Baby food ~ Pimp that puree

You’ve spent precious hours handcrafting purees from the finest vegetables, only to find that your 6 month old hasn’t got the memo. Here’s how to recycle their leftovers.

It’s no exaggeration to say that food is my biggest passion in life. One of the things I was most looking forward to about being a mum was introducing my babies to their first taste of every new food. Eating is a huge journey of discovery that can bring enormous joy throughout your whole life, so it felt like a real honour to take those first steps with my child.

In reality, that’s quite a weight of expectation to lay on such a tiny, fairly oblivious person, and it took a couple of weeks just for the mechanics of eating to kick in properly for baby no.1. Even when she mastered sensible swallowing, her appetite and enthusiasm varied from day to day, which lead to a lot of leftover bowls of mashed vegetables. Wastage can be demoralising, so we’d quite often pimp her purees and use them as a dip with crisps or grissini when beer-o’clock finally came around. These were some of my favourite combinations:

• Carrot – add crumbled feta and chopped dill. Great with toasted pita bread or grissini.
• Sweet potato – stir in a pinch of smoked paprika and garlic powder and a sprinkle of coriander (tastes a bit like chorizo!). Try it with tortilla crisps.
• Broccoli and pear – crumble in a bit of blue cheese and some chopped walnuts. Good with salted potato crisps or crusty bread.

Baby no.2 took to solid food much quicker. By day three he was swallowing properly and opening his mouth for the next spoon like a baby bird. By day seven, he was banging his fist on the table if I didn’t refill the spoon quickly enough. Most days he keeps eating until there’s no food left in sight, so no beer snacks for us…