Wicked easy recipes using baby oats!

This is the time of year when I find myself missing home (New England) more than usual.

View from the summit of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, Maine

To combat this, I do a lot of "Autumnal" cooking/baking.  My homemade iced pumpkin spice latte tastes about the same as what can be had at a certain Seattle coffee shop...and is dynamite with a scoop of vanilla protein powder.

In the realm of baby food, I've made two new foods for the Nugster, who recently turned 8 months old.  I wanted to share a few easy uses for baby oats (oat flour).

(I make a lot of flour, since I follow a gluten-free diet.  Regular wheat flour would work fine in these recipes too, but oats are just so healthy!)

How to make your own oat flour:

I mill rolled oats into a fine powder in the food processor.  This is so easy!  Just scoop the oatmeal in, grind with a few pulses, and you're done!  

What to do with oat flour:
1. Drop small pieces of prepared fruit (I use cubes of frozen mango, and sometimes poached apples or peaches) into a cup of oat flour and shake.  When coated, serve fruit as easy to pick up finger food!      

2. Homemade (ridiculously inexpensive) baby cereal!  Just add milk or water, heat, let cool, serve.

3. Baked oatmeal cup cakes. (vegan, sugar & gluten-free)

Healthy, yummy, and they make the house smell so good!!

Also easy!  
Mix:  Equal parts oatmeal flour and water (or bm, milk, whatever liquid you are comfortable serving your baby).  
Soak overnight, which makes the oats more digestible.  
Next day: If you wish, stir in cinnamon, and "pour" into mini muffin tin. (I lined with silicone baking cups.)  
Top with fruit.  
Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes*.  When cool, cut into small pieces and serve as finger food!  
*Since I'm at high altitude, baking is a trial and error thing.  And if you're not much of a baker, don't worry!  It's not possible to undercook these, since the recipe doesn't use egg, and the oatmeal flour is edible raw. 

I served this as Nugster's 8 month birthday cake.  To his delight, I continued to serve them for weeks after, as part of his breakfast.  Let's be honest, there's nothing better than birthday cake for breakfast!

4. Baby pancakes. (vegan, sugar & gluten-free...but feel free to use the flour of your choice)

The ingredients.  Well, most of them.  I forgot to take a picture of the blueberries.

Mix: 3/4 cup Baby Oatmeal (Oat Flour)
       3/4 cup Rice Flour*
*You can use whole wheat flour in place of the rice flour.
       Optional: dash Sea Salt, dash Cinnamon
Add: 1 1/4 cup Water
        1 T Coconut Oil* (or applesauce or any other oil.  
 *Since coconut oil is a carrier for Nugster's vitamins, we know he is not allergic.  Because coconut oil is so healthy, we prefer it over other oils.  Infact, we use it to treat rashes, dry skin, cuts and scrapes, and even as a hair treatment!) 

Coat skillet in your choice of oil/spray.  Pour batter and add blueberries (or apples, banana, avocado, etc). 

Cook on first side until large bubbles form.

 Since the batter is thick,  when you flip it, let it cook for a minute or so, and then split the pancake with your spatula.  This way you can watch as the center cooks through.

Still wet in the center...but vegan, so no risk of illness from "raw" batter.

Your pancake should be a bit crispy on both sides, and soft in the center.  This recipe made 3 adult-sized pancakes.  Since Nugget is eating this as finger food, I cut each pancake into small pieces and froze half, put half in the fridge for the week, and set aside a few for this morning.  After the pieces cooled, Nugget gobbled them up!

Mmmm! Pancakes!

This recipe, if you add 2 T of sugar, or 1 T of agave, would make a fabulous stack of pancakes for that special vegan in your life.  Of course, sans sweetener would be ok too, but I've learned that most adult palates aren't accustomed to sugarless pancakes.

Enjoy!

Making Baby Food...the what and how

Making baby food for the Nugster has been fun and easy.  At almost 8 months old, he has enjoyed rice, apples, oatmeal, avocado, bananas, squash, sweet potato, mango, peaches, carrots, blueberries, cauliflower, egg yolk, and chicken!  Creating "meals" for Silas is easy, since so many of the foods he enjoys blend well together.

There are a ton of websites that have lots of great advice and recipes for families who want to make their own baby food.  I've found Maggie over at Wholesomebabyfood to be most helpful!  She's done or found the research on all matters relating to baby food, and her recipes and allergy sections are very informative.

What: A quick guide based on Nugster's solid food adventures

I refer to the dirty dozen chart when shopping for produce. 

We opted to start Silas on veggies first, then fruit, and lastly grains and protein.  Because babies have such delicate systems, I follow the 4 day wait rule:

     Wait at least 4 days before introducing a new food.  

This way, if Nug has an allergic reaction, we can easily identify the trigger food.  I also keep a 3 day supply of baby food in the fridge and freeze the rest.  When I use up a container, I move another out of the freezer into the fridge. 

Early foods (4-6 months)

Apples: applesauce, organic, bought at Costco for $2.50/47 oz. Nug also enjoys flavored applesauce, such as mango

Avocado: smashed and fed with spoon or feeder (we prefer the silicone feeder vs the mesh-it doubles as a teether-we fill it with crushed ice.)

Also, so easy to clean!

For finger food, at around 6 months, I began slicing fresh avocado and then placing the slices on parchment paper to freeze.  Once frozen, I divided the slices into several plastic containers.  The avocado slices defrost very quickly, so they make a great on-the-go snack!
Banana: organic, mashed, close to brown for easy digestion

Mango: smashed/strained

Rice: cooked on stovetop (steamed or boiled), pureed

Squash: halved, seeded, baked in water flesh side down, pureed with water

Sweet potato: organic, boiled, mashed, pureed with water

6-7 months:

Blueberries: organic, defrosted in water (I buy frozen, only takes a few minutes), smooshed, fingerfood. Nugster has perfected this one, but still ends up pretty purple by the end!

Mmmm...blueberries are the best!

Carrots: (I buy a huge bag of baby carrots) steamed, pureed with water, sometimes applesauce

Mango: defrosted in fridge (I buy frozen organic mango chunks) and diced as finger food.

Cauliflower: steamed, pureed with water 

Rice: shortgrain, cooked on stovetop (steamed or boiled), sometimes pureed (sometimes not, since Nug enjoys eating rice with his hands)

Oatmeal: no need to buy "baby oats"-simply grind regular oatmeal until "powdery" (food processor or baby bullet does this in about 10 seconds) then add to boiling water. You can also make a large batch ahead of time and portion it out for meals.

Peaches: organic, baked (yuuum), skin removed, pureed

Egg yolk: organic, cooked on stovetop 

*Be sure to separate the egg! Egg whites contain proteins that can be highly allergenic! 

Chicken: organic, breast meat, baked with a small amount of oil (coconut oil works for Nugster...stuff is great for everything from diaper rash to cooking, and is the carrier oil for his vitamins), diced, pureed with juices from baking.

 

What is/was your plan for introducing solids to your little one?  What is their favorite food?

Making Baby Food - The Who and Why

Who:  Not just for hippies. We are a fairly food conscious household to begin with-but by no means are we crunchy hippie types.  I say this to point out that making your own baby food is not just for "hippies"!  We eat gluten-free because of my celiac disease, and Steve is a fan of lean protein because of his bodybuilding/wrestling background.  I kept a gluten-free pregnancy, and plan to avoid gluten for the Nug until he is schoolage and even then, we will introduce gluten with great caution.  However, those who know us would say our favorite foods are doritos (me), peanut m&m's (Steve) and red meat (both of us).  
Anyone can make their own food, it takes very little extra effort if you are already comfortable in the kitchen, and saves us a ton of money.

Who else: Why, Nug of course!  While Nugster still thinks that BM is the tastiest thing going, he showed great interest in solid foods around the age of 6 months.  (Around 5 months we fed him a bit of avocado, more for our amusement than his nutritional needs.  Since most of it ended up on his hands and clothes, we can hardly count that.)  I still nurse him before every meal, but he now (at 6.5 months) enjoys solids for breakfast and dinner as well.  

Why: As a proud owner of a Baby Bullet, I was beyond excited to begin making my own baby food. 

Good for more than just baby food (ahem, margaritas  mango smoothies anyone?)

I've probably lost a few of you with that statement, but let me share a few benefits.

Health: Jarred baby food has a shelf life of 2-3 years.  I actually found one brand that had an expiration date that was a whopping 5 years away.  I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to eat a banana/carrot/chicken/squash that had been sitting around for 5 years!  Yes there is organic jarred baby food, and yes, it is expensive.  The bottom line is, when I make the food, we know exactly what is in it and can be sure of the freshness.
 
Cash money:  Babies are expensive.  With the cost of diapers, gear, toys, clothes, etc, even those with disposable income want to save a buck. Jarred baby food is about $1/jar. A jar is about 4 oz.  If Nugster ate jarred food, his food budget would be about $50/month.  While that may not sound like much, let me show you the math for making our own food:

2 sweet potatoes ($1.50) = 60 oz of food ($60+ worth!)

1 bag of organic frozen mango ($2.97) = 15 oz of mango puree ($15 worth)
2 avocados ($1) = 10 oz of food ($10 worth!) 

You get the idea. So, for less than the cost of a grande soy with whip, we feed Nug for over 2 weeks!

   
Time:  Instead of going to the store, selecting foods that baby may or may not like, hauling it home, and then storing it, we simply pick what foods we want the Nug to try for the week (more like 10+ days) and then blend it to perfection.  It takes less than 5 minutes to puree an avocado or banana.  It takes less than 30 to prepare a months worth of chicken-carrot-spinach dinner for the Nug. 

Fun! It's incredibly rewarding (Mommy Bliss!) to make baby food for the Nugster.  Choosing what new food he will try next, and how to prepare it (bake, chop, puree, blend, steam, boil, peel, mash...)  He looks forward to each meal, and we are more dedicated to sharing mealtime with him because we invested time into making his meals.

Nugster enjoying some pureed squash.

My next post, since Nug is waking from his nap, will be about what makes for yummy homemade baby food!

How do you save money as a mommy (or daddy)?  Have you tried making your own baby food?