I’m not particularly a sucker for it, but he used to be unable to resist the smell of it in the street or in the parks. That is, until we started eating healthily some years back and banned sugar from our home. This never meant we did not enjoy our sweet moments. It is just that we have them sugarless. Daddy regularly makes cakes and crepes, but instead of sugar, he uses a mix of maple syrup, dates, raisins, depending on what we have at hand. This has made it so easy to have little gosling off sugar until the recommended age of two. And we’re keeping at it, with occasional exceptions. 

Little gosling had his first taste of waffles some weeks back when I could not resist the smell of the waffles coming from a waffle and ice cream van in the park and my husband was in a more tolerant mood. Little gosling had a couple of bites and he remembered it!

My husband is generally very, very good at keeping sugar away. So strict was he that I used to have my sugary treats at work, in my own time :P. Can’t give up chocolate completely :). But I enjoy a variety of dark chocolate. The lockdown however had a weird effect on him. At some point, he threw everything out the window and indulged in some very heavy ice cream eating. The warm, nice weather outside over the past two months also helped a lot. Consequently, we, the adults, spent a number of weeks eating ice cream twice a day, when little gosling was asleep. Now, with a bit of normality coming back into our lives – school restarting, going into work some hours a day -, we’re back at cutting out the sugar.  

Sunday has been our waffles day for the past weeks. Last Sunday, little gosling had two waffles, with slices of bananas and some peanut and hazelnut butter on top. Daddy ate his with honey. I ate mine with a mix of crushed bananas, raspberries and blackberries.  

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My mom was completely disconcerted at the idea of making it without sugar – we have been following a no sugar added baby diet -; also because it meant making it without sugar for all of us and my parents like their sugar. Consequently, she always makes it in two batches, without and with sugar added. My husband is the breakfast cook in the family and his porridges are delicious.  

Before that moment, I had not had semolina porridge outside pre-school (the 4 o’clock snack) or my parents’ home (usually as a late evening desert, when mostly my dad felt like eating something sweet). And it was always served sprinkled with sugar and covered with a fine layer of cinnamon. That was the only way I had known it and I was convinced that was “the way” to serve it. 

When my mom made it for little gosling, I did not like it with cinnamon and without sugar; so I tasted my husband’s and kind of never had it the old way since. My husband’s childhood semolina porridge was always with jam… It had never occurred to me (and my parents to this day completely reject this option). It was delicious with jam. We had a nice homemade strawberry jam at the time, from our local market. Later on, I discovered mango jam from a local farm and fell in love with it (we were living in South Africa at the time); it makes the best tasting semolina porridge for me. 

Little gosling and his dad have it with different toppings, such as: mashed banana; mashed (fresh) figs; hazelnut (or peanut) butter; maple syrup or honey, in various combinations, depending on what we have at home. Semolina pudding with hazelnut butter, mashed banana and a bit of maple syrup is my second favourite. It beats the pudding with some types of jam, for me.

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