It is simple, healthy and cost-efficient to make your baby's food at home. Homemade baby food allows you to control the ingredients. Whether fruit or vegetables, homemade baby food is easy to make, store and reheat. You can even make tasty combinations of fruits or vegetables that will increase the vitamin and nutrition content of your baby's food once the baby has tried the fruit or vegetable by itself.
It is important that the first time a baby eats a food, it is not combined with another new food in order to watch for any allergies.
All one needs to prepare baby food at home is a blender or food processor. All one needs to store baby food in convenient portions is an ice cube tray. Cook vegetables the way you would normally, using only water for cooking liquid.
Make more than the baby will eat in one sitting, since you will be able to store the excess. Cook vegetables or firm fruits until soft enough to puree. Once soft, you may want to pour off some of the cooking water before you puree it. Making your own baby food lets the baby try vegetables that you won't always find in the grocery store. Try zucchini, spinach, broccoli, squash, potatoes, and even cauliflower. Avocado is very healthy, and doesn't need to be cooked first. Of course, standbys like carrots, peas, and yams are easy to make homemade also.
Not all fruits have to be cooked first, unless it is necessary to soften them. Firmer fruits such as apples and pears should be peeled and cooked first. Melons, plums, mangoes, peaches, nectarines, bananas, and berries can be simply washed, sliced and pureed without cooking. Remember not to serve strawberries to babies until one year of age as they are a common allergen. Fruits do not need to be sweetened, and seldom need water.
Once the baby food is at the desired consistency, you can pour it into an ice cube tray and freeze. Once frozen, the cubes can be removed and stored in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Label the bag so you remember what veggie it is. Individual cubes can be heated in the microwave whenever needed.
Give it a try. It's most rewarding knowing that your baby is getting great, healthy food & you know what's gone into it!
Trust me, starting to have a low carb lifestyle is one of the toughest things that you'll ever do. Of course there are thousands of low carb recipes out there, so that is not the problem. The problem is that we are taught to crave carbohydrates above everything else except for fat. We can cook low carbohydrate recipes until we are blue in the face, but that does not mean that we will like them. Until you get used to eating a low carbohydrate recipe for every meal, it will be very very difficult to stick with your diet. Trust me, I know. It took me months of eating low carbohydrate meals before I was no longer tempted to gorge on potatoes, white race, and other high carb foods.The key to having good low carbohydrate recipes, and sticking with it, is to vary your diet as much as possible. This means having different meats with different meals, eating several kinds of vegetables a day (as long as there low carb vegetables), and even varying the way that you cook and prepare your food. Remember, your biggest enemy is not the difficulty of preparing low carbohydrate recipes, but your own bodies inclination to eat carbs even when you know that they are not good for you and will ruin your low carbohydrate diet. If you can resist the temptation, you are home free.Of course, the easiest way to continued to keep low carbohydrate recipes is to have other friends to cook with. If you can trade low carbohydrate recipes, and both get excited about the diet and lifestyle changes that you are making, it will be easy for both of you to stay with a more healthy and active way of living. You will even have a good exercise partner to help you along the way. This is an invaluable asset. According to many of the experts who are out there, the easiest way for you to succeed in any of your goals is to have other people to work with who are as excited about them as you are. Having partners, whether they are buddies in low carbohydrate recipes, or colleagues in your professional life, will always help you to push yourself further and live a better and more fulfilling existence. It is just a matter of finding the perfect people to work with. You do not need a whole group to trade low carbohydrate recipes with. One or two good friends will do.
I recently received a disturbing email about the dangers of using plastic in the microwave. There is a direct link between using plastic wrap over foods while heating them to cancer. There is also a link between freeze water bottles for consumption later. Both processes release toxins into the food and water. This is depressing enough in itself, but I have recently come across information about the benefits of raw food.You might be wondering how I could find something that is considered beneficial as depressing. The information about raw food is promising but it also makes you take as step back and consider how dangerous an average American diet really is. I am not necessarily a proponent of raw food; I am merely sorting through the information.When I was pregnant with my daughter I did not go near the microwave. I can't say that I really believed that anything bad was going to happen. I just had that little feeling that told me to keep my distance. In this sense, I am aware of possible dangers but I'm not sure if I believe in them. But why take a chance? I also washed my fresh fruit and vegetables thoroughly even before all of the hype about pesticides and other miscellaneous poisons floating around. It just seemed like a good idea because fruits and vegetables are often intermingled with dirt. I don't like dirt and I dislike the idea of eating dirt even more so I washed them and continue to do so.The theory behind raw food is that the vitamins and minerals take a turn for the worse while cooking. We all know that we lose some of the vitamins and minerals as we cook. I originally thought that raw food would suggest that we don't want to cook all of the nutrition out into the air or into the water.However, raw food theory suggests that we actually mutate the vitamins and minerals into some kind of molecular creature that attacks our systems. Even the healthiest foods can contain harmful substances. This is depressing. Until they figure this whole thing out, I think I'll dip into a pint of ice cream. At least I'm perfectly aware that it's bad for me.
Polish Cuisine (Polish: kuchnia polska) is a mixture of Slavic and foreign culinary traditions. Born as a mixture of various culinary traditions, both of various regions of Poland and surrounding cultures, it uses a fair variety of ingredients. It is rich in meat, especially pork, cabbage (for example in the dish bigos), and spices, as well as different kinds of noodles and dumplings, the most notable of which are the pierogi. It is related to other Slavic cuisines in usage of kasza and other cereals, but was also under the heavy influence of Turkic, Germanic, Hungarian, Jewish, French, Italian or colonial cuisines of the past. Generally speaking, Polish cuisine is substantial. Poles allow themselves a generous amount of time to enjoy their meals, with some meals taking a number of days to prepare in their entirety.A lunch on a special occasion is usually composed of three courses, starting with a soup, such as barszcz (beet) or żurek (sour rye meal mash), followed perhaps in a restaurant by an appetizer of salmon or herring (prepared in either cream, oil, or vinegar). Other popular appetizers are various meats, vegetables or fish in aspic. The main course may be sandwiches with lots of meat, including, ham, pork and so on. or kotlet schabowy (breaded pork cutlet). Meals often conclude with a dessert such as ice cream (lody), makowiec (poppy seed cake), or drożdżówka, a type of yeast cake. Other Polish specialities include chłodnik (a chilled beet or fruit soup for hot days), golonka (pork knuckles cooked with vegetables), kołduny (meat dumplings), zrazy (stuffed slices of beef), salceson and flaczki (tripe)
Entering a Polish home, whether you are an old friend or a stranger, you will be greeted with warm hospitality and a sumptuous meal. “Guest in the home, God in the home”, as the old Polish saying goes. Even seeing what's on the menu can really make your mouth water.For centuries the Polish kitchen has been the arena for competing influences from France and Italy, while it also borrowed extensively from more exotic tables: Tartar, Armenian, Lithuanian, Cossack, Hungarian and Jewish.The traditional Polish cuisine combines the refined and elegant tastes introduced to Poland centuries ago by the French court of Henri de Valois - the first elected Polish king, with the wild, mysterious flavours of the Lithuanian forests, the sweet aroma of the dishes served for the Jewish Sabbath supper, and the fierce, rare taste of the sanguineous steak Tartare - originally made by the horse riders of Genghis Khan who used to place a slice of raw beef under the saddle for extra tenderness.Locally made dishes specific to different parts of Poland will also spoil you for choice. Fresh water fish is the favourite dish in the north of Poland where lakes are in abundance; from the sandy plains of Mazowsze in central Poland comes Żurek - a sour rye soup, and the Eastern belt is know for the world famous Pierogi. Wielkopolska in Western Poland will treat you to aromatic duck dishes; Suwalszczyzna in the north-east tip of Poland offers the best potato dishes and Podhale at the foot of the Tatra Mountains is famous for kwaśnica - sauerkraut soup and oscypek - a sheep's milk smoked cheese. Wherever you go, you can enjoy delicacies that for centuries have been made of produce harvested in the forests, fields, meadows, lakes and rivers of Poland.Any experienced Polish chef will tell you the real Polish cuisine is incomplete without cereals, fish, crayfish, venison and fruits of the forest. To better understand why Polish delicacies taste so good you should also know that they are typically made of organic produce prepared by natural methods, cooked in the traditional home-made style without artificial ingredients. The best chefs pass from generation to generation the ancient recipes for pancakes made of turnip cabbage, lobster butter, pickled wild hawthorn fruit for decorating venison...
The traditional Polish cookery books are full of recipes using ingredients that strangers will find most exotic. Sour cabbage and cucumber, cereals, dried mushroom, curdled milk and sour rye are but a few unusual ingredients to be savoured. But above all, cooking the Polish way also means putting your heart into it.
Method
In a large mixing bowl, combine the ricotta, caster sugar and egg yolks. Grate the orange zest into the bowl and stir it in gently with the flour. Beat the egg whites with a balloon whisk till they are stiff, then fold them lightly into the ricotta mixture. I do this surely but gently, so as not to knock the air out.
Warm a non-stick frying pan over a moderate heat, add the butter, then, as it starts to sizzle lightly, place a heaped tablespoon of mixture into the pan. You will probably get three in at once, but leave room for them to spread. Let them cook for a minute or two till they have risen somewhat and the underside has coloured appetisingly, then, using a fish slice or palette knife, flip them over to cook the other side. Let them colour, then serve immediately, with a little melted jam and a slight shake of icing sugar.
Method
1. Cut the tomatoes into chunks, and cut the cucumber in half lengthways and then across into thick slices. Slice the red onion very thinly. Crumble the feta cheese into small chunks.
2. Put the olive oil, ½ teaspoon salt, the red wine vinegar, ouzo and some black pepper into a large salad bowl and whisk together. Add the tomatoes, cucumber and onions and toss together gently.
3. Add the feta cheese, chopped dill and olives and mix briefly, then divide among four plates.
4. Drizzle the salad with a little more olive oil, sprinkle with the dried oregano and a little coarsely ground black pepper. Serve with some crusty fresh bread.