While bought in baby foods are very convenient and can be kept on stand by for times when preparation of your baby’s meals is not possible, making your own foods for your baby has several advantages!
- It is cheaper to make your own foods than to buy them
It introduces your baby to foods and flavours that your family eat
You can prepare a number of dishes in advance and freeze them
So how simple is it? You can simply cook vegetables or fruit in the same way that you always do and then use a blender to blend them to a consistency that suits the stage that your baby is at. Then, you can store the prepared foods in storage containers as individual portions to be frozen and used at a later stage.
We have discovered an even handier and simpler way of preparing tasty and nutritious meals for your baby using a fantastic product called BEABA Babycook which is available from Buy4Baby. We asked them to tell us a little about the product….
BEABA Babycook
This multi-award winning product is a must-have for easy weaning of baby onto solids. An innovative product, the Babycook from BEABA is a versatile four-in-one appliance that steams, blends, minces, chops, defrosts and reheats food for babies and toddlers. It can cook fruits, vegetables, rice and meats separately or all together to make a wholesome nutritious meal for your baby.
The steamer action perfectly cooks the food while retaining all the essential nutrients to keep baby healthy and captures the full flavour of the food by avoiding contact with boiling water. The blending, mincing and chopping actions allow the food to be prepared to the required texture to suit baby’s age.
The Babycook will also defrost food safely again with its steamer action especially when used with BEABA baby-food jars (sold separately). Food can be reheated with the Babycook by steaming, helping to continue to preserve the natural qualities of the ingredients. Even a single serving can be reheated by placing it directly in the cooking basket or in an original baby-food jar.
Babycook can be used to either batch cook baby meals for freezing or can be used on a meal-to-meal basis. Used either way the Babycook frees up so much time for a busy mum. The fruit, vegetables and meat can be placed in the cooking basket and turned on to the required steaming function and within 10 mins baby’s meal is ready, no fuss, no multiple appliances, healthy nutritious food ready in minutes.
Babycook comes with a 600 ml capacity bowl, cooking basket, mixing lid, spatula and recipe booklet for babies aged 6-24 months. The bowl and basket are top-rack dishwasher safe.
BPA Safety-Tested.
The BEABA Babycook is available from http://www.buy4baby.ie and retails at €104.99
The following are some simple recipes:
Banana Veggie Blend
Nutrient-rich red bell pepper combined with the familiarity of carrot and banana. Ingredients
1/2 red bell pepper
1 carrot
1 banana
Instructions
1. Slice red pepper and remove seeds and core
2. Peel and slice carrot
3. Combine red pepper and carrot slices and steam for 15 minutes until tender
4. Peel and slice banana
5. Combine steamed red pepper and carrot with banana slices in blender
6. Blend until you reach desired consistency. If baby is older, you can also use “chop” setting for chunkier blend.
Carrot and Parsnip Puree
Ingredients
2 cups carrots – cleaned, peeled, sliced
1 cup parsnips – cleaned, peeled, sliced
Instructions
Combine carrots and parsnips in steamer
Steam 15 minutes, or until vegetables are very soft
Remove from steamer and allow to cool
Add about 1 cup of water (more or less to reach desired consistency)
Blend carrots and parsnips until desired consistence is reached
Serve, or pour into Beaba Silcone food portions, cover and store for up to 3 months
Give it a try for yourself! You will be delighted with the results!