I’ve known Melanie professionally for a few years now, since we worked alongside each other in a publishing house. Since then, Mel has carved out a strong career as a freelance lifestyle and business journalist, and a features writer at CollectiveHub.

Recently, the media spotlight has been turned on her, since the release of her debut book Special: antidotes to the obsessions that come with a child’s disability. You might be one of the thousands of viewers who caught her on Channel Ten’s The Project where she gave a moving insight into how challenging it’s been to crashland into special-needs parenthood.

I was so happy to reconnect with Mel to ask her about how she juggles her work and home life, caters for a special needs diet, and finds sanity in hectic kitchen moments. She also shares one of her children’s most-loved family meals: Salmon Nuggets with Vegetable Puree.

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Name Melanie Dimmitt
Occupation Freelance writer and author
Location Leichhardt, Sydney
Family members Mel & Rowan, Arlo (3.5 yo ), Odette (1.5 yo)

In a word, we are BUSY. Rowan and I both work in the media – he subedits newspapers and I write – so we’re slaves to deadlines and spend a lot of time bashing away on our laptops while drinking copious amounts of tea. Arlo is a charming young man with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. His schedule is rammed with daily screenings of the first 20 minutes of Moana and Frozen, physio, OT and speech therapy sessions, and he hangs with his posse at daycare a couple of days a week. Odie is just starting to walk, talk and make herself (very) known in the world. We’re a happy bunch.

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I’m getting my book Special out into the world. A straight-talking companion for parents who have recently discovered their child isn’t travelling the ‘typical’ path. Over the past couple of years I interviewed 50 or so parents around the world, raising kids with all kinds of disabilities, and asked them to help me feel better about what I thought was the worst imaginable pickle – discovering that my son has profound disability. Special is a mishmash of their stories, advice and hindsight – and silly me thought that writing it would be the hard part. Turns out this PR and marketing malarkey is a tough slog! But hopefully it will get Special into the right hands and help some parents at the start of this gig realise just how special they have it.

Screen Shot 2019-09-12 at 5.52.51 pm.png — **Before kids, my cooking style was more more of an ‘assembler’ rather than a cook – and a boring one at that.**
Dinner was usually a defrosted, pan-fried salmon cake partnered with some packet greens. I was known in the office as the person who ate zesty vinaigrette tuna mixed through a microwaved rice cup. Every. Single Day.

Rowan, on the other hand, is a natural cook. On one of our first dates he whipped up his signature veggie lasagne with four kinds of cheese and I’ve never looked back. Since becoming parents we eat ‘in’ a hell of a lot more. And we cook a lot of purees. Arlo having quadriplegic cerebral palsy (affecting his entire body) means he’s still learning to chew and swallow, so we’ve been in a bit of a 6 to 8 month-old eating stage holding pattern with this guy. Arlo has some medicine with the first few spoonfuls of his food so we need to make his purees extra tasty (read: cheesy) to mask the meds.

We’re fish-eating vegetarians but have been feeding the kiddos a little meat in the hope that they can make their own choice one day. Odie’s certainly not giving up her chicken sausages any time soon.

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We’re pretty healthy and sugar-free when we can be. We’ve been lucky with Arlo in that he eats anything, so we ram a bunch of veggies, lentils, brown rice and beans into all of his purees. Odie has a raging sweet tooth to contend with so we’ve limited her to only one slice of banana bread at our local coffee spot each week. Two tops.

When 4.30pm rolls around I call ‘Moana o’clock’ and the TV goes on while I prep dinner. If the guilt gets the better of me I’ll try cranking some tunes instead. We’ve got a ‘Smash Hits of Arlo’ playlist on Spotify that’s a compilation of Baby Bum, Super Simple Songs and Teeny Tiny Stevies.

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Most dog-eared cookbook pre and post parenthood: Pre-parenthood my cookbooks came in the form of takeaway menus. Post parenthood Deliciously Ella Every Day has had a good thumbing. We pore over Ottolenghi but he always seems to throw in a too-hard-to-get or never-heard-of-that ingredient that keeps his books out of the kitchen (they do look nice on the coffee table, though).

Favourite local kid-friendly restaurants: We are so lucky to live in Leichhardt, AKA where Sydney goes to have a baby. Everywhere along the central Norton Street strip is family-friendly. Our favourites are Monté café, where Odie gets her banana bread fix, Ragamuffin, where the olive and rosemary toasted English muffins (with butter, of course) are delish, and Penny Fours, with the croissants could fool a fussy Parisian.

Essential kitchen ingredients: Wholemeal pasta, pesto, frozen peas, lemons and fetta cheese. Many a last-minute meal can be made from these things.

Salmon Nuggets & Roast Vegetable Puree

Salmon Nuggets are a homemade take on what I used to defrost most nights for dinner pre-kiddos, and as fickle as Odie can be with food, they tend to go down a treat. They’re super-easy to make and can be frozen which is always a winner in our house. Roast veggie puree is a favourite of Arlo’s (Odie stubbornly refuses to be spoon-fed) and it’s the only puree that I make – Row is in charge of the fancier varieties. I cook up an enormous batch and freeze it into big ice-block trays so it can last for weeks.

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2 salmon fillets
1/3 cup plain flour
2 eggs
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 large sweet potatoes
½ butternut pumpkin
2 capsicums
1 red onion
5 mashing potatoes
1 head of broccoli
½ head of cauliflower
Large handful of grated cheddar cheese
Olive oil
Salt and pepper, to season

Preheat oven to 200C.

Peel mashing potatoes and chop roughly. Chop the remainder of the veg and set aside.

Place chopped sweet potatoes, pumpkin, capsicum and red onion in a large baking dish and drizzle with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast in oven for one hour, taking out for a stir at 30 mins.

While those veggies are roasting, boil the potatoes until soft, set aside in a large bowl. Steam the chopped broccoli and cauliflower until tender, set aside with the cooked potatoes.

Once the veggies are roasted, combine with the potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower in the large bowl and puree to desired consistency. Cool slightly, then stir though the grated cheddar cheese.

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To make the Salmon Nuggets, increase the oven temperature to 220C.

Remove any skin from the salmon fillets and chop them into bite-sized chunks.

In one bowl add the flour. In a second bowl crack in the eggs and whisk with a fork. In a third bowl add the panko breadcumbs and mix in salt and pepper to taste.