Annabel Karmel's feet of clay

My first experience of weaning was coloured by the primary bright pages of Annabel Karmel's bestseller, The complete baby and toddler meal planner. She alone is responsible for me staying up till all hours pureeing butternut squash and sweet potato.

It is her fault I wasted vast sums of money on a mysterious mouli device, which I could only find online from chi chi cookery store Divertimenti. Despite the expense, I used it once and then threw away its many complicated and dysfunctional parts in disgust after spending an age squishing potato through its slits, only to end up with a teaspoonful of goo my son promptly spat across the room.

My fridge was full of individually frozen cubes of veg and my son was inducted into the religion of healthy eating following her plan to the letter. He was stuffed with spinach and broccoli and not allowed a taste of fruit until he was well and truly inducted into the cult of the vegetable. I cooked every meal he ate and carried them around in little plastic pots which had a rebellious desire to spill all over my change bag at inopportune moments. I tried in vain to force the gallons of milk she recommends into my lactose hating boy, and as he grew older I fiddled with his food turning every pizza into a smiley face, every sandwich into a tempting shape.

My god I worked hard for that woman, and how was my toil repaid? Well my son is now six and his favourite food is chicken nuggets and potato Smiles, just like pretty much every other six-year-old I know, whether they were weaned on Wotsits or organic parsnip puree. So forgive me if I am a little disgruntled at all that wasted effort.

But this isn't really my gripe with AK, for while she may have caused me much personal pain, what really gets me is the way that the woman who pioneered the home made movement, who had us all stuck in the kitchen steaming, chopping and pureeing, now seems happy to slap her jolly logo onto any old box and call it healthy.

She has already endured a scandal earlier this year, when it was revealed that her Eat Fussy range of ready meals (I ask you, is that not sacrilege enough?) had more salt and sugar in than most grown up nosh in a box. But that hasn't stopped her selling her name to Disney pushing crisps and snacks (albeit healthy ones) at our kids in Mickey shaped packages. Or from slapping it on the kiddie grub served at Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventure and Thorpe Park.

That's not all, the lady is happy to lend her name to toys, cookery products as well as an ever expanding range of baby and children's cookery books. Given the acres of print she has devoted to weaning babies you would think it was a complex science, not just a process of shoving goo into their mouths until they are old enough to smear it over themselves unaided. All of which culminates in them all opting for burgers, chips, bolognese, pizza or chicken nuggets when given the choice.

Of course none of this would be a problem if what AK was producing was up to the high and admittedly delicious standards of the recipes she peddles, but as well as salt and sugar-gate, I notice that some reviews of her products online are less than glowing. I was looking for a mat to put under my twins' highchairs and was tempted by Annabel's bright red mess mat, until I read the other customer reviews. Both were devotee's of Annabel's books, but panned the mat as little better than a plastic bag, which at £9.99 is unacceptable.

Then I opened my fridge to see the box of teddy bear pizzas I had bought to try out on the twins had expanded to twice it's size. Puffed up like a fish in fear of its life, it looked like a toxic health hazard and I am too afraid to open it for fear of what might spew out. Of course this can happen to anyone, and may be down to poor handling by the supermarket who sold it or any number of other factors, but I'm afraid I saw it as indicative as a guru grown too big for her boots.

No one can blame AK for cashing in, but her penchant for slapping her name on any product that will pay for the priviledge whilst also polishing her halo as a champion of healthy eating for our enfants rather sticks in my craw, as I am sure would the pizza if I were brave enough to unbox it. It's a bit like Gordon Ramsay striding around provicial kitchens sneering at their poor provisions in Kitchen Nightmares, whilst happily microwaving bought in ready meals at his own pubs.

Perhaps I am displaying that horrible British trait of knocking someone for their success, but I do think that if you put yourself up on a pedestal, or your name of a veritable pyramid of ready meal boxes, there's always a threat of someone spotting your feet of clay.

Mummy magnet

There is a strange phenomenon affecting my place of residence. I am not sure if it is linked to the phases of the moon or tidal patterns - probably not as it seems to be somewhat of a constant - but whatever room of the house I am standing in, there seems to be a gravitational pull that brings all my boys into it almost immediately. With the exception of my office which is locked tight against invaders, wherever else I am, soon there will be boys too.

If my husband sneaks away to fiddle with his computer or have a shower, the boys don't seem to feel the same attraction. He is, sometimes at least, left in peace for at least 10 minutes, before one of them asks "Where's daddy?" and beetles off to find him. With me there is no such respite, I can never have a shower without one small person bursting in to ask me to help do up buttons or referee a fight, and that's while two of them are held off by an inability to climb stairs. Although having said that, this weekend I stepped out of the shower to find that intrepid twin one had made it upstairs all by himself - time to fit that final stair gate methinks.

Yesterday evening I was holed up in my office having embarked on a mammoth clear out. I finally tackled the filing cabinet which has been lurking like some malevolent presence behind plastic crates full of its contents ever since we had the loft conversion done over a year ago. The boys had been on a day out with grandma, but as soon as they exploded through the door they dashed upstairs to locate me like rats up a drainpipe. All very sweet until they started undoing all my good work tidying by liberally scattering the contents of my shelves around the floor.

It is definitely some strange quirk of physics that my boys can't seem to help but congregate around the mummy magnet - although I am already getting an inkling that this may be a force that weakens with age, for while the babies will shuffle and crawl across the house to find me, wherever I may be, the older boys are finally beginning to prefer their own company, which I will admit can be a blessed relief.

During the Easter break they have happily amused themselves drawing in the playroom, watching movies together and playing the ubiquitous Lego Star Wars on the Xbox, which has had the upshot of giving their aged Ps a little more time to either run around after the babies or just pursue adult amusements, such as sitting, doing nothing or watching TV that doesn't have a PG rating.

I would like to say that I miss being a mummy magnet, but actually I do sometimes enjoy being free from my little iron filings, just so long as they never stray too far from my gravitational field.