I’ve been experimenting in the kitchen of late, making Tiff a few home making home made baby foods. Does anyone have any cool recipes to share. BTW, she’s almost 10 months. Braxtonhicks? You must have plenty! CCare to share? Cheers Amos.
We have several babyfood makers who post on www.parentpages.net
I also picked up some recipe books at PageOne. I like the one by Annabel Karmel. She is almost ten months, the same as my son, so is she finished with purees now? i find it easy to just mash whatever I am cooking for the family before I add salt.
HTH,
Congee is the Chinese traditional baby food.
Eggs are also a good starter solid foods.
Hi Amos! Can’t believe your Tiff is already 10 months old! My youngest is celebrating One on Thursday.
Has she just started solids are you trying to make things more exciting at the dinner table? Give us a little more info and maybe some people will share some of their best ideas.
I always enjoyed making the purees (when I was the one making my baby food–now I have someone who helps me). Carrots, broccoli, potato, apples, pears, mango, papaya, whatever is age appropriate. I would chop it up, put it in the steamer, whirl it in the blender. Combine veggies, combine fruits. If you’re short on time, use the ice cube method and prepare everything once a week, freeze and store in ziploc bags in your freezer then reheat (and mix it up, broc and potato, etc).
Like piwackit said, you can take part of whatever the family is having and steam, shred, mash, or chop it up. My helper would go to the trouble of putting it all in the blender but I hate washing the blades etc for just one minute of work.
Congee is good too but you probably already feed her that. Add chopped meat, veggies (good way to use leftovers from the night before) and those tiny little white fish (can’t remember what they’re called… they look like big white tadpoles). Find them at the market. My nos. 2 and 3 loved those.
Pasta is a favorite at my house (use a pair of scissors designated for kids’ food to cut it into little pieces).
I have a couple of baby food books I’ve been meaning to donate to the Alleycat’s bookshelf. I might be able to do that this week, so if you’re able to swing by there or stop in for pizza, you can pick them up. One is the Annabel Karmel one that is so popular (beautiful book with lots of great ideas and photos but you’ll end up choosing several favorites and making them over and over.)
Two other baby food books I would donate if I owned them are Feeding the Whole Family (whole foods) and Super Baby Food.
Thanks guys. Braxtonhicks, if I get time on Friday, I’ll sneak into Alleycat’s as I’d love to take a look at the book. Tiff’s not on solids yet. Thansk
Uh oh, I guess that means I better get my butt in gear and get the books down there! I’ll let you know when I do that so you don’t waste your time!
Don’t hurry on my account. I would more likely go in next Friday anyway. Thanks again. Amos.
Hi Amos. No baby food recipes from me yet, as your Tiff is ahead of our Emily. But I’m interested in the subject, because I believe it may be relevant to us soon. At 4.5 months, Emily has no teeth yet, but I’ve recently started putting pieces of fruit in her mouth and was pleased that she gums them vigorously. She likes pears and cherries (of course – they’re so sweet), and I mashed a little banana for her, but those were all experiments as her diet is still 100% mooneye.
When should a baby first eat something other than milk: 4 mos? 6 mos? Also, I read that some people feel one should start with veggies before fruits, becasue otherwise the child may become spoiled by the sweetness of fruit and not want to eat bland veggies – true?
Babies should start when they are ready- which varies from child to child. The World Health Organisation recommends somewhere in the middle half of the first year. With my first child it was five and a half months, mainly becasue I was returning to work, and wanted her to be partly weaned. With my second child I tried off and on, but she was not very interested until about nine months - she still prefers breastmilk even at 18 months!
Every child is different. the longer you can hold off if you are breastfeeding, the better so their immune systemis not compromised, particularly if there is allergies in your family history. If you are bottle feeding, it might be slightly different. You can start with rice first, and then fruits and vegetables. Meat is for around 8-9 months and you should not try eggs until a year incase of egg white allergies.
Hope that helps you Mother Teresa
rubykate covered most of it, but I’ll add a few things. A few things to look for in seeing whether a baby is ready - she’ll start getting hungry before the next feed is due, she’ll be extremely interested in watching you eat and look like she wants some, chew on her hands etc.
Previously it was 4 months, minimum. I believe WHO recently changed it to 6 months. Better to start late than early. I probably started around 4-5 months with both of mine. Rice cereal is fairly universally accepted as the starter food because it’s bland and can be mixed with water or milk/breastmilk to a very runny consistency to start with. Carrots and banana often come next. Children will naturally have their own food preferences - you can shape their tastes to a point, particularly for the first year or so, but they will eventually assert themselves. Just don’t add any sugar or salt.
Big no-nos for the first year or so - eggs, peanuts, honey.
Sometimes their mouths are watering watching you take every bite of your meal. 
We cannot let alyssa see us eat anything unless we intend to share some with her.
And I realize some people might disagree but I did start adding a little bit of butter to purees when I served it to her (veggies). It aids digestion but also, I had one who was a very fussy eater and adding the butter helped get her more interested in eating.
Are eggs really a nono during the 1st year? Why?
I’m not actually sure if it’s all the way to the end of the first year, but definitely you have to be careful - egg white is one of the foods most likely to cause allergies. (Introduce yolks first.) Same with peanuts. I can’t remember the problem with honey - something to do with some toxin which might be present that adults handle easily but might be dangerous for babies.
And bh, I don’t see anything wrong with butter myself - it’s good, natural fat, and babies (unlike some of us!) do need a decent amount of fat in their diets 
Amos and anyone else interested, I dropped off a couple of baby food cookbooks at the Alleycat’s bookshelves today. Both are DK books but I also recommend “Super Baby Food” by Ruth Yaron and Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair.
[quote=“ac_dropout”]Congee is the Chinese traditional baby food.
Eggs are also a good starter solid foods.[/quote]
Better look into the eggs before feeding to your baby. It’s either the white or yolk that CANNOT be eaten too early because of possible allergy complications. I also learned recently that honey is a big NO. It can cause infant botulism.
Egg whites and honey are bot better put off until one year old. Same goes with shellfish.
peanut butter is another.
All nuts for the first two years, I think.
Babies are born with about a six-month supply of iron in their livers. If you are exclusively breastfeeding and aren’t introducing iron-fortified cereals at six months or so, then you might want to talk to your physician about an iron supplement for your child.
What a coincidence this thread rose to hte top just now. I was just helping my wife to feed our daughter (8 mos old) some freshly mashed applesauce (actually it’s grated through a cheap device we bought at the baby store, but it looks like it’s mashed). Although she usually loves it, for some reason she wasn’t interested today, so my wife put it in a bottle with some water and she drank it eagerly. I guess sometimes eating requires too much effort.
As for water, I’ve read that not only do babies not need water but it can actually be harmful. However, we give ours water fairly regularly throughout the day and night and she really wants it. My wife says she needs it because Taiwan is so hot and aircon is so dry. I think she may be correct. What do you think?