Joy’s popsicle post provided me with a burst of inspiration: Could I sneak vegetables into my daughter’s diet by disguising them in a tasty frozen treat?  The answer is yes.  Here’s my groundbreaking recipe:

Strawberry Spinach Popsicles

Pint of very ripe strawberries (overripe is okay)
2-3 cups of carefully washed spinach leaves
1 TBS honey (or more, to taste)

Place the strawberries in the blender and fill the remainder of the blender with spinach leaves.  Add honey and puree until smooth.  Pour into popsicle molds.  (Yields 2 cups liquid)

I invented this recipe and gave the strange-looking brown popsicle to my daughter.  She took one lick and said, “Yum, yum!”  Then she ate the whole thing, making quite a mess in the process.  Of course I sampled this brown concoction myself.  It really does not taste of spinach at all-it’s just pleasantly strawberry-flavored. 

Now, I know that disguising vegetables in other foods is controversial.  When Jessica Seinfeld’s book Deceptively Delicious came out, I read reviews from critics who claimed that lying to children about what they were eating would result in bitterness and mistrust in their parents as they grew older and wiser.  This seems a little far-fetched to me.  Besides, I did not lie to Audrey; I just handed her a popsicle and she ate it.  I hope she grows to love normally-prepared vegetables very soon, but in the meantime, I’m glad I found a way to sneak some greens into her summer confections.

This week’s Works for Me Wednesday is all about easy recipes that use five ingredients or less, so head on over to Rocks in My Dryer for more simple cooking ideas.

The sun’s out, your baby’s teething and it’s time for a soothing summer treat.  So, how exactly do you concoct the perfect popsicle?

Popsicle molds:  There are several plastic molds on the market (I have to confess that I own a set), but there are other options available around your home.  You can make mini-pops with icicle trays or individual used yogurt cups. Crate and Barrel made BPA-free popsicle molds earlier this year but they appear to have been discontinued. I’ve written to our friends at The Soft Landing about their safest choice for popsicle molds and will keep you posted on their response.  If you prefer to avoid plastic altogether, you can use paper cups, carefully washing them out and reusing them each time.  You can also try small juice glasses, ensuring that you gradually cool the glass so that it doesn’t crack with extreme temperature change. 

The perfect recipe:  Growing up, my mom made homemade popsicles out of fruit juice, but they were always extremely dense.  We longed for those soft store-bought brands that seemed to melt in your mouth.  If you’d like to get that texture at home, try blending in whole fruit or yogurt.  The thicker mix will also make it easier for your popsicle sticks to stand up if you’re using ice cube trays or cups.  If you’re up for using gelatin, (which vegetarians might not be) it will create a softer popsicle that doesn’t melt quite as quickly.

Natural Dripless Popsicles:  These are a great way to recycle half eaten fruits and get healthy food into your child. Pictured is the momentous day that that I served Roscoe his first dripless popsicles.  He ate four in a row in one sitting. When I asked him what he would dream about right before bedtime he said “sicles.”  Luckily there was no reason to feel bad about his popsicle obsession since I used organic plums, my son’s half eaten bananas(tossed into the freezer over the last few weeks) and a bag of organic frozen blueberries.  He loved them even though he’s usually picky about eating any of these fruits by themselves.

• 1 envelope unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup water
• ¼  cup sugar (or other natural sweetner)
• Three cups of fruit

Heat water, gelatin and sugar in saucepan over low heat until gelatin dissolves, for about 5 minutes.  Then toss gelatin mixture in the blender with fruit and puree.  Pour the mixture into cups and wait until frozen.  Enjoy!

A chocolate dream:  I found a recipe for Berry Fudgy-cicles on vegan-food.net. and modified it just a bit. Honestly, these are completely amazing and taste way better than anything this healthy should.  The secret ingredient for these homemade fudgesicles is silken tofu which provides them with plenty of nutritional prestige.  I’m not sure if this treat will be more exciting for my son or for me!

Toss the following ingredients in a blender, puree, pour into molds, and freeze. 

• 12 ounces of firm silken tofu (make sure it’s silken tofu made especially for desserts)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar or maple syrup
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup rice milk, coconut milk, or cows milk
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Pinch sea salt
• 4 strawberries, washed, stemmed, dried and sliced into quarters (put these in molds and pour chocolate mix to surround berries before freezing)

Baby-sized options:  If baby is too little to handle her own popsicle stick, consider using one of the products that use a tiny mesh bag. You can put frozen fruit chunks or ice in the mesh and then let her gnaw away to her heart’s content. This link shows Muchkin’s Fresh Food Feeder (which is BPA-Free according to their website), but you can usually find one of these in a local store if it’s easier than ordering online.

What are your ideas for summer treats?  Please add your exotic recipes to our post!

When I was still pumping at work and crawling out of bed for nighttime feedings, I clung to the dream of weaning at one year.  Although I loved my amazing ability to create food for my infant without a second thought, there were times where I longed for freedom.

It came as a surprise to me that I wasn’t ready to give up breastfeeding after my son’s first birthday.  Luckily, the decision to continue had many benefits for my son, for the environment, and for my own health.

For baby’s health:

• Breast milk provides excellent immunity for toddlers so that they get sick much less often.
• Breast fed toddlers have fewer problems with allergies.
• Extended breastfeeding helps a child continue to bond with the mother.
• Breast milk provides incredibly nutrient-rich food for toddlers.

For the mother’s health:

• Studies show that breast cancer risk is reduced in direct proportion the amount of years that mothers breastfeed.
• Extended breastfeeding also reduces the risks of ovarian, uterine, and endometrial cancer.
• Producing breast milk can help moms continue to lose baby weight.
• It can delay ovulation so that it naturally provides space between pregnancies. (Don’t count on this as your only means of birth control though!)
• Breast feeding forces a mom to sit, breathe, and admire her baby before throwing another load of diapers in the wash or whipping up a lasagna.

For the environment:

• Breast milk comes without containers and is naturally organic! 
• There’s nothing more local than breast milk. 

Roscoe started to wean at 20 months and is now finished breastfeeding, but I have to say that I really do miss it.  If I was a stay-at-home mom I would probably have gone a bit longer, but Roscoe was starting to want less and less so we just followed his lead.  For more detailed information on why extended breastfeeding is such a great option, check out this article from Mothering magazine.  

I’ve recently realized that the foods that thrive right here in my local community gardens have somehow become more exotic to most families (including mine, until recently) than mainstream items like oranges or bananas.  My grandparents generation regularly ate homegrown cabbage or beets, but today these are somewhat of a culinary rarity in many households.

Our family’s vegetable vocabulary was much smaller until just a few months ago.  Since joining a CSA, I’m humbled by just how ignorant I was about the range of produce available.  We ate the same ten types of veggies most of the time and rarely tried anything outside our repertoire.  Then we got a rutabaga.   

Of course, I had no clue what this alien veggie was even called until I looked it up on our CSA website.  Previously, I had only used rutabaga as a nickname for my infant, but I had no idea how to prepare it. 

After looking in the Joy of Cooking for a simple recipe, I found that it was easier than I imagined.  I peeled, sliced, and sautéed the rutabaga with a bit of red wine vinegar, a few herbs and some salt.  The result was incredible!  The rutabaga flesh was buttery and smooth, with a taste that my toddler loved. 

After that first success, I’ve learned that there are so many simple ways to prepare the veggies outside my comfort zone.  I’ve thrown red cabbage, kale, leeks, and potatoes into frittatas and stir fries with great success.  There’s really no recipe required!  Just chop veggies, sauté them and season for stir fry or toss in eggs and cheese for frittatas. 

My best adventure was making homemade pizza with sausage, leeks, and red chard.  It was a great success and everyone loved the veggies I slipped in!  So, if you’re wanting your toddler to develop a healthy palate, you can take the lead by throwing some unique produce in your cart or planting them in your raised beds.  Enjoy!

As soon as my daughter turned one, I wanted to introduce her to whole milk.  Like many other parents, I wanted her to have hormone-free milk, so that meant paying more and buying organic.  Right?  I like to save money, but organic milk costs a lot more than conventional milk–sometimes up to twice as much.  There was also something else I wondered about: all the organic milk I found on the shelves came from other states–some as far as Ohio!  Part of the reason I tried to buy organic foods was that I wanted to help the environment, but buying something that needed to be ultra-pasteurized and taken on a thousand-mile road trip wouldn’t be any better for planet Earth than buying conventional milk from a local dairy.  In fact, it would probably be worse.

Ideally, I’d be able to find milk that was both organic and local.  At the time, this was not an option.  I had to choose, and I ended up deciding that supporting a local, non-organic dairy was a better choice than buying organic milk that came from far away, considering my local dairy did not use hormones.  Plus, at under $3 a gallon, it was more affordable than many of the other brands on the supermarket shelves.  Now, just one year later, Alpenrose dairy has gone organic, so it’s possible to have local organic milk here in Portland.

Of course, not everyone plans to introduce cow’s milk to baby’s diet.  Joy’s son, Roscoe, has some food allergies and intolerances.  She continued to breast feed him after a year and offered him soymilk as an additional beverage.  Now that he’s older, he can tolerate cow’s milk, which Joy buys from an organic dairy.  Because Audrey is so small, I was glad she took to whole milk, which comes packed with vitamins, fat, and calories. (Read my “Fattening Baby, Naturally” post for more baby-fattening ideas.)  Although cow’s milk is not an environmentally or nutritionally perfect food, I opted to introduce it to my baby’s diet over alternatives such as soy or almond milk.

Some questions for our readers: Do you plan to introduce cow’s milk when your baby turns one?  What alternatives to cow’s milk, if any, have you tried?  What are your thoughts on conventional, organic, and local milk products?

My daughter has loved black beans since we started her on solid foods.  First we blended them up and added them to her oatmeal porridge (Mm-m, doesn’t that sound scrumptious?).  Later, she was able to pick individual beans up with her hands and gum them.  Once she was about eighteen months or so, she enjoyed eating black beans in salsa or chili.  We make three pounds of dried beans at a time, use most of them in Andy’s frozen burritos (we make twenty burritos at a time), and enjoy the rest in other recipes.

Using dried beans instead of canned has a few advantages.  First of all, it’s cheaper.  I estimate that we save a whopping $2.80 every time we cook our own beans.  We also avoid the toxins lurking in cans.  (Holly on the Ecobaby Blog wrote about her concerns with canned beans here.)  Last but not least, we’re keeping more than seven fifteen-ounce cans out of the recycling bin every time we cook a vat of tasty legumes. 

Here’s how we make three pounds of dried beans:

1. Soak dry beans overnight in a six-quart stock pot.  Beans will double in size, so use as much water as possible.
2. Drain beans.  Add fresh water.  The whole pot will seem filled with beans at this point, with only an inch or two of water over the top.  That’s okay.
3. Cover and heat on medium high until the water just starts to boil.
4. Reduce heat to low.  Simmer, covered, for 45 minutes to over an hour, until soft.

Three pounds of dry beans will yield over six pounds of cooked beans.

Note: You can add spices to the beans while cooking, but don’t add salt until they’re done or they may never soften.

Freeze your cooked beans in six or seven glass jars (old peanut butter jars are perfect), and you will have them on hand to use in place of the canned variety.  I like to cook huge batches at a time to make the effort worthwhile.  Although it takes about ten hours from start to finish, the hands-on work involved in cooking three pounds of beans is minimal.  Now I just have to decide what to do with that $2.80 I saved!

For more Works for Me Wednesday tips, visit Rocks in My Dryer.

Ever since Audrey started on solid foods at six months, she’s loved oatmeal. We spoon-fed oatmeal to her for months, and now she asks for her “oats” and feeds herself. I was happy to find a cheaper, more nutritious alternative to the typical rice cereal, which many parents are now avoiding as a first food. (Read an article about how to choose baby and kid cereals here. Learn more about the oat porridge I made Audrey in the early months here.)

I had a harder time finding a dry cereal that Audrey could enjoy as finger food. Cheerios, a common baby finger food, contain both wheat and sugar–two ingredients doctors say to avoid during baby’s first year. Plus, they’re not organic. My neighborhood stores offered plenty of organic Cheerio-like cereals, but almost all of them also contained wheat and sugar (sometimes disguised as organic cane syrup). 

Finally I found the perfect solution: puffs. Both Nature Valley and Arrowhead Mills make puffed grain cereals that are perfect for babies. The only ingredient is the grain itself–no sugar, no salt, no additives or preservatives. I’ve seen puffed corn, rice, millet, wheat, and kamut. Kamut is the preferred puff in our household. Although it is a larger relative of wheat, many people with wheat allergies or intolerances can digest kamut. If you are really worried about introducing wheat or its cousins, I’d recommend the corn puffs instead.

What about the price? I try to buy the six-ounce bags when they are on sale for $1.50 ($4/pound), but the regular price is $1.90 ($5.06/pound). Yes, this is more expensive than a jumbo-box of Cheerios, which can be had for 22.2 cents an ounce ($3.55/pound). However, I think the extra price for an organic, whole-grain cereal is worth it. And most importantly, kamut puffs are one of Audrey’s favorite foods!

This week’s Works for Me Wednesday is all about what doesn’t work for you.  Cheerios weren’t working for me, so I’m glad I found an alternative.  For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, head over to Rocks in My Dryer.

It takes almost no time to whip up a batch of pancakes from scratch.  Pancakes from a mix are filled with chemicals you don’t want your kids to eat, and they come in packaging you have to recycle or throw out.  For even speedier homemade pancakes, Joy explained how pre-mixing the dry ingredients can save even more time.  

The version I use is adapted from the Joy of Cooking’s basic recipe.  I use 100% whole wheat pastry flour.  The pancake is a fairly versatile food–you can experiment with different flours and milks if your kids don’t eat wheat or dairy.  I’ve even forgotten the eggs and had them turn out all right!

This recipe is suitable for babies and kids over one year old.
 

Whole Wheat Pancake Recipe

Preheat griddle.

Mix together in a large bowl:

1 ½ cups whole wheat pastry flour (or even regular whole wheat flour)

3 tablespoons sugar

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

In another bowl, mix together:

1 ½ cups milk

3 tablespoons butter, melted

2 eggs

Combine wet and dry ingredients, gently whisk together, and cook pancakes on the griddle.

Pancakes are endlessly adaptable.  Add blueberries, raisins, spices, or nuts to boost nutrition or calories.  I make a whole batch and keep leftovers in the fridge or freezer, then reheat them in the toaster oven for quick snacks.  My daughter, who has always hovered at the lower end of the growth charts, can eat up to four pancakes at a sitting.

I think I finally did it: I found an object that embodies the Green Baby Guide’s motto.  The humble pancake saves time, money, and the planet.

I’ve always wanted to be one of those minimalist cooks who owns nothing more than a good knife and one skillet.  After years of acquiring every kitchen gadget and appliance under the sun (including, but not limited to, a crepe maker, stand mixer, hand mixer, waffle iron, and panini press), I finally had to admit that I’m actually a kitchen maximalist.  The upside of this is that I didn’t have to run out and buy anything for my baby-food making needs. 

Below you’ll find my review of every conceivable food-masher known to home cooks.  Needless to say, it makes the most sense to start with what you already own and purchase something only if what you have doesn’t work.  I’d also recommend buying something that you’ll use in the kitchen for years, even after baby’s palate has matured.

Blender–I found it funny when Joy wrote about using her blender to make baby food because this is the one gadget I never tried–it seemed like too much mess, and I didn’t want to add a lot of water to the food.  If this is what you have, though, it will work just fine.  Keep in mind that the blender is better at liquefying than mashing, which is why you’ll need to add water for best results.

Hand blender (immersion blender)–My aunt and cousin gave me a hand blender years ago.  At first I thought I would never use it.  What’s the point of a little hand blender if you already own a full-size blender?  At the time I didn’t have a full-size blender, but I was still skeptical.  But then, only moments after unwrapping my new gadget, we used it to chop up some chocolate in a big pot of milk.  This was necessary for reasons I have now forgotten.  I still use my hand blender to this day.

But I digress.  The hand blender is great for making baby food.  You don’t need to add a lot of water, and it’s much easier to clean than the regular blender.  Plus, it’s efficient for mashing small batches of food when you don’t want to drag out the heavy-duty appliances.

Food Processor–Due to my aforementioned desire to have a minimalist kitchen, I lived without a food processor for most of my life.  Now I can’t envision a future without it.  It turned out to be my number-one tool for food-mashing.  You can grind dry things as well as blend wet things, so I used it to mill oats that I then cooked into a porridge.  Audrey ate this porridge three times a day for months.  (Read about that here.)  You can also use a food processor to grind nuts into nut butters or chop up vegetables very finely without liquefying them.  The food processor works much better than a blender to make hummus, another baby staple (or so I’ve heard–my particular baby has not caught on to this infant culinary trend).

Food Mill–A food mill is another handy gadget for the baby food chef.  The advantage of this implement is that it will sort the stringy, seedy, or otherwise inedible parts of food from the soft, mushy parts.  So, for example, you could cook up some string beans and crank them through the food mill, and the strings and stems would be left behind.  Beyond the realm of baby food cookery, I’ve used the food mill to make gnocchi (a food processor would render the potato dough into a gluey mess) and coulis–the food mill saves hours pushing berries through a sieve with a spatula.

Mini Food Mill–I never had one of these, but Joy soon abandoned hers in favor of her blender.  These teeny-tiny food mills are sold in baby stores all over.  Supposedly you can take them everywhere you go and grind up your food at restaurants with it.  This doesn’t seem particularly practical, and once the baby is eating normal food the mini food mill would be out of commission.

Potato Ricer–Many mashed potato lovers swear by the potato ricer, which could also be used to mash starchy baby foods.  It wouldn’t work at all on green vegetables or fruits, I would imagine.

Potato Masher–So many foods can simply be mashed with a potato masher.  This is a nice, carbon-free way to pulverize your baby’s delicacies.  Of course, this is just conjecture as I do not own (nor will I ever own) a potato masher.

Pastry Cutter–A pastry cutter can double as a potato masher, in a pinch.  It’s also great for turning soft foods such as sweet potatoes or bananas into delectable purees.

Fork, knife, hands–Most home cooks own one or all of these items.  They can be invaluable for the baby-food maker in the family and have many household uses once baby yearns for more toothsome fare.

Other implements–I’m sure I’m missing a few obvious food-mashers.  A mortar and pestle?  A chinois?  An ulu?

Making all of my baby’s meals from scratch (and avoiding jarred and boxed baby food) has saved me hundreds of dollars.  I always knew exactly what went on my child’s plate and had a grand time experimenting with my arsenal of kitchen gadgets.  My daughter has since moved on to more sophisticated fare (such as apple slices and crackers), but I’ll always take pride in knowing that I created some truly delicious and wholesome recipes.  I’ll leave you with one of my favorites:

Mashed Banana

Ingredients: one banana

Directions: peel banana and place on a small plate.  Press the tines of the fork repeatedly into the banana until it is completely mashed.  Serve immediately.

First it was the spaghetti.  Roscoe would pile heaps of noodles on his head at dinner and the make us laugh against our will as he peeked out from the pasta tendrils. Now Roscoe, always the entertainer, has come up with another coy little trick for mealtimes: spitting out food.  He pops it into his mouth, takes a few chews to savor the taste, and then just as happily lets it dribble down his chin while he goes for the next bite.  We can say our son is a comedian or a creative eater, but when dinnertime is over and the belly laughing is done, what are we supposed to do with all that food?

Families with dogs don’t ever have to ask themselves this question and probably also have much cleaner floors than we do.  Since the only thing resembling pets in our home are wilted houseplants, we depend on our compost bin to function as a food waste controller.  Rather than sending scraps to a landfill where they don’t have enough air to decompose properly, composting allows food to biodegrade and be reused as fertilizer. 

We keep a plastic container (purchased at a thrift store) on our countertop and dump in all the non-dairy, non-meat waste that ends up on Roscoe’s tray at each meal.  Then, we regularly head out to our Darth Vader-shaped compost bin and dump in the latest batch.

As our years of composting continue, we’ve learned just how many things can be tossed in, including tea bags, manure from vegetarian animals, wood ashes, paper napkins, fall leaves, and grass clippings. It confounds me that the bin never fills up, no matter how many overflowing containers of scraps we load into it. We even tossed our old bank statements and paperwork into the bin this year-good old Darth managed to quickly digest it, leaving plenty of room for Roscoe’s offerings. 

For those that haven’t started a compost bin yet, it’s far simpler than you might guess.  You can make your compost bin out of an old trash can and just a few other materials.  Check out this website for a video showing just how to create your bin and start composting. In warmer climates, like here in Oregon, the bin can go year round, but in more seasonal areas it’s best to start composting soon (early spring) and continue through the fall.  Compostguide.com has loads of inexpensive options for setting up your own bin plus tips for advanced composters on using worms or making “compost tea.”

In addition to composting, we’ve also tried some creative methods for cutting down on Roscoe’s food waste.  Instead of loading his tray up with too many choices, we fork over a few items at a time. This seems to cut down on the off-tray food dumping. Christina Katz, author of Writer Mama, recommends taking all those half eaten bananas (which we seem to accumulate on a daily basis) and other partially-nibbled fruits and tossing them into a Ziplock bag. She stores them in the freezer and when her kids long for a smoothie, she whips out the frozen fruit bag and dumps it into the blender.  Voila!  I suppose if I were organized enough and/or had more time, I could do the same thing with veggies and then blend them up for vitamin-packed soups and stews.  

At this point in our busy lives, the compost bin remains our standby for dealing with Roscoe’s food waste.  In the spring when we pull rich dirt out of the bin for use in our garden beds, we are glad that we trooped out into the rain all winter long to dump our potato peels and carrot tops.  The top quality soil from our compost is produced at no expense AND saves us money on our garbage bill by cutting down on our monthly pickups.  That dirt manages to help us grow organic tomatoes, basil and peppers for lovely summer meals that Roscoe will likely be putting on his head instead of into his mouth.  Those scraps will again end up in the mouth of dear old Darth, our family’s favorite compost bin.