Toddler Food - Creamy Pastina

Like a lot of parents, I have a picky eater on my hands. I am constantly looking for new recipes that seek to introduce my little GirlKitty #1 to new flavors. I found this recipe from Food Network's Giada De Laurentiis. Apparently her own little wee one enjoys this recipe also. I adapted it, however, to fit better to my own tot's liking. If you want to original recipe, go here.

Creamy Pastina

1/2 bag mini pasta (the kind you find in the Mexican aisle for 50 cents) or orzo pasta (about 1 cup)
frozen peas
olive oil
1 carrot
1 small onion
1 cup water or chicken stock
4 oz cream cheese
1 tbsp butter
dried dill and pepper to taste

1. Cook the pasta according to package directions. Make sure you reserve some of the cooking liquid to thin out your sauce later.

2. In a frying pan saute finely chopped carrot and onion with the olive oil. After a couple minutes add the water or chicken stock and continue to simmer until the vegetables are soft.

3. When vegetables are cooked through add the cream cheese, broken into chunks, and stir until melted.

4. Add peas, butter, dill and pepper. Make sure the peas are sufficiently warmed and the butter is melted. Serve warm or chilled.

Making Your Own Baby Food

When I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter I was all about finding the best products for her (that also usually meant the most expensive). The best food was also on the list and it took me a long time to determine what this was. As a new mother you want to protect your baby from harm. As you browse through your grocery store and you pass the baby aisle your first instinct isn’t that one of those things is store bought food. However, after a little research I realized that food is one of the biggest things I wanted to protect my baby from. There are so many fillers in processed food today that are so unhealthy. After reading the labels on my baby’s food I was disgusted!

Even formulas have questionable ingredients. If you look at the ingredients on formula cans most list the first ingredient as high fructose corn syrup. Some have even as much as 50%. I was amazed at this. I didn’t want my baby’s bottle to be filled with sugar. They always say that ‘breast is best’ anyways and I was determined to breastfeed when my daughter was born. But – she was a biter. I was willing to work through the pain but after a series of problems that was later identified as a milk protein allergy along with sensitivity to mother’s milk I was forced to turn to formula. The doctor gave us a script for a hypoallergenic formula but I still felt like a failure. Because I felt like this I was determined to make sure I would feed my daughter the best possible solid foods.

When the time came to switch her over from milk to solids I began to make my own baby food. I found this to be extremely easy and not very time consuming. When I was cooking dinner at night for the rest of the family I pulled out a baby food recipe from a favorite baby food cookbook (Baby Food Bible by Eileen Behan). I could usually produce and freeze the equivalent of 10 jars of baby food before dinner was done.

There are a lot of different accessories you can buy to help you make your own baby food. There are products that have a built in system like the Beaba which cooks and purees the food in one container. I, however, thought this system and others like it to be too expensive. In my opinion babies don’t eat pureed foods long enough to justify the cost. I chose to spend the money on a Breville electric steamer that I could use for years to come and that had a much higher capacity than a few jars of baby food. I already had a 10 qt Food Processor so I was set. I also have a bamboo steamer that works just as well and is a lot cheaper but requires boiling a pot of water. For a cheaper alternative to a food processor you can use a blender. To freeze my baby food I used Juvenile Solutions Baby Cubes storage containers. A cheaper solution would be ice cube trays. You can get these at the dollar store. When the food was done freezing I would transfer the food cubes to Ziploc bags, wash my containers and re-use them another day with a different recipe. I found it’s best to start your cooking a few days before you want to introduce a food so you can have options in your freezer for different meals to feed your little one. I know I don’t want to eat the same thing everyday for every meal. As always, when introducing your little one to a new food, only introduce one new food at a time and wait at least 3 days before introducing a new one to make sure he or she has no allergic reactions. Making your own baby food is really simple and cheap. A store bought jar of baby food can cost you over a dollar. I’ve made my own baby food for less than 15 cents a jar. That’s a huge savings and you can be comfortable knowing there are no preservatives and fillers in your baby’s food.

Of course, we all run into those times when convenience trumps cost, especially when traveling. I always bought a few jars of store bought food to tote around in my diaper bag so I had food in an emergency. However, I was only comfortable buying Earth’s Best baby food because they use all organic ingredients with no fillers.