Raising a Foodie, Cont. - Proteins

Its been a while since I've posted about baby food. Jackson is such a good eater, and we have been expanding his diet. My last post talked about simple purees of fruit and vegetables. Since then, we have added meats and protein to Jackson's diet. The first meat we tried was chicken, again using recipes and ideas from Top 100 Baby Purees. I made Chicken with Carrots, Leeks and Peas and Chicken and Apples.

Here is the Chicken with Vegetables before:

And after:

At first, I was not thrilled at the idea of pureeing meat. It just didn't sound appetizing. Using the Magic Bullet, the texture came out like a fine chicken salad - not too bad. I've had friends say that their meat purees have come out a little grainy. They both blended the meat using a food processor, so that might be the issue. I also think it is important to blend the meat with additional vegetables/fruit. This adds a smoother texture and more moisture overall.

When finished, I froze the vegetables in my ice cube tray and we were set!

Our next protein was a vegetarian option: Red Lentils. I don't cook with lentils very often, since I'm not the biggest fan, but I really enjoyed the red lentils. They are smaller and take less time to cook than the green lentils I am used to. I cooked them with carrots, onions and cauliflower. Jackson loves it, and they are a good alternative to meat. I've also found it to be a good way to introduce curry into his diet (since Josh and I are big fans). I add the spice at each meal, which allows me to start light, and increase the amount of spice with each meal.

Jackson's first taste of beef was a braised beef stew. I slow cooked the beef with carrots, potatoes and other vegetables. Though it took a few hours to cook, Jackson has enough stew to last a while. He likes it, but I will make some changes the next time I make it for him. In order to get the right consistency for the beef, I had to puree everything a bit longer, which resulted in a gluey, sticky potatoes. Next time, I will cook and mash the potatoes separately and then mix that with the pureed meat and veggies.

Right now, I am still making Jackson's food separately from our meals, though he is starting to get little tastes of our food at dinner. We are working on finger foods now, and I'll follow up soon with some of Jackson's favorites.