RMDM Kitchen: Making Baby Food

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Barley, Lentils & Sweet Potatoes

Almost from the time that my wife and I learned that we were about to become parents I was interested in making our son’s food once he was ready to make the leap to solids. His development of a milk protein allergy at four months put us a little behind introducing solid foods to his diet and he really didn’t start gaining steam until he was nearly six months old.

Now that he is knocking on the door of ten months the time has come for me to fire up the blender and make his food. The decision to make his food ourselves was less a financial consideration than a health one. Between my wife’s restricted diet on account of his allergy and my recent diabetes diagnosis, we have been substantially more conscious of what we are eating these days. Since this is a lifestyle change for us and not just a diet it is important for us to pass along our new and improved eating habits to him.

As I prepared for my culinary quest into all things boiled and pureed I purchased a few baby cookbooks from Amazon including Blender Baby Food by Nicole Young. What I like about this book so far is how it is broken down into age groupings with recommended menu plans as the child progresses. Another nice aspect is the suggestions that come with each dish about how you can modify for your child as they get older or even for the whole family.

After perusing a number of recipes my wife and I selected Barley, Lentils and Sweet Potatoes as the first one I would make for our little man. As with most of the recipes they are fairly straight forward with the ingredients chopped, simmered and blended into an age appropriate puree. Whenever I make something for the first time I generally keep to the recipe, although I had concerns with the amount of liquid it called for in relation to the absorption power of the barley and lentils.

When I went to blend the mixture after allowing it to cool to room temperature I found myself adding an additional ½ cup of chicken stock to get it to the consistency I had wanted. Since this was going to be little man’s dinner and it was still early afternoon, I refrigerated the final product and would have to wait on the verdict. Upon reheating the puree it appeared to have gotten even thicker than I had expected, which did not appeal to our son’s palate.

After some quick thinking my wife mixed half of the puree with half a jar of sweet potatoes to get it more to his liking. This shrewd move paid of in spades and little man gobbled up my culinary creation, albeit modified. All in all this is definitely something I will be making for him again, however, after encountering the consistency issues, I will definitely be increasing the liquid like I had originally anticipated needing to do.

Just as I enjoy my role as the family chef, I really enjoyed making a hearty, healthy meal for our son and look forward to trying out many more recipes from this cookbook. And who knows what can happen, maybe I can become the Eric Ripert of baby food. Alright, so maybe that is setting my sights a touch high, and I probably should be thinking more Chef Tony than Ripert, but either way it’s going to be fun.