New to making my baby food......?'s

[PeepersMom]

I am so excited to start making the baby food - maybe even more excited than seeing my baby eat it!   :lol:

So I am to start rice cereal first and probably will start in a week or so, then at 5 months at the earliest start veggies.  He has diary and soy intolerances, sadly.  So we are not doing anything other than rice cereal for a while.

Right now the only thing I can think of to make is sweet potatoes and squash.  Those are easy to steam. But I can't visualize steaming green beans or broccoli or cauliflower and then getting them into a fine enough puree.  I have a wand type mixer, a blender, and a food processor.  I am not really good at using the food processor and there are sooo many parts that I was hoping to get away with just the wand mixer or the blender.

Can anyone help me?   Peas seem hard because they have a bit of a casing.......Is avacado considered a veggie or fruit in baby world?

What was on your babies first menu?

Thanks

[Fiona (Leah & Kians Mom)]

Hi Meg,
You can blend just about anything,including meat and chicken so don't worry about that. I would recommend the Gina Ford Weaning book for recipies and the Annabel Karmel book too, she has a website you can have a look on. We actually started with both fruit and veg after the rice, sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, pear and apple, pear is actually a very good fruit to start with as it's quite easily digested.
Fiona

[Deb_in_oz]

to thin out a puree you can add either breast milk or formula and they get extra nutrition that way.

peas actually blend really well especially when done in a mix with other veg, but i have belended peas and formula and it is fine.

[evanskimberley]

brocolli, cauliflowe, beans do puree, but take a bit more work. Sometimes bettre to boil them and use the water to add to the puree. Boiling seems to get them a lot softer and if you use the water as well then you're not loosing any goodness.

Courgette is  great for this age, it mixes with rice cereal really well.

[Dela]

I agree that Annabel Karmel's book is great for how and when to introduce different foods.

Squash and sweet potato went down really well with us and we have also had great success with cauliflower too. DS now eats most things actually, had fish for the first time today!

Avocado is a brilliant first food as you can just mash it up with a fork, DS loves it mixed with banana.

Have fun and don't be afraid to try different things, your attitude towards having a go will transfer to your baby.

Good Luck!

[teezee]

just wanted to add that i just purchased annabel karmels book and it is fabulous - i wish i had it from the first day that i started dd on solids!  just yesterday she tried spinach/sweet potatoes and LOVED it -would have never thought of it to be honest with you..

[Bea's Mum]

I have borrowed Annabel Karmel books from the library from time to time and they're all really useful.  Not just the recipies, but the general information too.

The book I bought, however, is called "First Food" by Sara Lewis (ISBN 1-84477-459-7) and I thoroughly recommend it.  It has lots of nutritional information and a wide variety of recepies from first fruit and veg purees to finger foods to family meals.

Having been making all Beatrice's food for six months or so, I'm getting more confident at just making things up.  Some of my biggest successes have been "bungits".