Isobel's first finger food

Isobel is still mostly having purees as she is not the least bit interested in any kind of mashed or lumpy food. Fair enough!

Lately she started making gestures with her little hands as if she was picking up imaginary food and feeding herself. Normal? Who knows :) It was totally cute though and the clearest sign in the world that perhaps it is time to let her indulge in some well-deserved finger food.

Babies are so good at letting you know when they are ready for the next level! They definitely tell you in their own little way.

But what to give, since she is not used to actually chewing and swallowing bits of food??? I started with something soft that she could easily chew or "gum", like courgettes, pictured above.

I cooked the courgettes sliced in rounds, steamed until soft and then placed 5 or 6 into each cube of my mumi&bubi freezing tray and popped into the freezer. These cubes "lever" out just like cubes of pureed food.

**You can see in the pic that I pureed half of the rounds to mix in with other veg and meat. This finger food thing is new so I'll still need to feed her most of her solids for now :)

For serving, I warm the courgette cube of frozen rounds, then cut each round into smaller pieces. I'll give her the whole piece when she is a bit older.

It is so handy to have a supply this easy courgette finger food ready to go in your freezer!

Courgettes are a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals important for your baby's health and development. See nutritional info and puree recipe here at our original courgettes puree post.

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who came along for making Mary's Market another fun and successful morning!

It was great to see all of our friends who stopped by our stand to say hello and share their homemade baby food experiences and fabulous to meet new ones too.

See you at the next Mary's Market on 22 May! Put in on your calendars as it will be that last one for a couple of months...

Directions and more info on Mary's Market here.

Who's cooking with mumi&bubi?

Rebecca McLeod, owner of Made4Baby, joins us this week to share a little about her family, business, and how the Solids Starter Kit (SSK) helped her to prepare healthy homemade baby food in no time at all:

Family
I have 2 wonderful little boys, Sammy is almost 4 (and the face of Made4Baby) and Will has just turned 1, a Labrador called Charlie and my wonderful husband Jimmy.

Made4Baby
Made4Baby is a range of natural skincare – our fabulous easy to use range includes a Fragrance Free range for super new and super sensitive skins and we also have an Organic Citrus Fragrance, loved by Mums and kids!

The Made4Baby office is out the back of our home so it makes it easier to look after the boys, manage the business, especially while Will has been a baby.

As a busy working Mum, how has the SSK made it easy for you to make your own healthy homemade baby food?
Great – when Will was a baby I would just choose one meal for the whole family and take the first part off for him and then pop a row in the cubes. Then I could add all the herb, spices and extras. This just mean on nights when I was in a rush or not prepared, I could just pop out a cube (or more as his tummy expanded!), and he had a healthy homemade meal.

What percentage of baby food was homemade by you (or someone in your household), using the SSK?
75% - wish it was more but there were times when it was just all too hard and I succumbed to the readymades (but mostly when out, never really used at home as Will didn’t like them as much)! Also Will moved quite quickly to wanting to finger feed.

Thank you, Rebecca! You can find out more about Made4Baby skincare at www.made4baby.co.nz Max loves his Bubbles!Bubbles!

Chicken & Kumara Dinner

This super-easy meal for older kids and bubs who have started eating meat was submitted by Rebecca McLeod from Made4Baby:

2 x chicken drumsticks
1 kumura, peeled and cut into cubes
Water to cover in pot

Just bring the chicken to the boil, and then cover and reduce to a simmer for 30 min add the kumura and cook for another 15 min, once all is cooked then take out and puree or mash to the consistency required. Take out what you need for the night and put the rest in the SSK.

Also love putting cheese sauce in there so that if any meal isn’t looking that flash, a bit of cheese sauce can improve it a great deal!

Who's cooking with mumi&bubi?

This is an exciting new feature of my blog where I will profile a fabulous Mum who is cooking with mumi&bubi.

You may be surprised - I sure am. Because it's not who you think! It's not the leisurely Mum with time on her hands to be puttering around the kitchen all day making baby food.

Mums who use the 'Solids Starter Kit' are a savvy, tuned-in bunch: they are super-busy Mums from around the world - professionals, WAHMs (work at home Mums), Mums working part-time and SAHMs with babies, toddlers and busy households to manage.

And they all use our mumi&bubi 'Solids Starter Kit' because we make it easy for them to save time making their own healthy homemade baby food.

So who's cooking with mumi&bubi? Check back soon to see our first profile...

Two Spoons - the key to a happy meal

Isobel is 8 months old now and wants to be interactive at mealtimes. It is getting harder to negotiate spoonfuls of homemade baby food goodness into her little mouth without Isobel trying to grab the spoon.

I am not one of these Mums who gives her child a toy to play with during mealtimes because that is simply too messy. It's one thing for her hands, face and clothes to get messy - it's another thing entirely for a puree-covered toy to be hurled across the room and land on my carpet. Or curtains. And, not to mention, questionable manners with all that racket at the dinner table. Best to start them off right from the start as far as manners are concerned. No toys at the table.

Besides, our after-meal cleanup routine is already more than enough and includes:
-clean Isobel (all of the time)
-clean the high chair (most of the time)
-clean the floor (sometimes)
-change our clothes, yes mine too! Things can really get out of hand sometimes (depends on what was for lunch and/or our agenda for the rest of the day: see my Beetroot post)

So what to do??? She needs something more as me making funny noises while feeding her is just not working for her any longer....

So I came up with a simple solution: If she wants to pretend like she is feeding herself, give Isobel her own spoon. It has worked a treat for us, she really thinks she is feeding herself, the little spoon goes back and forth from her imaginary bowl on her tray to her mouth and, in between, I get a spoon full of homemade baby food in there once in a while too.

Everyone is happy...

Organic Brown Rice

From around 8 months or so, babies can be introduced to brown rice. Most babies are on the move by this time - Isobel is so fast these days crawling from room to room and scrambling to climb up on the coffee table, etc. - that some more carbs & this exciting new texture may be a welcome change.

To save you from the time-consuming task of cooking brown rice on a regular basis just for your baby, the 'Solids Starter Kit' is ideal for freezing "cubes" of rice and having a 1-2 month supply at hand in the freezer.

Leanne Cooper, the Organic Bubs nutritionist and owner of Cadence Health, recommends that brown rice can be introduced around this time. Just make sure that it is cooked thoroughly until soft.

Avoid GM rice, but this can be easily done by choosing organic brown rice like the one we use from Ceres Organics. It is widely available at regular grocery stores, has a wonderful nutty flavour and is great for the whole family.

Wrigglepot 'Solids Starter Kit' review

The cost of these seem high in comparison to other trays on the market, however, unless you only want to cook up a single carrot you will be forced to buy several of the others which will end up being more expensive. These trays really will save you money and are a joy to work with.

* Super easy to clean because of the unique shape of the individual portion sections and only 2 trays to contend with. The individual pots of other brands means individual cleaning and are a lot more time consuming.
* The unique shape of the portions makes removing the food easier than any other tray I have tried.
* A total of 42 portions means I can cook more food at one time.
* Easy to stack in the freezer.
* They are a great shape and in between babies I fill them with lime and lemon juice and melt them in jugs of soda water, etc and they look great.
* BPA free!!

I used to make up a big batch and then take out all of the portions and store in a zip lock bag in freezer for super easy access.

review from wrigglepot In Australia, buy your Solids Starter Kit from Wrigglepot and get free shipping nationwide!

Tonight's dinner

Isobel's evening meal is the only one she has before her bottle. This is simply due to the fact that she is hungry long before her bottle is due, so I feed her dinner early most days, anytime between 4:30 and 5:30 depending on how her day is going.

This is also practical as I can feed Isobel her solids and she is happy to entertain herself with a tasty frozen cube of banana or other treat in her teething feeder while Max and I have our dinner together. She also likes sitting up at the table in her chair with us as part of the family meal. (Gavin works afternoons so it's just the kids and I in the evenings) She has her bottle after her bath sometime between 6 and 7pm depending on her naps for that day.

Tonight's dinner consisted of 2 cubes of carrot baby puree and 1 of swede along with 2 cubes of pear puree on the side. She loves drinking from her pink Safe Sippy2 which she can use all by herself.

I still haven't found a good stainless steel baby feeding spoon so - for now - I like this nifty silicone one that I found at Smith & Caughey. Although it wasn't intentional, I love that the vibrant orange colour of the spoon exactly matches the handles on the Safe Sippy :)

No Time? Think BIG!

These 4 du comice pears are at least twice the size of the pears I normally see in the produce section. One glance and I knew that they would be a huge time-saver. You can see how big they are, just a bit shorter than my mustard bottle!

It takes roughly the same amount of time to peel and quarter a large piece of fruit as it does a small one and the same effort will yield twice - or more! - the number of homemade baby puree cubes.

So, to make twice as much baby food in the same amount of time and with the same effort as using small or medium-sized fruit, GO BIG.

Choose large-sized of produce when taste or flavour isn't compromised by going big. This works well for fruit such as apples and pears and veggies like potato and pumpkin. Just be careful with things like parsnip and swede, the bigger ones tend to be a bit woody in the middle.