Wholesome Baby Food Recipes Blog – A Homemade Baby Food News Blog

Mama Terry wrote to ask about steaming veggies in breast milk. She wondered if this would be a great way to boost up the nutrients in baby’s food. We received an email from another Mama who wondered if nitrates would seep into breast milk if she steamed carrots in breast milk.

Cooking with Breast Milk:
We do not recommend cooking with breast milk (steaming or boiling veggies in it) as the high temperature of steaming/boiling could destroy some of the wonderful nutrients, enzymes et al. that breast milk contains.

Using Breast Milk in Homemade Baby Food:
You may use breast milk to thin your purees. You may use breast milk either before you freeze your purees or after you have thawed the frozen purees. Please keep in mind that you should NOT use previously frozen breast milk to thin purees if you intend to freeze those purees. Previously frozen breast milk should not be thawed and then frozen again!

Using breast milk in homemade baby food will give your baby a familiar taste as well as a nutritional boost!

Regarding “Nitrate” Veggies:

Nitrates may seep into any kind of liquid you use for cooking so we do recommend NOT pureeing with that liquid.

Handling Breast Milk at the CDC
Storing & Transporting Breast Milk – Dr. Sears
Safely Storing Breast Milk – Kids Health
Nitrates and Homemade Baby Food – Wholesomebabyfood

For some recipes on “cooking” with breast milk, check out this page at KellyMom

Have you guessed what it is? I can remember when my twins first noticed this monstrosity of a winter squash. Their eyes grew wide with disbelief and their mouths made a small pucker and said “Ewwwwwwwwwww! What is THAT?”

It’s the Hubbard squash and let me tell you, it’s a tasty one for sure. Tasty – if you can maneuver it around the kitchen cut it up without chopping off your fingers or hands! This squash can weigh up to 10 pounds, and can be even heavier.

Hubbard squash is the most flavorful when roasted. Take out that turkey roasting pan, you’ll need it to roast this big squash.

How to roast the Hubbard:

Preheat oven to 400F

Cut it in half (Hubby typically cuts it up for me using a small sharp (and sterilized) hack-saw). Once cut, scoop out the seeds and place “face” up in the roasting pan. Add some water to the cavity and place in the oven for about 1 hour. Time will vary depending on the size of the squash.

Once roasted, scoop the meat away from the shell and mash or puree. Hubbard is wonderful when mashed with a wee bit of applesauce and allspice. This squash is great for little ones from 6 months +

Enjoy!

Visit our Acorn/Butternut Squash page for more winter squash ideas, information and recipes!

Nutmeg is a wonderful spice that we most often associate with the Fall and Winter season.  Nutmeg is a key spice in eggnog, pumpkin pie, and a myriad of other yummy foods that abound during these seasons.  With the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays fast approaching, we have received a few emails asking if nutmeg is considered a nut.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, nutmeg is a spice

“consisting of the seed of the Myristica fragrans, a tropical, dioecious evergreen tree native to the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, of Indonesia. Nutmeg has a distinctive, pungent fragrance and a warm, slightly sweet taste; it is used to flavour many kinds of baked goods, confections, puddings, meats, sausages, sauces, vegetables, and such beverages as eggnog. Grated nutmeg has been used as a sachet; the Romans used it as incense.

Around 1600 it became important as an expensive commercial spice of the Western world and was the subject of Dutch plots to keep prices high and of English and French counterplots to obtain fertile seeds for transplantation. The nutmegs sold whole were dipped in lime to prevent their sprouting.”

So is nutmeg a nut and should you avoid it?

The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) notes that nutmeg is safe for those who have tree nut allergies.  The Food Allergy Initiative also notes that nutmeg is not considered a nut when it comes to tree nut allergies.  AboutKidsHealth (a site from the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada) states that “Nutmeg is safe to eat. Nutmeg comes from the seeds of a tropical tree”

Many pediatricians will say that adding spices to your little one’s food is fine around 8 months of age; nutmeg is included.  We do recommend that ,as with other new foods, you introduce spices one at a time and wait a few days before introducing another.  Add the spice to a food that you have already introduced without any issues.  In the event your little one has a reaction, you should be able to pinpoint the spice!  As always, we recommend that you consult with your baby’s pediatrician about any foods or spices that you would like to introduce to your baby!

Read our Spice up baby’s food page for more information.

Vitamin D has been in the news lately.  It is thought that this vitamin might boost the immune system and increase the ability of the body to fight the swine flu.   We have been unable to find any evidence that taking extra vitamin d will in fact stop the swine flu however.   You must be careful when taking additional Vitamin D.

We have spoken with 3 doctors today and all 3 caution against random Vitamin D supplementation.

You see, Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin.  It is stored in the body’s fatty tissues and used when needed; what is not used, remains stored

It is very easy to overdose on fat soluble vitamins and the consequences can be very dangerous!  Before you rush out to buy Vitamin D supplements for your family, please be sure to consult with your physician!  

Babies and young children can suffer severe health issues if they are overdosed on Vitamins!  Please seek proper medical consultation before adding any vitamin supplements to your little one’s diet.

Learn about vitamin D from the National Institutes of Health

I am going to share an email received over the weekend from a Mom who is upset that our site does not recommend or promote making homemade baby formula.

I am disappointed that you regulate the flow of information on your website and instill fear into mothers who may opt out of supporting the baby formula industry. Noticeably bsent from your site is the fact that all non-organic formulas use corn syrup and other sugars that essentially prepare our children for obesity and diabetes.

It is ridiculous to assume that women cannot possibly make their own formula considering that we have inhabited this planet for tens of thousands of years sans Similac and others.

Why not have a section on the harm of corn syrup NOT just in baby food but formula?

You had an opportunity to use the inquiry of “homemde formula recipe” as springboard to delve into the harmful effects of HFCS found in formula and that Organic formula uses other simple sugars not found to be detrimental for children.

We should DEMAND from the mutli-billion dollar formula industry that ALL of its products be produced without toxins (read: corn syrup). Instead you decide to completely ignore a growing trend in American families: making a conscienious decision to NOT participate in a food industry that has no regard for our health.

We note the following on our Homemade Infant Formula page

It would be irresponsible of our site to make recommendations and/or offer recipes for homemade infant formula. Solid foods are known as complimentary foods; they are not meant to provide for the total nutrition of an infant. Recipes for sweet potatoes and squash for example, would not endanger the overall nutritional health because your baby’s main source of nutrition is not from solid foods. A homemade formula recipe could very well irreparably harm the health and growth of a baby.

During baby’s first year, infant formula is a non-breastfeeding baby’s main source of nutrition and may also be a complementary source of nutrition to a breastfed baby. We do not feel that it is wise to make homemade formula for this important reason. We will never post or endorse any recipe(s) that may endanger the health of an infant.

We would love to hear from you about homemade infant formula – would you make? Have you made homemade infant formula? Has your doctor or other clinician advised you on how to make homemade infant formula?

Making baby’s food has lead many families to change their entire eating habits for the better and we are so excited when we hear about this. Our site was born so that we might help parents see how simple and easy it is to make baby food. We hope that this site will help parents see that they don’t need to have dependence on highly processed, prepackaged foods. Still, we won’t encourage nor will we print recipes for homemade baby formula and we hope that our visitors can appreciate how we feel about this.