More finger food tips

Earlier this week I talked about some of the vegetable finger foods that baby girl likes (or doesn’t like). Now I’ll share some of my other tips for baby finger foods.

We discovered pretty quickly that baby girl likes fruits. Pears make an alright finger food, but honestly, I think they’re more messy than they’re worth. I’m much better off mixing up a ripe pear (and its juice) with baby oatmeal as breakfast than I am trying to feed her pieces of the ripe pear. Did I mention she’ll tolerate being spoon fed better in the morning?

Entering the world of finger foods

When I first decided to make all of baby girl’s food, I figured it would be easy. We’d make lots of purees, and she’d get to eat healthy fruits, veggies and meats. It would be great.

And it has been. Mostly.

But for the past month or so, baby girl has lost patience with being spoon fed purees. She wants to feed herself. Of course, at 10 months old, she doesn’t have the coordination to feed herself with a spoon. Unfortunately, she’ll only tolerate me feeding her with a spoon for a couple of minutes. Not nearly long enough to feed her two cubes of food, much less three.

Recipe: Pork chops and applesauce for baby

Baby girl is almost 10 months old, and we’ve given her lots of yummy foods. Her favorite vegetable is probably squash, and she loves pretty much every fruit. But we’ve only given her two meats: chicken and turkey. And she only had a couple of bites of turkey because we were eating it for dinner one night, so I’m not sure that counts.

Either way, I decided it was time for her to try another meat.

I went with pork primarily because it’s what I had in my freezer. When I told my mom I was planning to give baby girl pork, she asked if that was a good idea. Her question prompted me to look into the nutritional value of pork. This is what I found out:

It’s got lots of good vitamins, including A, C, B1 and B2 and Folate. It’s also got Potassium, Magnesium, Calcium and Iron. Plus it’s obviously a protein. Now we know.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I tend to make baby food that mimics meals that hubby or I like. This one is a hubby favorite. We both love pork chops, but I’ve never been a fan of sweet sides with savory dishes. That said, pork chops and applesauce is a classic. I added carrots to the mix because a) they’re good for baby girl, b) I figured they would give the meal a better texture and c) I wanted an excuse to go buy a steamer.

Here’s the recipe:

• 2 pork chops – cooked and cubed
• 2 handfuls of baby carrots – steamed
• 1 and 1/3 cups of applesauce

I put the cubed pork chops in the food processor first, followed by the carrots. Then I added applesauce by 1/3 cupfuls until it got to the consistency I wanted. Turned out I needed 4 of the 1/3 measuring cups. You could probably get away with a little bit less if you wanted the mixture to be less sweet. The recipe made 2 ice cube trays full.

This recipe was a hit! Baby girl loved it. I think she liked that it was kind of sweet but at the same time not like her fruits. We’ll have to give it another couple of tries before I declare it a favorite.

A note about the carrots: I’m not a very measurmenty kind of cook, so I apologize that I don’t have a real number for you on the carrots. If you have small hands, you might want three handfuls. You can see in the picture that the amount I used filled about half of a cereal bowl.

A note about applesauce: At baby girl’s 4 month doctor’s visit, her pediatrician gave me some advice:  “Applesauce is applesauce.” I told her that I was planning to make all of baby girl’s food. She suggested that I spend my time making other food and just buy the unsweetened, plain old applesauce you get at the grocery store. I decided to take her advice. You could probably make this recipe with an apple and some water instead of applesauce if you wanted.

A note about pork: If you don’t eat pork, I think this recipe would also work well with chicken.

Watch out baby food, real food’s making an entrance

I’ve blogged before about making baby good for my daughter. She’s had lots of veggie purees, a few meats and lots of fruits. Her favorite foods are pieces of fruit, and those baby berries are definitely up there too. But until today, she hadn’t eaten the same thing as hubby and me for dinner.

That’s mostly because I don’t usually cook very good meals for hubby and me to eat. I think I mentioned it before, but I really dislike grocery shopping. I love to cook, but by the time I get home from the store I have usually lost my motivation. So hubby and I eat out a lot. Or we end up making boxed mac and cheese or frozen pizzas.

Today was different.

Recipe: Cheesy Chicken and Potatoes for Baby

I love, love, love cheese. Turns out baby girls does too. I discovered that my daughter likes cheese when I arrived at daycare to pick her up for one afternoon and found her munching away on shredded cheese. While I wasn’t thrilled that she had a new food without my knowledge, it turned out to be great because I wouldn’t have thought to give her cheese, and it’s one of her favorite foods.

So why do I tell you that since this is supposed to be a chicken and potatoes recipe? Because I use cheese to flavor the chicken and potatoes. Here’s the recipe:

Recipe: Baby Berries

Last week, I took baby girl to the pediatrician for her 9 month check up. The doctor said it was time to start exploring more foods. With a few exceptions, she said baby girl could eat anything I wanted to give her. I figured I’d start introducing some of my favorite foods to her.

Since it’s probably a little early to start my daughter’s chocolate addiction, I opted for berries. Hubby and I both love berries. My favorite is probably strawberries, but hubby really likes blueberries. I decided to see what would happen if I mixed them.

Baby Food 101: Basic Purees

When I first started making baby girl’s food, I leaned toward simple purees with only one primary ingredient. When my daughter was about to turn six months old, my mother in law gave me one of her extra squash. I read somewhere that yellow or orange vegetables are the best first baby foods. Not sure if that’s true, but I went with it and used that squash to make baby girl’s first food.

I cut the squash in half and microwaved it for about 10 minutes. Once it was soft, I scooped out all of the flesh and put it in the food processor. The consistency wasn’t great, so I added breast milk until it was smooth and fairly thin.

Makin’ baby food

Until my daughter was six months old, I basically refused to give her anything to eat except for breast milk. There were a couple of reasons for this:

First: Breastfeeding comes easy for me. I know that’s not everyone’s situation, but it just clicked for me and my baby girl. To this day, some of my favorite mommy moments are nursing by daughter.