A Bowl Full of Mush – Page 2

The Kitchen Archive by category "A Bowl Full of Mush" (Page 2)

Spinach Zucchini Soup

April 12, 2015 April 18, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush 0

Taking a break from reviewing storebought foods today to share a fast and tasty pureed spinach soup I found last week! This was excerpted from Karen LeBillon’s “French Kids Eat Everything” book, which I have only scanned but do plan on reading thoroughly one of these days. You can never have too many tips on healthy eating habits, as far as I’m concerned. I’m also curious to learn how Europeans encourage adventurous eaters, since I’m sure it’s completely different from the way my mom went about it. Same results, different paths — I’m hoping there are gentler options than what I grew …

Valio Onni Blueberry-Oat and Banana-Lingonberry Yogurt Snacks

April 8, 2015 April 14, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush, Shopaholic, The Nursery 0

Here’s something different from the long list of porridges and gruels I’ve been presenting – yogurt and fruit snacks! These were actually what gave me the idea of adding yogurt into my own baby smoothies — Blob developed a huge fondness for these particular blends but there were only two flavors available from this line, so we improvised. Blueberry-oat yogurt snack. Ingredients listed: grape juice, organic yogurt (23%), fresh milk whey, blueberry (8%), rice starch, wholegrain oat flakes (1%), rapeseed and sunflower oils, calcium, vitamin C. What I am translating as “blueberry”, by the way, is most likely bilberry since blueberries as we …

Valio Onni 4-Grain, Raspberry-Blueberry, Lingonberry, and Raspberry Porridges

April 4, 2015 April 6, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush, Shopaholic, The Nursery 3

So after a month of gradually thickening the gruels (both pre-mixed and powdered) with additional baby cereal, we were pretty much at porridge consistency. This coincided with the 5-month+ age recommendation for these porridges above, so I started serving them up as well. Although I started playing fast and loose with age recommendations for lots of foods after the 6 month mark, I tried to go a bit more slowly in the beginning since we were still mastering the whole get-it-into-the-mouth-and-swallow routine 🙂 Four-grain porridge. Ingredients listed: fresh milk whey, milk, wholemeal flour and flakes (oat, barley, rye and wheat; 10%), …

Valio Onni Wheat and 4-Grain Gruels

March 31, 2015 April 6, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush, Shopaholic, The Nursery 0

In addition to the four 4 month+ flavors from last post, there are two 5 month+ ones that contain wheat. I suppose it was the addition of gluten-containing ingredients that added the extra month to the age limit, though I’m not sure how much of a difference it truly makes. We had already moved on to thicker porridges by 5 months, but we gave these a shot anyway since Blob liked the other ones so much. One-grain oat gruel. Ingredients listed: fresh milk whey, milk, wholegrain oat flour (5%), lactose, rapeseed and sunflower oils, emulsifiers (vegetable-based fatty acids), vitamins (A, D3, thiamine, niacin, …

Valio Onni Potato-Carrot, Banana-Blueberry, Corn and Rice Gruels

March 29, 2015 April 6, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush, Shopaholic, The Nursery 0

The first food we tried after the fruit purees was liquefied baby cereal. Gruel, to be exact. A friend pointed out that “gruel” wasn’t a term regularly used in the States, but I’m not sure if there is anything else that quite describes this stuff. The word that comes to my mind is “muay”, which is Taiwanese for rice congee — when we were young, my mom would make a version of this with various broths instead of milk. The Finnish word is “velli” and it refers to a milky, starch/grain-based beginner’s baby food/beverage. Lots of babies get this instead of formula for their …

Valio Onni Pear and Peach Purees

March 27, 2015 April 6, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush, Shopaholic, The Nursery 0

So when we started transitioning to solids with Blob (we are going with that as the nickname used for this blog, since it gets used frequently around the house and “Megasuck” is just too long to type every time — even if he isn’t particularly blobby anymore) at 4 months old, I was mostly going off of my mother-in-law’s advice and whatever I managed to glean from the baby forums online. Even though I’d been planning to wait until 6 months, Blob’s insistence on grabbing food out of my hand and stuffing it in his mouth convinced me that maybe we …

Blueberry Pea Baby Smoothie

March 23, 2015 March 23, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush, The Nursery 0

So yes, peas. I’ve been getting more adventurous with my smoothie combinations and wanted to do some spring cleaning with my freezer stash. The baby has mostly graduated from purees, so I figured this was a good way to use them all up. A bit of balancing is still required, of course, since the resulting combination has to be sweet enough to still be attractive for tiny taste buds. To be on the safe side, I went with one the stronger tasting fruits available, and it ended up working quite well. 400 grams of frozen Finnish bilberries. They are like blueberries, …

Pumpkin Nectarine Baby Smoothie

March 19, 2015 March 23, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush, The Nursery 0

In my last post, I mentioned that I had strayed from making pure fruit smoothies for the wee one, so here is one of those examples. Although strictly speaking, a pumpkin is a fruit. Also by the same logic, tofu is made from soy beans, which are also technically a fruit. Not that the baby cares — he’s just all, “Orange goop, yay!” We also gave a couple pouches of this concoction to his little baby bestie, who seemed equally happy to slurp it down with hardly a pause for breathing. With plenty of fruity sweetness and a punch of protein, what’s …

Kiwi Pear Baby Smoothie

March 12, 2015 April 6, 2015A Bowl Full of Mush, The Nursery 2

My baby is a smoothie addict. Not a bad thing to be, since it makes his five-a-day fruit/veggie quota easy to fill, but it can be a bit hard on the pocketbook if we only use ready-to-eat pouches from the supermarket. Which we obviously don’t, since I enjoy making my own baby food, but there definitely are situations (any outing longer than a few hours, for example) where convenience and shelf stability trump freshness and low costs. Having a few of these in my bag when we’re on the go during a mealtime has saved my butt on more than …

A Bowl Full of Mush: Creamed Pear

November 26, 2014 November 26, 2014A Bowl Full of Mush, The Nursery 0

This is what most mornings at Casa Kerfuffle look like at the moment. Our little guy has been eating solids for a couple of months now and taken to them very enthusiastically. Here he demonstrates the typical baby bird look he has the moment he sees me getting out a bowl. This is rapidly followed by a shark attack lunge and death latch the minute the spoon is within reaching distance. In fact, if I’m not shoveling fast enough, I will often get very vocal protestations. Yep, this kid loves his food. Then again, it probably shouldn’t have been much of a …