[amberg007]

So far Dd has only had foods that were soft enough to mash up with a fork. The other day I tried to make a puree with carrots. BAked them first, then put them in the magic bullet. It wasn't the consistency I wanted so I added olive oil but still no good. What is the proper/easy way to do this. I prefer to just mash it up but what can you do for "hard" foods? Should I steam them first? Which method holds in the most nutrients?

 

[95191]

when you say "hard food" what ones do you mean?

 

[alegna]

For carrots, I don't puree. I use the little ones and steam well and give them to him to hold and eat.

-Angela

 

[heidirk]

for carrots, I get the frozen ones, already cut into rounds. I get them from my local bulk foods store, and they are baby carrots. I usually boil them, but you can steam them too. They are pretty soft and juicy this way, and you can add the water you cooked them in to other things to recover those nutrients. Then puree them.

 

[rmzbm]

For carrots, I mash canned ones.

But DD is not really a carrot lover.

So it's all good...

 

[NaturalMama311]

Check out this website, this is where I got all my info on how to cook everything. I use an immersion stick blender to puree it and it works great. I just add water to thin out the food if necessary.

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/sta...od_recipes.htm

 

[LadyCatherine185]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alegna For carrots, I don't puree. I use the little ones and steam well and give them to him to hold and eat. -Angela

we don't puree anything, but i just have a dumb question about steaming.

i heard that if you steam carrots or other veggies, that all of the nutrients go out of the veggie and into the water?

 

[FernG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LadyCatherine185 we don't puree anything, but i just have a dumb question about steaming. i heard that if you steam carrots or other veggies, that all of the nutrients go out of the veggie and into the water?

Cooking any veggies makes them loose nutrients. Steaming uses less water and so fewer nutrients are destroyed. Microwaving completely destroyed many nutrients, so it's best to do it on the stove. Babies can't eat hard veggies, so they need to be cooked.

I roast my carrots with onions and garlic and some sort of meat and other seasonings. DD loves them that way.

 

[NaturalMama311]

I think if you use a steamer insert they lose a lot less, when they are steamed in water the nutrients are sucked out by the water. Also, with carrots you should throw out the water they are cooked in because the nitrate level is too high for a baby. With any other fruit/veggie you can use the water it was cooked in to thin out the puree.

 

[kbond]

For carrots, I use our rice cooker as a steamer by putting a half inch of water in the bottom and then a strainer in on top. I cut the carrots into round slices, put them in, and then turn the rice cooker on for about 20 minutes.

When they're soft, I pour them into our food processor, add the water from the bottom of the rice cooker, and then add in about 2 ounces of breastmilk as well. I then blend them. Carrots don't tend to get really pureed; i.e. they'll have a kind of bumpy texture. I just make sure that there aren't any pieces bigger than a blueberry.

Then, I spoon the contents into ice cube trays, cover with saran wrap, and place in the freezer. 6-8 hours later, I pull them out of the ice cube trays and place in a covered freezer storage container. When I want to feed my daughter carrots, I pull an ice cube carrot out of the freezer, heat up, and serve.

For other purees, I do basically the same thing. I heat/cook the vegetable or fruit, blend it with breastmilk, and freeze.

 

[Delicateflower]

Roasting gives the best flavor but you'd almost certainly need to thin it with water or milk.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NaturalMama311 I think if you use a steamer insert they lose a lot less, when they are steamed in water the nutrients are sucked out by the water.

How do you steam without water?

 

[NaturalMama311]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Delicateflower Roasting gives the best flavor but you'd almost certainly need to thin it with water or milk. How do you steam without water?

Well you still use a tiny bit of water in the bottom of the pan with a steamer insert. Since the carrots are not actually IN the water they lose less nutrients......at least that's what I've always been told. If the carrots are placed in the water to be steamed then the water sucks out some of the nutrients.

 

[sapphire_chan]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3188558.stm

Quote:

Dr Anne Nugent, a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, said it was the presence of water rather than the cooking process in itself which was the problem. She said: "It is not the microwaving per se that is causing the antioxidant loss but the presence of water, and boiling. "In other words, the antioxidants would also be lost upon boiling rather than steaming.

http://www.seattlepi.com/health/2891...lthrail19.html

Quote:

In studies at Cornell University, scientists looked at the effects of cooking on water-soluble vitamins in vegetables and found that spinach retained nearly all its folate when cooked in a microwave, but lost about 77 percent when cooked on a stove. They also found that bacon cooked by microwave has significantly lower levels of cancer-causing nitrosamines than conventionally cooked bacon.

There's more out there, but I'm feeling too lazy to look log into my school library and hunt through all the studies I found on microwave safety a year ago. My personal decision after reading through every report I could find on microwave safety at that time was to start cooking vegetables by putting them in a bowl in the microwave, covering tightly with plastic (making sure the plastic didn't touch the food), and microwaving.

No water.

By that method a pound of broccoli cut into large chunks takes 3 minutes.

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...ight=microwave locked now, but here's where I shared all the stuff I found when I looked into the "microwave radiation" question.

 

[skolbut]

I've had good luck with carrots just steaming them until really mushy and then putting in my blender. You do have to add some liquid I find when using the blender, but I have an ice crusher button that seems to do well for carrots too. Also I read somewhere to add a little fat of some sort (bmilk, butter, margarine, olive oil) to help with nutrient absorbtion... for some reason carrots stick out in my mind as needing this. I added about 1 tbs of formula and another of butter to the entire blenderfull of carrots. We haven't gotten to this stage with ds2 yet, but we will be soon!

 

[heidirk]

I think you need to add fat to carrots particularly because Vitamin A is fat soluble.

I'm sure you could find a list of which Vits are fat soluble and which are water soluble.

OTOH, if you nurse after meals, the fat from your milk would accomplish the same thing. . .

:

 

[celesterra]

i am still spoon feeding my twins (8 mo old/6 mo adjusted age), and haven't considered even giving them soft foods to pick up with their fingers, so if i make the food, i puree it.

i typically use a steaming basket, but i've roasted things like butternut squash and had success. i steam whatever veg i'm going to use (peas, carrots, sweet potato, beets - we abandoned beets because they stain so badly!, cauliflower -they love cauli! - and broccoli so far) and then put it in the blender, adding as much formula as necessary to make it into a nice puree. i make as much as i can at once and freeze the extra in ice cube trays. it works beautifully, is much faster than the food mill, and i love giving the boys food that i have prepared for them.

 

[sapphire_chan]

Remember to be careful when you add liquid to make a puree if you aren't using your LO's main milk source to thin things out (e.g. breastmilk if breastfeeding). Your LO's main nutrition source should still be the milk feeds and you don't want their tummy to fill up with other things.

 

[Elismum]

I just cooked whatever veggie or meat or grain and stuck in the food processor. I'd add a little water to get the right consitency. As DS got older and I wanted chunkier, I made the consistency thicker. Also for freezing, I didn't want to take up space in my freezer with water, so I'd puree to a thick consistency without adding much water and then add the water after the cube thawed and before freezing. I rarely added oil to the puree. I might have added olive oil or butter or parmesean cheese before feeding.

I also recommend the wholesomebaby.com website a PP recommended. Lots of great info and ideas.

 

[marrymeflyfree]

We steam them in a bamboo steamer over a pot, then put them in a blender with a little bit of the water from the pot they were steamed in. When she was brand new to foods and I was paranoid about chunks, I'd occasionally mash them through a sieve to make sure there were no big hunks or peels from fruits/squashes/etc. I do a big lot of them at a time and freeze in ice cube trays. She doesn't do straight purees much now that she's a bit older, but it's handy to have the cubes to mix into other things or dip bits of whole grain bread into for her to self-feed, etc.

 

[Twwly]

We steam. Most of the time our kids self feed, if we do make it mushier, we use a fork or a food mill.