Tips Submitted By Our Visitors

 

Tools Our Visitors Suggest:

• Williams Sonoma Ice Trays w/Cover -  Veronica says these are the greatest

• Ball 80400 4 oz. Deluxe Quilted Crystal Jelly Jars. - Melanie likes these versatile jars for freezing and storing
   

• Destiny writes regarding freezable Ball glass jars: "Hi, I like, 'Melanie', found freezable jars. But I found them significantly cheaper than the other website. You can get a case of 36 for 28.99!! A great deal."
  Here's the link:
  http://www.freundcontainer.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_CJ600_A_ss_E_
   

• Glad Ware 2 oz containers - store and travel well - Kim finds these containers great for traveling with baby food and for storage
   

• "Sets of ten small containers with lids for $1 at Dollar Tree, they are just over three ounces each and are perfect for baby food! I thought you might want to let your readers know about this."  Tara writes us with this great find!  Thanks Tara!
   

• I looked around and found this great ice cube tray called orka from isi. http://www.isinorthamerica.com  When i make a batch of food i can freeze it and pop the cubes out and put it into plastic bags. the tray comes with it's own lid and each cube has a soft bottom so the frozen whatever pops out nice and easy. no twisting hard plastic.  thought that i'd let you and your readers know!  thanks for all the tips! - helena

 

Recipes & Recipe Alterations from Our Visitors:

• Shirley offers this change to the blueberry purée recipe:

  I think your recipe states 4 cups of water, which I think is too much.

  This is what I did:
  1 cup blueberries
  1 cup water
  The method I used was the same.
  I had to strain them to remove the grainy seeds.  I also combined pear puree (of 2 pears) with the blueberry puree, without water.  Therefore, in the end I had only 1 cup of fruit liquid, which I can use as juice."

• Leanne writes about her "baby quiche" (YUM!)

"I have a great idea for a baby recipe for you.  I'm still playing with the ingredients but it's basically a baby quiche.  All you do is make your own mixture of cooked veggies, meat and/or a little grated cheese. 

Using a mini muffin pan, loosely fill each cup half full with the mixture. Scramble up some egg yolks and a little plain yogurt or milk and fill the cups the rest of the way.  Then bake them.  You can freeze them in the freezer and when you want to use them thaw them in the fridge and microwave the next day.  So easy!!!

Other Suggestions and Recommendations from or visitors

• Lindsay writes about our monthly Tip regarding "Cereal in the Bottle"

I read your monthly tip about the cereal in the bottle.  I absolutely agree not to do it to get more sleep.  My son had acid reflux and I found that Enfamil AR worked much better at preventing the reflux than the cereal in the bottle.  Hope this may help some moms.  FYI, WIC will supply Enfamil AR with a doctor's note!

• Lisa asks us to include information regarding Sesame Allergies and offers the following information:

I do want to point out that in the USA sesame is now the 9th most common allergen according to the Food Allery and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN).  I hope you will add it to your list of most allergenic foods.  Also, sesame is an especially dangerous allergen because it is super potent, like peanut.  According to the Peanut Allergy Answer Book, peanuts take about 3000 times less exposure to cause a reaction than other allergens other than seeds and nuts.  Nuts take 900 times less and sesame is said to be equally potent as peanut.  And considering that people have had fatal and near fatal reactions to invisible amounts of milk when we get to the 900 times less to 3000 times less range we are talking super minute amounts able to cause huge, life threatening reactions.  So, I do think sesame is worth a mention here.  It is not very well known and as serious as peanut allergy. 

• NEW! - Miyo writes about using waxed paper to line ice trays!

Just wanted to hand over a trick that I've grown to use as I freeze the purees I make. I've been finding that when wrapping the ice cube trays with plastic wrap, that sometimes the wrap sticks to the food, and if it wrinkles while freezing, will rip off and get stuck under the "folds." Even if I run warm water over the plastic first to loosen it, little pieces of invisible plastic will get stuck in the food and -- hopefully -- I'll find it before the food ends up in my daughter's mouth.

What I've grown to do to try to avoid this problem is to first cover the top of the ice cube trays with waxed paper, then cover that with the plastic before freezing. The wax paper comes off more easily than the plastic does, and is more visible so I feel a little safer about using it.

Hope you find this might be something you can share with your other visitors.