Recipe Three - Chicken and Apple

Chicken and Apple Puree

1 cooked and chopped boneless chicken breast

2 cooked and chopped dessert apples or 6 heaped tablespoons of apple sauce (no added sugar)

Puree the two ingredients together, adding a small amount of unsweetened apple juice if the consistency is too thick.

This recipe is great for a day when you and daddy are eating chicken - you can make baby's food at the same time :-) 

xxx

Yummy Sweet potatoes :-)

Lately my pregnancy craving has been for sweet potatoes and so I thought i'd post up my favourite way to have them.

Sweet potatoes are really healthy - they are rich in complex carbohydrates, fiber, beta carotene and lots of A, B6 and C vitamins. Which is good for me because they taste really yummy when baked :-) 

When Scott and I cook sweet potatoes we do it really simply - just scrub the potatoes, prick them with a fork and bake them in the oven for about forty minutes. After they are softer we cut them in half and stick them on the grill with a topping of caramelized onions and cheese. These are so tasty and really filling too. 

Great for when you're feeling peckish and also nice as an accompaniment with grilled chicken or fish. I think that I'll be eating LOADS of these once the baby is here and I need the extra energy for breastfeeding. 

The other plus side is that once baby starts weaning i'll be able to cook sweet potato for them aswell - just bake until extra soft, remove the skin and puree with a tiny dab of butter (you can guess who will be eating up their leftovers!)

xxx

Recipe Two - Apple and Pear

Apple and pear puree (optional cinnamon)

This puree recipe is taken from Annabel Karmel's 'Top 100 baby purees' and is an ideal first food because it is easy to digest and unlikely to cause any allergies. The cinnamon is an optional addition - some parents like to leave out extra spices until their baby is a little older. 

For this recipe you need:

2 dessert apples (try Pink Lady or Royal Gala)

2 ripe pears (try Conference or Chinese sweet pears)

4 tbsp pure apple juice or water

generous pinch of ground cinnamon (optional)

Put the peeled and chopped fruit into a saucepan with the apple juice or water (and the cinnamon if using). Cover and simmer over a low heat for 6-8 minutes until tender before blending to a smooth puree. 

Weaning

Many parents delay the start of weaning until their baby is at least six months old - however this tends to be because of the fact that the processed jars of food tend to be aged at 6+ months. Most doctors, health advisors and nutritionists agree that a baby is able to be weaned from the age of four months. 

During the first year of a baby's life most of the nutrition that they receive will be gained from their breast or formula milk intake - so as long as they are still receiving the right amounts of milk the baby loses no nutrition from being weaned at four months than they would later on. According to Annabel Karmel, a leading child nutritionist, it isn't a good idea to delay introducing solids any later than six months as a baby needs to learn to chew and swallow food. Also chewing encourages the development of muscles that are essential for speech. 

From four months the types of foods that are suitable for a baby are:

baby rice mixed with breast or formula milk, avocado, bananas, cooked apple and pear, parsnip, potato, carrot, squash and sweet potato. 

Image: babyccinoblog.com

xxx

Recipe One

Ok so all the equipment you need to produce your own nutritional baby purees is a hand blender (or a normal blender although this is harder to clean) and some plastic ice cube trays. 

Making your own baby food is not only a hundred times healthier for them but is also one of the most effective ways of saving money - particularly if you use ingredients that you are also using for your own dinners. 

All you really need to do is blend the vegetables or cooked meat that you are using into a smooth puree, mixing with a little bit of the cooking water if you need to thin it out. You can then pour this puree into an ice cube tray and put it in the freezer. Once its frozen you can empty the cubes into a plastic freezer bag (labelled with the date) and this way you can reuse the ice cube trays too. Cooking in bulk and freezing in batches couldn't be easier - all you need to do is defrost your puree in the microwave or on the hob when its to be used. 

First vegetable puree - carrots

Steam or boil (in a small amount of water) 350g/12oz of carrots that have been peeled or chopped. 

Drain and puree with some of the cooking liquid until very smooth. 

This makes 8 portions and is ideal for freezing.

Baby Food

Unfortunately these days people are eating more and more heavily processed food - sales of microwave ready meals are on average twenty percent higher than sales of fresh produce and meals seem to revolve around spending as little time in the kitchen/eating as possible. 

This has also led to a rise in the use of processed jars of baby food that you see in the shops nowadays, and which most mothers use for their babies. Many of these baby food companies, including the big names such as Hipp Organics and Heinz replace real food products with water and thickening agents in their baby food - of course this food is then going to be nutritionally inferior to products made with fresh food. So according to testing by the CSPI the baby foods are nutritionally defunct, and not only that but they cost a lot more than similar regular foods that aren't marketed at parents.

For me this is a really important thing to understand - I don't like putting junk food into my body and i'm certainly not planning on putting junk food into our baby either! So when it comes to weaning Scott and I are planning to make all of our baby's food ourselves - this way we know exactly what the baby is eating and that the food doesn't have added fillers and sugar. 

It isn't actually particularly time consuming to make your own babyfood - particularly today when most people have a blender (or hand blender) and you can easily produce a big batch of food and freeze it ready to be used throughout the month. 

Because of the importance of this to me i'll be adding a new regular post - each week i'll be putting up a little bit of nutritional information or advice on baby feeding and a quick, easy and nutritional recipe for baby food. 

Hope you like it 

xxx

ps: have a look at the link for more information about the different findings concerning baby foods and their nutritional (and purse friendly) values: 

http://www.cspinet.org/reports/cheat1.html

Scott's Birthday

Had a really lovely weekend - didn't do any wedding planning though :-S!

It was my darling Scott's birthday on Friday and so we had a nice lie-in, went shopping for a few bits and pieces (And new shoes for me!!!) 

I'll be pairing them with black straight jeans (just like i pair everything) and an oversized shirt (probably the birthday boy's!).

The rest of the weekend we spent relaxing, reading, cooking together and listening to music. Although I did fit in a few hours to help my little brother with his egyptian project - I think I enjoyed making the barbie-doll mummy and the sarcophagus more than he did! 

Scott is back at work now though :-( So i'm all alone until very late tonight - completely unfair but someone has to earn the money to pay for our wedding day!

xxx