Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook - Mashed Potatoes

Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:

Potatoes, peeled

Salt and pepper for seasoning

Cayenne pepper, just a pinch

For the adult version:

Milk

Frozen butter nuggets

Preparation:

The first thing to do is to wash, peel, and boil the potatoes in salted water until it is completely tender to the point of being crumbly. When the potatoes are cooked, mash them with a potato masher or a ricer or a fork.

The next step is important because it is the secret to amazing mashed potatoes. Transfer the mashed potatoes onto a pan and place on low heat. Keep on mixing the potatoes so that they don’t burn while the heat makes sure that the excess water evaporates. Continue to mix the potatoes on low heat until there is very little steam leaving them.

At this point, you can set a little aside, season with salt and pepper, let it cool and feed the mashed potatoes to your baby. For the adult version, this is the stage where you add the milk. Add the milk a little at a time along with a little salt and pepper so that you are also gradually seasoning. When you reach the consistency where when you take some of the potatoes in a spoon and hold it sideways above the pan and it drops by itself, then you’ve put in enough milk. For the last step, add a pinch of cayenne.

 Be careful not to add too much. Cayenne requires heat to release its flavors so it may take a little while before you can actually taste it.

Want to make the mashed potatoes more interesting? Throw in some chopped chives or some roasted garlic.

This is an excerpt from the book: Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook

Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook - Poached Fish

Poached Fish

Ingredients:

Chicken stock

Fish fillets, any white-fleshed fish

Yogurt, plain

Dill, chopped

Lemon juice

Salt and pepper for seasoning

Preparation:

Poaching is a great cooking method for fish because when you’re cooking fish and other seafood, you’re always running the risk of overcooking this tender and delicate meat. With the low temperatures that poaching requires, you can get to that sweet spot of just right and enjoy a great dinner. This is a dish that you can cook for your family and friends while setting a little aside for your baby.

But first, make sure that the fish is completely deboned with the skin removed. If you want it skin on, make sure there aren’t any scales but I would highly recommend that you buy skin off especially when you’re feeding your baby.

In a pan, season the fish with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Add chicken stock to the pan until the fish are halfway covered. Place the pan on low heat; make sure the liquid is only steaming but not bubbling and it should definitely not be boiling. Once it starts steaming, you can cover it halfway with a lid or foil. The fish will take about ten to fifteen minutes to cook.

You can prepare the yogurt sauce by mixing the chopped dill, yogurt, and a little lemon juice together. Season it with salt and pepper and maybe a little sugar if you prefer.

This dish will not only make for a great and healthy dinner for your family but it is also soft and tender enough for your baby. The fish should be fine with just the sauce for your little one but for the rest of the family, this dish is best served with white rice, fried rice, or mashed potatoes. 

This is an excerpt from the book: Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook

Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook - Chicken Mushroom and Rice Casserole

Chicken Mushroom and Rice Casserole

Ingredients:

Chicken thigh, deboned and cut into bite-sized pieces

Mushrooms, preferably Portobello, chopped or sliced when using small mushrooms

Rice, white

Sage, chopped

Garlic, chopped

Onion, chopped

Paprika, just a pinch

Salt and pepper for seasoning

Preparation:

This is another meal that you can prepare for your family and friends while also setting a little aside for your baby.

A chicken casserole is a lot easier to prepare than you think. Place all of the ingredients together in a casserole with a little olive oil and give them a toss. Add chicken stock until the mixture is completely covered plus an additional centimetre and a half of liquid before placing it in a pre-heated oven at 180°C. Let the casserole cook for 45 minutes or until the rice is tender. Before serving, top with a few frozen butter nuggets.

For the baby’s share of the casserole, mash it up a little with a fork, especially the chicken which should be shredded. Also, make sure that the casserole is cool before you feed your baby.

This is an excerpt from the book: Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook

Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook - Hard Boiled Egg

Hard Boiled Egg

Ingredients:

Egg

Preparation:

Place the egg in a pot of boiling water and cook for 11 to 12 minutes. When it is cooked, take out the egg, peel it, and chop it up into small pieces. Let it cool before feeding it to your baby. If you want to make things more interesting, you can add a spoonful of plain yogurt.

When feeding your baby egg, you don’t have to stick to just hard boiled. You can try scrambled eggs too and maybe grab the chance to introduce a few light-flavored herbs like chopped chives or dill. At this age, you can also start introducing spices in very small amounts. For scrambled eggs, a tough of nutmeg or white pepper wouldn’t hurt.

But remember; when feeding your baby egg, always make sure that it is cooked through and through especially when he or she is less than a year old. Don’t try to cook in ways that leave the yolk undercooked like sunny side up, over easy, or poached. There is still an element of risk and your baby is more susceptible to bacteria than most adults are.

Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients:

Macaroni Pasta

Cooking cream

Butter

Cheese of your choice

Salt and Pepper

Preparation:

Macaroni and cheese is a staple in most homes because it is delicious and it is very easy to prepare. What you basically do is cook the pasta until al dente. To prepare the sauce, you melt the butter and add the cooking cream. Let it heat up a little before adding the grated cheese and seasoning the salt and pepper. When the pasta is done cooking, you mix it into the sauce and you’re done! To make things more interesting, add a touch of cayenne and some herbs like parsley or basil.

When you’re cooking macaroni and cheese for your family, you can also prepare some for your baby. Just set aside a bit of the pasta and let it cook for longer until it is soft enough to eat with just gums. This way, your baby begins to eat what you and the rest of the family eat.

This is an excerpt from the book: Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook

Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook - VII. More Solid Food: 10 to 12 Months

 VII. More Solid Food: 10 to 12 Months

When your baby reaches the age of ten to twelve months old, you’re going to find that he or she might suddenly become a ‘picky eater’. It’s not that they don’t like the food; they don’t really become truly picky about what they eat until their toddler years. Chances are they’re just distracted by the things around them, like toys or different sounds or all the hundred different little things that they’re just beginning to notice. Take heart, this stage where you’re struggling to feed them solid food won’t last forever.

At this stage, your baby won’t appreciate thin purees anymore and will begin to enjoy the chunkier, soft cooked finger food like the ones they get to sample when they’re eight to ten months old. But don’t forget; even at ten to twelve months old, solid food is only supplementary to breast milk. Breast milk should still be your baby’s main source of food for complete nutrition and development.

This is the age when your baby really starts to eat soft versions of grown up food. You can feed them pasteurized cheese (but no cow’s milk until after a year old), mashed proteins like chicken breast or white-fleshed fish, eggs, and tofu. This is also the time when your baby starts to feed himself, although not always successfully. But you can hand him a plastic and baby-friendly spoon and see where he goes from there.

Here are some great examples of baby food for the age of ten to twelve months.

This is an excerpt from the book: Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook

Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook - Soft Cooked Pasta

Soft Cooked Pasta

Ingredients:

Penne pasta or fusilli pasta or any kind of pasta that is short enough for your baby to hold on to

Preparation:

Cooks on TV will tell you endlessly that pasta should be cooked al dente or with just enough bite to give it texture. But when cooking for your baby, you definitely can’t go for al dente.

In fact, you need to push the pasta as far and as soft as it can go without falling apart.

The best part about feeding your baby pasta is that you can just give him a smaller amount of what the family is having, just an overcooked version of it. 

Penne in tomato sauce? Your baby can have some of that too. Cold fusilli salad in the summer? Just cook the fusilli a little longer than usual and it will make for a great snack for your precious one.

This is an excerpt from the book: Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook

Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook - Kiwi Slices

Kiwi Slices

Ingredients:

Kiwi, ripe

Preparation:

Peel the kiwi by cutting off both ends, standing it up, and carefully running your knife along the sides of the fruit. When cutting the ends off of the fruit, you may encounter some resistance; don’t try to force the knife through. Instead, move your knife down the fruit until you cut through the part that easily gives way. You don’t want your baby to be chewing on the hard part that gives your knife trouble.

Cut the peeled kiwi right down the middle and into slices that your baby can hold on to.

Boiled Carrot Sticks

Ingredients:

Carrot

Preparation:

Wash, peel, and slice the carrots into batonettes or small sticks that your baby can wrap his hands around. Prepare a pot of boiling water and season it with a little salt. Drop the carrot sticks into the boiling water and let it cook until the carrot sticks are as soft as possible while still holding its shape.

Prepare a water bath with ice right beside the boiling pot of water to shock the carrot sticks with. When the sticks are done cooking, transfer them into the ice water bath and let them cool. This will ensure that the carrot sticks are never too hot for your baby and it also immediately stops the carrots from cooking any further.

Carrot sticks are hard so you need to make sure that it is soft enough for your baby to eat. The best way to do this is with a fork test while its cooking and by actually tasting it before giving some for the little one to eat.

This is an excerpt from the book: Homemade Healthy Baby Food Recipes and Cookbook