papaya for small people
I make my own babyfood
here’s why
here’s how
I actually can’t stand papaya at all
I’m not a fruit person
babyfood tips
July 14, 2009
Ahh, baby food. When to begin feeding it to your baby. What food to start with. How to make your own. How to pack a nutritional punch for your baby at mealtime.
In case you haven’t noticed, I am a big fan of both nutrition and ease. To that end, we sometimes use both jars of baby food and mostly use homemade baby food.
But I’ve been on a big homemade babyfood kick with Stellan lately, as he is really starting to enjoy solids…and lots of them. One trick I use to make homemade babyfood making a little more efficient is to make up huge vats (read: food processor fulls) of babyfood and freeze the leftovers into ice cube trays for me to thaw and feed him later.
I made these protein cubes the other day and Stellan loves them. I blended together cooked egg yolks (no egg whites until age one, but babies can have the nutritious cooked yolk), oatmeal, plain whole yogurt, cooked kidney beans, prunes and a little bit of fresh spinach.
He ate a bowlful. I froze the rest, and when he wants more, I just let a few cubes thaw out. They’re easy for on the go, too. Just put a few in a covered glass custard bowl, toss in your diaper bag with a bib and spoon, and by the time it’s lunchtime when you’re out, the baby food is soft and ready to eat!
Another favorite of Stellan’s is split peas. I grind (dry, uncooked) legumes like split peas into powder. Then, I cook them in hot (distilled) water on the stovetop. When it forms a nice, mushy paste it’s ready to (cool off and) eat!
Again, I freeze the extra. This morning, for our little guy’s breakfast, I thawed two split pea cubes and mashed them with a half of a banana and some sprinkles of brewer’s yeast. I sometimes also mix them with (unsweetened) applesauce. He loves both. Freshly milled flaxseeds are usually sprinkled on top of his meal.
It’s always best to begin a baby on solids with single grain baby cereal or banana. But you can build from there as your baby’s tummy gets accustomed to food! Our other favorite baby foods:
cooked brown rice, blended, mixed with a little water/formula/breastmilk until runny/pasty/however your baby likes it
avocado (super duper source of healthy fats needed for brain development)
oatmeal (we like steel cut)
brewers yeast and cooked eggs yolks…mashed and mixed into anything
beans…processed into powder and cooked or cooked whole and then mashed
sweet potato (super source of vitamin A)
squash
kale (probably the most nutritious food on the planet)
carrots (I’ve heard it’s best to buy carrot baby food as opposed to making your own because of the something or others in carrots)
flaxseed oil (I dribble some into Stellan’s brown rice porridges)
And, well, that’s Stellan’s diet so far! As he grows, I gradually blend his food less and less so it grows more chunky. When his pincer grip gets better, I’ll start leaving some of the veggies whole (but small, like little cooked broccoli bits) so he can feed them to himself. It’s a slow progression from soupy to runny to thick to pasty to chunky to whole foods as a baby grows.
And remember that children, like adults, all have different likes and dislikes. It’s totally normal for your children to eat different things than mine, and vice versa! Tastes changes as children grow, too. There’s no single right or wrong way to feed a growing child!
MckMama answers your questions, weekend edition, take 1
August 16, 2008
What terrific questions so far! (It’s definitely not to late too pose your question in my “ask MckMama anything” post below. I will be here all weekend. Hah, hah.) But truly, I will crank out a few more answer posts after this one. I chose a few questions to get me started. Grab a glass of lemonade and enjoy getting to know me a bit more!
What kind of camera do you have? What kind of lenses do you use? Could you tell us novice photographers how you get your subjects so clear and the background a little fuzzy?
I started with a film Canon Rebel and I moved to a digital Canon Rebel xTi and now I primarily use my Canon 40D. For my professional stuff, I rent an 85mm prime lens and some wide angle ones. The best–and most affordable–regular use lens I ever purchased was recommended to me by my friend and photography mentor Kelly Vasami...a 50mm prime lens. (The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens). Opening the aperture of your camera all the way and using a great lens like the one I just mentioned will help you achieve the clear subject/fuzzy background look.
How do you make the carrot puree?
Well, I am so glad you asked! Because it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3 (4, 5, 6)!
1. Gently boil some fresh carrots (or other veggie).
2. Toss them into your food processor.
3. Blend them up. Add some whatever (hard boiled egg yolk, flax oil as pictured here, etc…).
4. Finish blending it up. Scoop the baby food into a jar (don’t use plastic! icky! icky!).
5. Feed it to your eager baby.
6. Make a bunch at a time, while you’re at it. Freeze extra jars of baby food so you can thaw and feed later!
Now, tell me that wasn’t easy!
What kinds of baby carriers do you use?
As far as my wraps and slings, my favorites are the Kangaroo Korner pouch sling and the Storchenweige wrap.
I was impressed to see some great new twists on vaccination questions! Be sure you’ve read what I have already covered by clicking on my delaying vaccines label in my sidebar. But I would love to address these questions:
I read another blog, where both parents are just out of med school. They also are the very natural type but cringe at the thought of no vaccines. They actually said that if they had a family practice that they would not allow children who were vaccinated even enter their building. I LOVE the idea of not vaccinating, and really love your take on it…but do you think it would prevent kids from being accepted into certain places??
This is a great question and I have so much to say about it, but in the interest of brevity, I am going to keep it short:
Not vaccinating my children according to the recommended schedule does keep them from being allowed into certain private places (In spite of what they may try to get you to believe, public schools cannot turn a child away because he or she is not vaccinated.). I cannot drop my children off in the hourly care at our local community center for that very reason.
However, the sad fact that my children would not be allowed into the building where the couple you spoke of practices would never alone keep me from changing my mind about vaccines. I am sure they are a wonderful, educated couple who would have a fantastic family practice and I would probably be missing out. But not fully vaccinating my children is for their own benefit. The fact that they may miss out on things but that cannot change the fact that I refuse to give my children vaccinations that they don’t need.
With that being said, I find it rather humorous…this idea that non-vaccinated children should be kept out of any place where vaccinated children would be. If vaccinations work, then what is there for the parents of vaccinated children to worry about!?
Do you give the kids any vaccines?
This is a learning process for me. I do not know everything about vaccines. I research often and have altered my views over the years.
Big Mac has had the most vaccines of all of our children, MckNugget has had a few (tetanus, the ones that offer some protection against meningitis) and Small Fry hasn’t had any. I am fairly certain that we will have our children vaccinated as they grow older and their bodies are bigger. I am not totally against vaccinations! I am, however, against vaccinating 7 pound newborns whose blood-brain barrier hasn’t even closed yet!! I am against the routine vaccination of children for sexually transmitted diseases (Hepatitis), I am against the lumping together of vaccines (Like the MMR, etc. You can ask your clinic to give them to your children separately.), and I am against vaccines originated from tissue from aborted babies (the Chicken Pox vaccine). I am against vaccinations for illnesses that themselves cause fewer deaths and hospitalizations in our country than do vaccine injuries from vaccinations for the same illness!
There is certainly a risk in not vaccination our children according to the recommended schedule! But there is (a different, but equal…and bigger in some cases) risk in giving our children all of the vaccines that are now recommended.
I really want to believe that the American Academy of Pediatrics, pediatricians and the government of our good nation are trying to look out for the best interest of all children. Making blanket recommendations may be a great idea for the country at large. But the regimen of vaccines for each individual child holds so many untold dangers! As the parent of my children, I have to do what is best for them and not for the country.
How do you “do it all” and keep your house so clean, etc.?
I pick up bit by bit, in increments, in 5 minute chunks, after and before activities with my children, all day long. I am not kidding. It never ends. Because, after my children’s bedtime, I refuse to do any work of any sort. That time is for me and my husband and I won’t do anything that is not fun.
We are (relatively) organized, always on the go, I pick up my messes as soon as I make them and I help my children to do the same. I am pretty good at this child-rearing while home-keeping thing. With that being said, I am not supermom. To that end, please read this post about how I “do it all”. I think you will enjoy it!
What are your feelings on birth control?
Unlike with some things I believe, here–in my opinion–there is not clearly a right or wrong answer. Families who choose to use no form of birth control at all and accept any children that come their way are truly blessed and I really look up to and admire them! Simply using natural family planning (not using any control, but paying close attention to one’s cycles and avoiding fertile times) is another great option. I personally have no moral or other reason to be against barrier methods of birth control, such as condoms, etcetera. We find them to be great solutions during times we do not want to conceive. I draw the line at abortion as a means of “birth control,” as well as the morning after pill, IUDs and even The Pill. Those all have abortive effects to some extent, allowing the chance for a pregnancy to begin and then effectively destroying the pregnancy. It is at those forms where I draw the line.
The furniture in your room is gorgeous. Would you mind sharing where it is from?
The furniture in my room is from HOM and is the first real furniture my husband and I ever bought…last June. 
The cradle is from my dad, however. He made it for me when I was born and all of my MSC have slept in it for the first four months or so of their lives.
Would you be willing to post some pictures of the MckBaby bedrooms/nurseries?
Of course!
Here is Small Fry’s bedroom. It is where MckNugget currently sleeps, though, as Small Fry still has her crib in the closet off my husband’s and my bedroom! Having the boys share a bedroom did not go as well as we had hoped (They went to bed fine and loved it, but MckNugget kept missing out on sleep and became crabbier and crabbier and that was no good.)
We are still doing some rearranging and, by the time MckMuffin is born and then is ready to move out of our bed and into his own crib (in our closet), we will move Small Fry from our closet to her yellow room and hope to have the bigger boys’ bedroom situation ironed out by then.
Have you found a way to preserve you blog, either in book form or printing it off, so that you will have it as a momento for your kids later down the line?
Yes! I have! I use Blurb.com. You can download their free software, “slurp” your blog right off the internet, and have it printed into hard or soft cover book(s)!!
And, on a housekeeping note (and because I don’t think I have her email), I need to say a big thank you to Tiffany in Michigan for the awesome–and generous!–care package! The hospital forwarded my mail to me here at home and your box came today. The boys went wild with their stuff for at least an hour. Thank you!!!!!
Whew! Are you all on information overload now? A couple more answers posts to come, so look for them!
making my own baby food
June 19, 2008
I may be all natural in some areas, but even I don’t make my own clothing or dwelling places. One thing I am passionate about making, however, is my children’s baby food. (But don’t get me wrong, my kids have all eaten baby food out of jars, too. I may do things the natural way, but I’m not 100% a purist.)
Consider this post an abbreviated lesson on making your own superduperhealthy baby food from scratch. (This is assuming your baby has already begun solids with a great starter food such as rice or bananas. Once baby is ready for combined solids and is at least 7 month old, heartier meals like the one I am going to share can be introduced.) And if I can do this, anyone can. Because remember, I hate to cook.
A great basis to any baby food dish is a legume. Beans. Incredibly healthy sources of protein, fiber and nutrients. To begin, simply scour your cupboards to see if you have any. Or buy them in bulk at the natural food store. Or dry in bags at the grocer. From here, there are two ways to proceed: Either cook the beans, and then blend them up in your food processor or grind the dry beans first, and then cook the powdery result with water. The second is much, much quicker. And I like quick. So I choose that way to proceed.
Mix the dry, ground beans in with some water and bring to a boil on the stovetop. Reduce heat and simmer the bean mix until the water is absorbed and the mixture is soft. (This technique also works great with ground brown rice. This is the basis to much of my children’s baby food, in fact.)
Is this sounding like a lot of work? Don’t forget that you can grind a bunch of beans or rice ahead of time, and then just cook up a quick batch using some of it. The cooking itself only takes about 5 minutes. Keep in mind that ground rice and bean baby food does not reconstitute well. So just make as much as you think your baby will eat at that meal, and not a whole lot more. The consistency of leftovers can be kind of off.
Next, it is time to add some extra nutrition to your baby’s meal. Some favorites add-ins of mine (because they are just so darn healthy and packed with vitamins) are:
Nutritional Yeast. Available at your natural food store, these yummy flakes (incredibly similar to brewer’s yeast) bring heaps of Vitamin B’s to the table. My mom used to make us a health “shake” before breakfast every morning that had as one of it’s main ingredients nutritional yeast.
Flax oil. A huge benefit of flax oil is the omega fatty acids it provides. Don’t forget the power of the wondrous avocado as a baby food as well. It is nutritious for the same reason. I dash a bit of flax oil into the baby food I make and also into the boys’ oatmeal in the morning (though, lately, we are on an eggs-for-breakfast kick.) We don’t drink much juice at all in our family, but I have heard of folks who get flax oil into their kids by putting a little “shot” of it into their children’s morning cup of OJ.
Other astonishingly nutritious add-ins include: cooked egg yolk (an amazing source of nutrition for babies–they can eat this before age one, provided you do not serve the egg white with it), freshly ground flax seeds (they need to be ground right before eating to get the most health benefit, though adding whole seeds to recipes adds an interesting crunch, nut butters, tahini, kale or other ground legumes.
With this as your base baby food dish (that I serve daily to my baby food eaters), you can also add to your baby’s diet cooked. Our favorite things to add? Veggies, fruits and plain yogurt. I’m hoping that my children’s growing brains and hungry tummies will thank me for starting them off on a nutritionally sound basis.
So that’s why I make my own baby food.
