Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Baby Bistro







For all you baby food chefs out there this book is a must! I make Sawyer's food from scratch on a daily or weekly basis. Not because I am worried about fillers or preservatives in canned baby food, the truth is I'm appalled at what those cute miniature baby food jars cost! Sawyer would easily eat 4-5 jars a day and at close to $1 a pop, that's more than I'm willing to spend.

My mother in law Carol has her doctorate and teaches nutrition at USC. One of her students went on to create books called The Baby Bistro and The Toddler Bistro. Carol got me signed copies of them and I can't even begin to tell you how much I LOVE these books!  They have excellent nutrition advice on what to feed your baby at specific ages, recipes galore (that are super easy) and store recommendations on where you can buy all the ingredients. Each recipe tells you how many baby size servings it makes and whether you can freeze the leftovers. I was overwhelmed at what and when and how much to feed little S. when it came time for him to eat solids. Luckily these books came to my rescue!

When Sawyer was only eating purees I would just whip up some sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, peas, spinach, etc. and then freeze them in ice cube trays. Once they were frozen I'd empty the cubes into freezer bags, label them with the date, and viola! he was set on food for a month. Each ice cube is about 1 oz. so he usually eats about 3 cubes at each meal. When I mention to other moms that I make his food, some think it sounds too time consuming, but honestly it's not at all. And the money we've saved on buying jarred food is an insane amount, mostly because I make his food out of what I normally buy for us each week anyway.

So there you have it. Hope this book helps other moms out there as much as it's helped me. You can tell my copy is well loved because some of the pages stick together and it's gotten more then a few spatters of food on the cover. One he hits a year, we are moving onto the Toddler Bistro, which is sitting on my bookshelf all new and shiny just waiting to get food smeared all over it!

4 comments:

Victoria said...

Pureeing food is super simple and cheap. I think people don't realize how easy it is, so they just settle for overpriced jars of baby food (although it is nice to have some on hand for when you're on the go or on vacation). Homemade baby food tastes better too. You can hardly recognize green beans in the jar.

I was never inspired enough to look up recipes. I just pureed plain veggies and fruit. Once Samantha was old enough for "real" food but didn't have the teeth for it, I just pureed whatever we were eating. I'll have to take a look at those books next time we're over.

Unknown said...

This is awesome! My husband and I are expecting our first in about seven months. I'm 12 weeks and have thought about making the baby food becaue they are so expensive and it would save us so much. These books are going to really help thank you!

This is Andrea (Corbett) Carter if you were wondering. Hope you have a great day and weekend and thanks agian for the advice on the books!

Bull Publishing Company said...

Thanks for the great review. We are really glad you are enjoying the book!

Steve and Hailey said...

You are amazing Kristen! I'm going to have to check that out.