Porridge!

Life has been very busy lately, with little time for blogging. But I will try to do some more baby food entries before Nora becomes a toddler! She's now a very busy 9 1/2-month-old. Crawling, climbing, and dancing are some of her favorite activities!

There have been many new foods over the past couple of months, and a daily staple is "porridge." Porridge takes many forms, but always includes one or two grains*, a protein, and at least one fruit or vegetable. I mix it all together and serve it warm, and she usually loves it.

Some common combos include:

oatmeal - egg yolk - squash
oatmeal - egg yolk - banana
barley - tofu - broccoli - squash
millet - tofu - pumpkin
barley - tofu - broccoli - sweet potato
millet - garbanzo bean - green bean - peach (yes, really, she ate it!)
barley - lentil - green pea
barley - lentil - carrot

As long as you've got the basic ingredients on hand, you can make a quick, healthy meal in a short amount of time!

* I usually sprinkle a tablespoon or two of Earth's Best organic iron-fortified cereal into the porridge to increase its iron content.

Thanksgiving Tofu

The vegetarian baby turned 8 months on Friday, so we decided to give her her first "protein" food for Thanksgiving dinner. I mashed up some organic extra-firm tofu with organic canned pumpkin and added a pinch of cinnamon. She seemed to like it! I also gave her a few tiny cubes of tofu for finger-food practice, most of which ended up somewhere in the depths of the high chair.

Little Bird

I always thought of millet as "bird food," since it's a primary ingredient in many birdseeds. Today, I fed it to my own "little bird." This baby is spreading her wings! She crawls all over the house, can go up and down a single stair, and is starting to try to climb. We love to watch her.

I bought organic pearled millet in bulk from our nearby co-op grocery store. According to WholesomeBabyFood.Com, millet is rich in a variety of nutrients, including B vitamins and iron. I then used the recipe for "Millet Baby Cereal" on that same webpage. I cooked up half a cup of dry millet, and it made far more than she'll ever eat in three days. Next time I'll make less. I then pureed part of it in my blender, mixed in a little more hot water and some breastmilk, and served it up. She liked it pretty well!

Update: Since writing this entry, I have changed my millet-making procedure. I now grind the millet to a powder in the blender before cooking it. I had been afraid of doing this, but it's actually much easier than trying to blend cooked millet. It takes about a minute to do one cup of millet, and the powder can be stored for a few weeks, covered, in the refrigerator. To cook, I bring one cup of water to a boil with a tablespoon of olive oil, whisk in 4 tablespoons of millet powder, lower the heat, and simmer -- stirring frequently -- for ten minutes. I then divide the cooked millet into three portions, serve one portion that day, one the next day, and the rest the day after that. (The millet thickens as it cools, so if I am serving it a day later, I warm and thin it by stirring in spoonfuls of very hot water until it reaches the right consistency again.)

A Typical Meal

At 7 1/2 months, we have at least two and sometimes three solid meals per day, depending on naps. Each meal includes a serving of grain and 2-4 vegetable and fruit servings. I try to rotate the different fruits and vegetables so that she gets a variety every day. She has one serving of avocado every day for healthy fats.

Shown in this photo, clockwise from top-left, are: homemade oatmeal, peaches, avocado, butternut squash, and green beans. Other foods regularly on the menu are commercial rice cereal (for iron), sweet potatoes and yams, green peas, mango, carrots, prunes, bananas, and occasionally applesauce and plums. She has also had commercial baby barley cereal at a friend's house but we haven't been able to find any of our own yet.

I located BPA-free ice cube trays and bowls with lids at BabiesRUs and prepare most of her food in those. It's really a lot of fun!

Mama's Little Pumpkin

Of course, a vegetarian baby ought to dress up as a giant fruit for Halloween...

Butternut Squash Cubes

What does it take to make your own baby food? I've been asked this by several people lately. It's really quite simple. And, I think, it's kind of fun, too.

To be fair, I'm not making all her food myself. As mentioned earlier, she's having commercially prepared oatmeal because it's fortified with iron. Also, when she came down with a virus last week, the nurse recommended rice cereal and bananas, so I went ahead and got commercial rice cereal (Earth's Best Organic) as well. I also use jarred organic applesauce and frozen organic peach slices. But so far I have made everything else myself.

Shown in the photo is a tray of butternut squash. I purchased one squash -- organic -- for just under $3. It made a total of 35 cubes. I figure that if you account for the water that's added to the jars, one of my cubes is equal to 1 - 1.5 jars of food. That means my $3 got me the equivalent of more than 23 jars of food, depending on how you count it. Not a bad investment! Even if you aren't concerned about the price of jarred food, though, preparing your own baby food when you can is also environmentally friendly. I saved at least 23 glass jars from being used!

1. Slice a butternut squash in half. Scoop out the seeds and pulp. (Save the seeds for roasting, described below.)
2. Place the two halves face down in a baking dish with about 1/2 inch of water.
3. Cook in a pre-heated, 400 degree oven for about 40 minutes, until soft. (You can check by stabbing it with a fork.)
4. Peel the squash and let it cool for a few minutes.
5. On a large plate, smash the squash with a fork. Make it very smooth.
6. Press blobs of squash into a clean ice cube tray. Freeze overnight. If you have more squash than fits into your tray, the extra can be placed in a tupperware in the refrigerator until there is room to freeze it the next day.
7. Pop the squash cubes out and store them in a plastic freezer bag. Be sure to label and date the squash. It's good for up to two months in the freezer.

Roasting squash seeds:
Rinse the seeds. Toss with a little olive oil and salt. Roast in an oven with something else you're cooking until the oil is all soaked in, stirring occasionally.

Feeding the squash to your baby:
Take a frozen cube from the plastic bag. Heat over low heat in a small saucepan with a few spoonfuls of water. Stir frequently until all the squash is thawed and warm, adding water as necessary.

Avocado!

The vegetarian baby has embarked on this next stage in her life! She had avocado on her 6-month birthday -- you can see the results. She seemed to like it pretty well, but then developed a cold that kept her from enjoying much of anything for about a week. Since the cold ended, though, she's been eating up her twice-daily meals.

Her absolute, hands-down favorite food so far is oatmeal. Because I was concerned about iron, I opted to use a fortified commercial brand instead of making my own. We feed her Earth's Best organic whole-grain oatmeal, and it's a hit!

To date, her foods and opinions on them include (in order of introduction):

-- avocado (liked, then didn't like, now likes)
-- sweet potato (didn't like, now tolerates)
-- [rice cereal] (she has just had some tastes of this at our "baby pre-school" class, she likes it fine)
-- oatmeal (her favorite)
-- unweetened applesauce (also introduced at baby pre-school and I decided to go ahead and let her eat a little every few days -- she loves it)
-- banana (didn't like, now tolerates)
-- peaches (just a taste, at pre-school, she liked them)

And next on the lineup, later today, is butternut squash. So there's some variation from my original plan, but on the whole I'm happy with the schedule so far.

I've been asked why I was skipping rice cereal. In my opinion, there's not much point to it. Rice cereal is usually given as a first food because it has a very low allergy risk. However, it doesn't have much to offer - nutritionally - other than calories and fortified iron. I decided that I wanted to maximize nutrition, and oatmeal offers more vitamins and fiber, as well as the iron, with a similarly low allergy risk.

With the exception of the oatmeal and applesauce, I am making all her food myself. I use the "food-cube" method. I buy the produce -- all organic -- then cook and/or puree it at home. She'll eat a bit fresh that day, and the rest gets frozen in an ice cube tray overnight. Then I pop the cubes out and store them in freezer bags. So far I've made two avocados, three sweet potatoes, and 2 bananas . . . and I have enough of all these foods to last another 10-15 days. It's much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than buying all those little jars! Plus it's very satisfying.

Garbanzo Beans with Spinach and Spices

One of my favorite quick-and-easy recipes -- very low-fat and nutritious!

Ingredients:

1 medium onion, diced
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
2 T canola oil
2 T ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (or less if you don't like it spicy)
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1 10-oz package frozen spinach
2 tsp garam masala (Indian spice blend)
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste

1. Saute the onion and garlic in the canola oil over medium heat until translucent.
2. Stir in the cumin, coriander, tumeric, and cayenne and heat for one minute.
3. Add the tomatoes and simmer five minutes.
4. Add the garbanzo beans and simmer five minutes.
5. Add the spinach and simmer until fully thawed. Stir it in.
6. Add the garam masala and salt to taste. Simmer a few more minutes and taste to adjust seasonings.

Serve over brown rice cooked with a little tumeric in the water for yellow coloring.
Optional: If you make it spicy, serve with plain nonfat yogurt on the side.

Sitting Up!

My baby girl can sit up by herself . . . she's growing up so fast! We're just a week and a half shy of her 6-month birthday, when she'll start solid foods. We'll start with vegetables and then fruits, in lieu of the traditional rice cereal which I'm hoping to skip altogether. I think early cereals will include oatmeal and quinoa, pending a little more research.

My current plan, assuming our pediatrician approves it, is to start with avocado, then sweet potatoes, carrots, green peas, bananas, pumpkin, and squash (heavy on the autumn harvest). I'm pretty excited and think it will be lots of fun for both of us!

Fat-Free Stir-Fry

Finally having recovered from my delivery & postpartum complications, I decided it was time to work on losing the pregnancy weight. I gained a rather astonishing 45 lbs... of which the baby was less than seven. Three months of breastfeeding and limited exercise enabled me to drop 25lbs, and finally at the beginning of July I felt ready to start focusing on diet.

I lost 30 lbs on Weight Watchers in 2004 and I am a big fan of the program. I find it works very well with being vegetarian. Since starting to count points and increase my exercise in the middle of July, I have dropped another five pounds. This recipe for fat-free stir-fry has become one of my lunchtime favorites over the past couple of weeks.

Points Value: 6 (without egg) or 8 (with egg)
All ingredients are Core

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked brown rice or whole wheat pasta
1 1/2 cups frozen vegetables
1/5 block of firm or extra firm tofu, diced
vegetable broth
soy sauce

Optional: chopped onion, minced garlic, chopped hard-boiled egg, cayenne pepper, whatever else you want to throw in

1. Heat a frying pan and spray it with cooking spray. Saute the onion and garlic, if using, until the onion is starting to soften.
2. Saute the tofu until the sides are starting to turn golden. Add vegetable broth as needed to keep the tofu from sticking to the pan.
3. Add the frozen vegetables and saute until cooked through. Add more vegetable broth as needed, and soy sauce for flavor.
4. Add the cooked rice or pasta and saute until heated through. Add more soy sauce as needed.
5. Remove from heat and turn onto a plate. It will be a large pile of food! Mix in the egg, if using.

Hints: When taking care of a baby all day, I don't have time to spend cooking rice or chopping vegetables. I'll make a large pot of rice one day to keep in the refrigerator and use for several days. Same goes for eggs - boil a bunch at once and then eat over several days. The frozen vegetables are a big time-saver, and are often more nutritious than fresh ones anyway. I like the vegetable broth that comes in a rectangular carton that you can keep in the refrigerator, just using as much as you need at a time.