we used to give him porridge cakes in the morning. They are very easy to make. You just make the porridge as normal, then make a little "pancake" (thickish) on a plate and put it into the microwave for, I think, around 15 seconds. If you leave it to cool (overnight is best), it turns into a very edible cake. We also used to give him mini shreddies as he was able to handle these and eat them. He started to try to use a spoon for himself at around 9 months old, so from that point on we were happy to give him things like risottos. Also, I think we had a high mess threshold, so we didn't mind him using his hands. We gave him a fairly long spoon with a good scoop on it (I think from Mothercare) and he used to get by just by "scooping" with it, even before he fully mastered it. It's a bit difficult to explain! We probably only started to give him yoghurts at around 11 or 12 months, once he was able to use his spoon himself. We weren't too fussed about yoghurts anyway as he was dairy allergic… We did give him thick soups and the such like and we gave them with some think bread. He soon learnt to scoop up. Again, our mess threshold needed to be high! I guess the one thing which remained constant in what we tried to do was that we adopted a baby led approach, which meant that we let him lead, rather than us feeding. There is a lot of scope for different interpretations of "baby led" (that is why baby led weaning is so interesting, there are no hard and fast rules) but fundamentally the key element is to give the baby the control over what he eats and how he eats it – even if sometimes it can be a little chaotic in the early days!! hope that helps…