Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Baby Food Part 3

I'm so amazed by what babies can "gum" and eat successfully with such a small number of teeth. During month 9, I started experimenting with Evelyn eating her own food (beyond cheerios) at dinner and at all meals on the weekends when we were home. She is now successfully eating most of her meal herself, although I supplement by feeding her some pureed veggies since it seems like half of the food goes in the high chair. Here are some of our favorites for each meal. In addition I must recommend eating with no clothing on and using a bib that "catches" some of the food!

It is also important to note that when I cook dinner for us I try to think about her. For example, if I make ground beef for spaghetti for us, I will take off about 1 cup without seasonings and portion it out into smaller amounts for her in small snack baggies so I can pull meals out for her on the fly. So when you see "1 cube" those are portions I have frozen in ice cube trays. When you see 1/4 cup, those are portions that I have frozen in small snack baggies.

Breakfast:
  • diced bananas
  • diced pears
  • diced peaches
  • diced sweet peppers with scrambled eggs and hash brown potatoes
  • diced sweet peppers with diced turkey sausage
  • applesauce mixed with 1/2 of a hard boiled egg
  • chunks of clementines
Lunch/Dinner:
  • 1 cube of ditali pasta with 2 cubes pureed veggies
  • 1/4 cup ground chicken with petite diced tomatoes and 2 cubes pureed veggies
  • 1/2 to a whole diced avacado
  • diced carrots with peas and small shreds of chicken
  • 1/4 cup pot roast with mashed carrots and pureed sweet potatoes
  • 1/4 cup pot roast mixed with some brown rice and mixed veggies
  • pureed okra and sweet potatoes (I didn't puree it until the okra was complete mush, you can still taste the texture from the seeds and some of the okra skin ~ which is what I was hoping to achieve) 
  • 1/4 cup red beans and brown rice with pureed veggies (see Baby Food 2 post)
  • 1/4 cup ground chicken with cabbage and carrots (cooked until soft ~ used for egg rolls for us)

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Spinach and Tortellini Soup

For dinner tonight I made Spinach and Tortellini Soup. I must give credit to my friend Kattie for the new idea! I also found 2 recipes on pinterest, but was torn between the two and didn't have all the ingredients for either one...so I made my own recipe using what I had in my pantry with the support of Recipe 1 and Recipe 2

My Recipe:
Place and stir together the following ingredients in the crockpot on low for 4 hours (I actually put mine on "warm" and left it for 6 hours.
4 cups or 1 box of chicken broth
2 cans of petite diced tomatoes
1 bag of fresh spinach
1 pkg of sliced mushrooms (torn into smaller pieces)
1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
1 teaspoon - 1 tablespoon italian seasoning (I don't really know how much I used)
1 hefty pinch of red pepper flakes
3 cloves of garlic, minced

About an hour before dinner turn the crockpot on high and add:
1 bag frozen cheese tortellini (I personally didn't think it was a good idea to put these in earlier because I didn't want the noodles to get soggy)
1 brick of cream cheese cubed (I'm sure you could do a broth based soup and avoid this...but it sounded SOOOO good!)

It was AWESOME!