Pureed Foods?!
Answers: I really would like to make food for my baby, he is 5 1/2 months old, what would you suggest I give him? I have heard of pureeing foods, but I am not sure what that means? use a blender to mush the food up? what foods are best to do this with? and what foods are the healthiest?
Pureed baby food is blended in a blender or food processor, but if the baby is very young it is made smoother by straining out any fiber. You can force it through a fine sieve/strainer with the back of a spoon after it's blended.
Ask your pediatrician which foods to start with and what sequence to add them. Generally start babies with a mild cereal like cream of rice.
Pureed fruits would come next. You can add mashed, sieved banana to the cereal. Strained apple sauce is good too.
Strained vegetables can include carrots, peas, beets, spinach, etc.
The main thing to remember is that you want to give you baby a variety of foods but only add one new food every several days or week so you can tell if there are any allergies. Also, baby's taste buds are EXTREMELY sensitive, so you don't need to season the food and really shouldn't season it for baby. There's plenty of time for that when he's older.
Ask your doctor when to add meat. Generally you'll start with an easily digested meat like chicken or lamb.
Once your doctor clears your baby for solid foods he can eats TINY pieces of what you eat, just not so seasoned.
Have fun. Enjoy your little one.
I suggest you ask a docter but purree does mean mushed up food like those little bottles with smashed yams. You can try lots of friuts and veggie but depends on what your baby likes! Just press puree on the blender with desired fruit/ vegtables.Remember it like liquidy mush you Dont want your poor baby to choke now!
Check with the pediatrician first to make sure that your baby is ready for the introduction of foods other than breast milk or formula. If he is already eating the rice cereal and seems to have no problems with keeping down what he eats or processing it, try some fairly low fiber veggies, like peas or carrots. Cook them until soft, put in the blender and flick puree. They should be mush. Mashed potatoes are another good starting point. Be sure they are smooth, without lumps to choke on. Avoid seasoning veggies or other foods as they are introduced to your child. This makes it easier for them to like them 'as is' later in life. Absolutely avoid corn until your child is older... the starch turns to sugar quickly and the individual kernels are nearly impossible to process in a fully developed digestive system. For three weeks or so, alternate between three or four veggies and see how baby processes them and reacts to the change in general. Some are happier with more in their system, some aren't. After veggies, begin to introduce fruits. Avoid acidic types until his system matures to about 30 months. Bananas generally soften stools significantly, so feed in small amounts until a tolerance and familiarity is built up. Cook berries or small firm fruits in a bit of water, strain the seeds, skin and/or pulp that does not pass easily through the sieve or cheesecloth. Measure the amount of juice and cook over high heat in a small sauce pan. When it reaches a boil, whisk in a tablespoon of cornstarch mixed with 3 tablespoons cold water for each cup of juice. Boil about a minute, until thickened and cool. These kept well for about five days stored in a covered container in the refrigerator. This avoids damage to the digestive system from fiber that your son can't process quite yet. Apples, cherries, blueberries and grapes all work quite well. As he continues to grow, you can puree a bit of cooked pork with some of the juices or a bit of apple juice, beef with veggie broth, or chicken with its broth or veggie, too. Around 20-24 months is average for the digestive system to have developed to the point it can process these. The habits he develops with food will stay with him his whole life.
Puree - food prepared by cooking and straining or processed in a blender
Most fruits and vegetables would be great to puree for your child. You can gather ideas next time you're in your local grocery store by checking their baby food section and seeing what types of baby food they carry. Some good examples would be:
---Fruits---
Apples
Pears
Bananas
Mangos
Peaches
Prunes
---Vegetables---
Carrots
Squash
Pees
Green Beans
Sweet Potatoes
*Make sure you cook these vegetables as you would cook them for yourself like steaming or boiling them, then puree them in a blender. You might need to add a bit of water to keep a puree type of texture that will be easy to swallow for your child.
To keep things easy on yourself, you should cook up a weeks worth of food for your child and store it in your freezer. A great way of storing them is to puree your food and pour it into an ice-cube tray.
I make all of my sons foods at home, its super easy. Some are more hard though (peas, greenbeans) and I tend to buy those. But I make him avocodo (is the #1 healthiest) add a bit of water but you dont have to, pears, apples, mango, papaya, sweet potatoes, banana, carrots, peaches, berries, etc.
I buy some frozen like the peaches and berries and boil them in juice then blend in a food processor but you can use a blender, I just find this easier. I boil all fruits in juice and then add the juice when I blend to get the thin or thick that I want it to be. I use water for veggies. And you can add cinnamon and etc to peas or apples bc its safe for babies.
I just put it in ice trays, wrap in plastic wrap and freeze then pop them out and put them in baggies that I label and keep in the freezer. The great thing about this is that you can mix things as well like sweet potato and mango, peas and apples, apples and pears, etc. They you never run out of flavors plus if he dont like peas the apple will make him eat it you know.
All of these things are really great for them. My son loves mango and the banana and avocodo you do not need any water you can just mash with a fork. I do use the processor when I do the avocodo personally though so its not chuncky.
This website is great you should try it it tells you what foods taste good with what, what age is ok and how to do it all plus recipes.
http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/
http://www.homemade-baby-food-recipes.co...
Also, all of these things are SAFE starters for a baby his age. I started with green, went to orange, yellow, etc. I buy prunes and squash at the store. I get everything I can and make sure he eats it and my son is not a picky eater bc of this, he loves everything so I think you should try that as well.
pureed is ground to almost a liquid. put veggies in a blender with the least amount of liquid possible to get all the food into the blades and let it go till there are no lumps. veggies are good and sometimes adding a bit of grain (cooked) is good. get a cook book for a baby or look at the label on baby food jars and follow what they put in, except, leave out the junk, like thickener and sulfates or other preservatives. you can also do meat this way, or even mix the meat with veggies.
My daughter's 27 and I made all of her food. I also used to teach this stuff and was on TV once sharing this very information ----->so listen.
A blender or cuisinart doesn't puree. You need to separate the outer hull of anything that has a hull, like oatmeal and even barley has a bit.
First follow the allergy risk rules" NEVER give anybody under 3 years anything that has a high risk of causing an allergic reaction, then when you do add them one at a time after that you can probably avoid most food allergies. No No's include: egg whites, dark grape juice, moldy /aged cheese, cow's milk products like cheese and yogurt, bell peppers,peanuts, strawberries, wheat, cow's milk and honey. I'm sure you can find a site that lists these. Or maybe your pediatrician has a list. or local health dept
Divide food into 3 groups: cereals (oatmeal, barley, brown rice), fruits (bananas, cooked apples, white grape juice, apricots, peaches...) and veggies (carrots, green beans, spinach and other greens, squash) and add one a week so if there's a problem you will be sure which food caused it.
You can buy a big pureer (sp?); it's like an old fashioned flour sifter but bigger and stronger with the shovel type blade. It's the best way to make asparagus soup, too. Anyway, they also have baby food making puree-ing gagets which are small and work like a tampon with a cutting blade on a handle. You push the food up through the tube and turn the blade then your baby's food will be on top of the blade; when you remove the blade the hulls are left behind.
Start with oatmeal, but triple the water . If you're lucky you can get your hands on an old Mother's Helper book from when they taught this stuff in school. My grandmother had one dated 1912 and it was a tremendous help because it has recipes no one has anymore. Later, you can cook it in diluted white grape/apple juice or goat's milk (not soy as it may cause gas/colic since it's a bean) If you're nursing, add your milk. Baby colicy? Add lactobacillous acidophious powder, not yogurt unless it's made with goat's milk, which I've never seen. I cured the most awful colic my baby had. Her digestive system was just immature even though I was nursing . She really needed those digestive enzymes,
Since your baby is over 3 months s/he can have goat's milk. NO HONEY. It contains pollen, another high risk for allergy food.
Next week add banana to her/his diet. You can mush that with a fork. Next a veggie: carrots are a good start. Those can be cooked well and blenderized or cuisanart -ed as they have no hull. (save the water for cooking other veggies or adding to cerel making water). Now, back to cereal: barley. Same thing, triple the water and puree. Then fruit: introduce either diluted apple juice or white grape juice. Then back to veggies: puree cooked spinach so it's pasty.
OK on the goat's milk? I put the powdered in the cereal water. Colic? When cool, add the lactobacillus acidophilus powder.
When baby gets enough teeth, cubes of goat's milk cheese, then you might try a soy- cheese or maybe a soy yogurt. But don't push the soy too much because it could really cause gas; just some for diversity, especially if Baby's tolerated a soy formula.
If your baby has tolerated the juice you can add that to the cereal cooking water if you want, but really water it down so it's not too sweet and always "brush" the baby's teeth with a rubber baby toothbrush and give plain water to wash out sweets, especially before bed. The last thing s/he needs is to be teething AND get a cavity s/he can't tell you about.
If you're really dedicated you can make goat's milk yogurt, but you will have to use a good heaping tablespoon of cow's milk yogurt in order to pass the lacobicillous acidophilus [ that's naturally occurring in everybody's gut, but may be lacking in a developing baby's; it helps digest food like little "pacman" and is always destroyed when you or baby takes antibiotics so to avoid a yeast infection or "thrush," which is yeast in the mouth, or around baby's anus, give acidophilus powder or yogurt 1/2 way between antibiotic doses...you, too! There's a high level in your milk which is why bottle babies get colic more often than nursed babies. Get a yougurt maker on Ebay, but get a set of 6 or 8 separate 8 oz containers so you don't contaminate a big container by dipping into it over and over for such a long period of time.
And you don't have to stop nursing now. To reduce your risk of breast cancer significantly nurse at least a year. Baby will wean on her/his schedule.
Back to pureed food: check Toys R Us for a small puree-er, one you can carry with you so you can even puree your dinner for baby when you're out rather than taking baby food with you (no fat, sweets, or heavily spiced...but not bland! No one likes bland boring food). EBay should have them too from everyone whose baby is now too old to need them. Same with big kitchen puree-er. Or a kitchen store. I don't recommend an automatic or electric one. Do it by hand so no little husks slip buy and choke the baby.
Don't even bother with corn until s/he has more teeth. It's just too hard to puree. Toward the end of her/his 2nd year of adding new foods make split peas. They boil down to a mush, but since they are a bean they might cause an allergy. Some people are allergic to all legumes, not just peanuts. My neighbor's daughter died from the drop or so of peanut oil in a cookie that didn't have peanut oil on the label because, the company said, it did not contain a significant amount of peanut oil. So this allergy avoidance is serious business. Don't give in and don't listen to those people who said they gave their babies peanut butter. It's not worth it. Wait until Baby is 3 years old. Studies have proven , I repeat, that if you don't give these risky foods until age three, most of these children do not develop food allergies.
Oh, the exception to the "no wheat rule" [actually it's the gluten in the wheat] is "ZWIEBECK" (sp?) teething crackers or stale bagels for teething. Most of it goes on their clothes.
I work as a cook in a residential home for the elderly, so I have to puree food for those with chewing and swallowing difficulties due to stroke, illness etc. I assume there are some similarities with preparing food for babies who have not yet learned to chew and swallow solid foods.
Rather than a blender, I use a 'Moulin a Legumes'. It's a hand-operated device that fits over a saucepan with rubber legs, and purees the food using metal plates. Since the food must pass through the plates into the pan they also act as a sieve to ensure that the food is completely smooth. Tough fibrous parts and any unpureed lumps which could be a choking risk simply remain behind in the hopper, where with a blender they could be left in the food.
I also have one at home, since they're also great for making soups and smooth sauces. In fact, now that I think about it, the one I have at home is a vintage model that my parents used to make my food when I was a baby!
Just one point: if you do invest in one of these, I recommend an all-metal model, rather than the cheap plastic versions.
http://www.akademia.ch/recettes/glossair...
