Category Archives: Homemade Baby Food

Baba Ganoush

Perhaps our baby bird is a rare one, but she absolutely adores eggplant. She gobbles down the soft roasted vegetable faster than I can cut it for her. But she loves it best made into a garlicky baba ganoush.

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I’ve found that the easiest way to prepare eggplant is to stab it once or twice with a fork and stick it whole in a hot oven for an hour. If you don’t puncture the skin, steam within the eggplant may cause it to explode in your oven. (Yes, it can really happen.) Roasting–or grilling–whole, there is no need to cut or salt it to reduce bitterness, or to use oil in order to make the flesh tender.

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The eggplant is done when it gets soft and easily can be mushed in. After cooling, it looks wrinkly and is easy to peel. One more reason why I love this preparation is that it becomes easy to separate the tentacles of flesh from the seed pods with your hands. I personally prefer not to eat the seeds.

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Easy Roast Eggplant Dip: Baba Ganoush Recipe

  • 2 medium to large eggplant
  • 1/4 cup of sesame tahini
  • 1/4 cup of olive oil
  • 2 or more cloves fresh garlic
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • smoked paprika and cumin
  • (optional) 1 T. of toasted sesame seeds
  • (optional) paprika, zatar and/or olive oil for garnishing
  • (optional but delicious) pomegranate seeds for garnishing

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Place eggplant in a baking dish. Pierce the skin of each eggplant with a fork or knife. Bake for about 1 hour, until the skin is easily indented and the flesh feels mushy. Allow to cool. Once cool enough to handle, peel and discard the peel, stem and seeds. (Eggplant can then be stored for later use. Try roasting an extra eggplant for baby food or other recipes.) Reserve any liquid with the flesh.

2. Put eggplant flesh and liquid, tahini, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper, smoked paprika, cumin and sesame seeds in a blender. Note: quantities are all suggestions. Blend until smooth. If the blender struggles, try adding more oil or liquid. Taste and adjust the ingredients to your liking.

3. (Optional) Garnish with a sprinkle of paprika, zatar, fresh pomegranate seeds and/or a drizzle of olive oil. Serve with pita chips, pita wedges or crudites (aka veggies). Also great in pita sandwiches.

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Tips for Feeding Baby:

Our baby has loved this as a puree starting at 9-10 months. Before that I pureed the roast eggplant with other vegetables, starting at 8 months. Small cut bites of soft roasted eggplant make excellent finger foods for baby led weaning. She also likes baba ganoush mixed with rice, either eating it with her hands or practicing her spoon skills.

Our baby has never had any digestive issues from eggplant, but her skin does turn red when she applies baba ganoush topically, perhaps from the eggplant, but definitely from the lemon juice and garlic, too. She loves to rub her food into her face and hair, so I try to keep it out of her eyes.

How To Boil the Perfect Fresh Egg

On our little backyard homestead, summer brings not only a bounty of vegetables and herbs, but also a plethora of eggs. Chickens respond to the longer days and increased light and are at their peak of production. This is one reason why commercial egg producers will keep lights on the hens, day and night. We live in San Diego and have never felt the need to add artificial light, but if you live more to the north, it might be something to consider for a few hours a day during the winter months.

This year I have been having fun swapping or trading extra eggs with other local urban homesteaders. In exchange for eggs and some dairy products, we have received homemade jams, fresh salad, kombucha, lemons and lemon curd, AVOCADOS (our absolute fav), home-baked bread, homemade granola, fresh bay leaves, chicken broth and more.

But one of my favorite ways to enjoy extra eggs is to hard boil a batch. Hardboiled egg yolk has also been a staple in baby’s diet, especially during months 6-10. Plenty of people use the following technique, but it was my grandmother who showed me how.

Boiling the Perfect Egg

Step 1: If using fresh eggs, wash them.

Step 2: Place the eggs in a medium-sized pot. Try to have enough eggs so that they are somewhat cozy, without too much room, and only in one layer.

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Step 3: Cover the eggs in cold water.

Step 4: Put the pot on high heat and bring to a boil.

Step 5: As soon as the water boils, take it off the heat, cover with a lid and set a timer for 12 minutes.

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Step 6: Have a bowl ready with cold water and ice. As soon as 12 minutes are up, pour out the hot water, rinse once with cold tap water and then transfer to the ice bath. If you leave them in the pot to cool, the water will quickly heat up again from the residual heat in the pot and continue cooking the eggs.

Ways to Enjoy the Eggs:

For baby the yummiest combo is half a hardboiled yolk, mashed avocado and breastmilk. My baby is “so over” purées at 11 months but will make an exception for this silky, creamy concoction. No special equipment needed other than a fork for mashing, making this a great combo to take on the road.

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Hardboiled eggs make a great quick snack. Just like the raw energy bites, I love having instant food on hand. Oftentimes, when I am making baby something with the yolk, I just pop the white of the egg in my mouth. :)

My go-to summer lunch includes a green salad topped with sliced hardboiled eggs, an artisan balsamic vinegar and olive oil and fresh veggies. You can use any dressing you like, but try a really good balsamic and oil. There is something magical about the way the bits of yolk mix with the vinegar. Perhaps it is emulsifying a little in the mouth?

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This salad has spring mix, avocado, hardboiled egg, tomatoes from my garden, snap peas from my mom’s garden, an espresso balsamic, blood orange olive oil and a little truffled goat cheese. The oil and vinegar are from a local shop.

Notes:

Occasionally fresh eggs will be hard to peel. One tip is to reserve the oldest eggs in your fridge for boiling. Papa Bird shares that thin shells can be a symptom of a calcium deficiency in the chickens. A simple remedy is to feed the hens shells that you have rinsed and crushed up. Since he has been doing that our eggs peel easily now.

Egg yolk can be constipating for babies. At one point we had to cut back from eggs daily to every other day.

And finally: Papa Bird’s tip on how to tell if an egg is raw or hardboiled. Try to spin it like a top… if it spins, it’s cooked. If it wobbles and can’t get a decent spin, it is raw.

Never Go Hungry Frittata: Backyard Chickens Save the Day

It has been a little over two years since our family grew to include an average of five chickens. Having hens means there is always something to make for dinner. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought there was nothing to eat in the house and was able to pull something delicious together thanks to our eggs. Backyard chickens really do save the day–or at least dinner.

Occasionally I will have dough for a single pie crust (either homemade or store bought) in the freezer and will make a quiche, but I most often make a frittata or tortilla española. Both of those are simply different names (Italian and Spanish, respectively) for the same thing, which is essentially a crust-less quiche. Without the crust it is a little healthier and definitely faster, easier and potentially more affordable (especially if you buy the crust or crust dough.) We also do a lot of scrambles, but a frittata or tortilla just seem a little more “dinner.”

Between baby and work I don’t always make it to the grocery store before the fridge starts looking empty. This week was no exception so I picked a few veggies and herbs from the garden and collected a few more eggs. Zucchini goes particularly well with eggs. :)

 I also found a few potatoes and snap peas in the fridge. I don’t have a picture of the frittata fully completed since a little Baby bird started getting cranky, but here it is nearly done:

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Never-Go-Hungry Frittata Recipe

This is more of a template than a recipe. Feel free to improvise with the ingredients and make it your own!

Step 1: Pre-cook hard vegetables like potatoes or broccoli (boil, roast, etc.) Please also clean out your fridge of any already cooked leftovers. Oven roasted veggies are awesome, as is any leftover meat. This is a great use of a little meat that would be less than a full serving if eaten alone. (My husband finds it more substantial when I use potatoes.)

Step 2: Sauté aromatics, like onion, in a healthy amount of olive oil or coconut oil (it will also be keeping the egg from sticking) on medium heat. Season with salt and pepper. Add other veggies and cook until soft. (Options are endless, but try zucchini, mushrooms, garlic, bell pepper, kale and other greens…)

Step 3: Beat eggs with a fork vigorously until light and fluffy. Use at least 2-3 eggs per serving. You want to have enough eggs to cover all the filling that is in the pan. If you need to use more eggs than you will eat that night, do it. Leftover frittata is great. If you run out of eggs and need a little more volume, add in a little milk. Season with salt, pepper and spices and then pour into the pan. Turn the heat down to low.

Step 4: Finish by adding fresh herbs, tomatoes and cheese. (All I had was my truffled goat cheese. Cooking it essentially wasted the truffle salt. Adding any kind of heat takes away the flavor of truffles which is why they should be used only as a finisher. But, hey, I needed the cheese!)

Step 5: There are at least three options for cooking it all the way through:

  1. Cover the pan with a lid and cook on super low heat until the top appears set.
  2. If you have an oven proof pan (i.e. the handle is entirely metal and not covered in rubber) you can transfer it to the oven and broil a few minutes to cook the top.
  3. If you are daring, try the Spanish method. Once the bottom half of the tortilla is cooked, take a large plate and flip the entire tortilla onto the plate and then slide it into the pan so that the other side is now down. Finish cooking until the center is done. (This is heavy and awkward for me personally, so I use one of the first two methods.)

Serve cut into wedges. Goes great with a green salad.

Notes:

If your zucchini grow a little too big, like ours often do, I recommend peeling them and cutting out the seeds at the core. The rest of the flesh will still be good.

Want to know a trick for fluffy eggs I learned in Spain? When I was an exchange student I watched the señora I lived with make tortillas like this: she tipped a bowl so that all the yolks drifted to one side. Then she beat the side with the whites with a fork vigorously until they were completely broken up. Next she incorporated one yolk at a time. Essentially, she beat the whites alone without going to the trouble of officially separating the eggs. I’ve done the same ever since.

Tips for cooking for baby:

Pediatricians recommend avoiding egg whites until baby is one year old. We have given her plenty of egg yolk since around 7 months but we still do not feed her whole eggs. I often reserve the filling just before pouring the eggs in. Potatoes, zucchini and other sauteed veggies make great homemade baby food! In our case this week I wasn’t fast enough. She was getting super tired and the only thing done was the boiled potatoes.  Lucky for her she likes baby mashed potatoes….

And here it is:

Baby’s First Mashed Potatoes Recipe

Scrub organic potatoes until clean.  Potatoes are a priority to buy (or grow) organic, even if you don’t normally do, since they are sponges for pesticides. Roughly chop and boil in water until they are fork tender. Drain and let cool. Pull off the skin. Mash them in a baby food mill, with a potato ricer, or with a fork. Add a good helping of breast milk until they are smooth and creamy.

Cauliflower is also yummy mashed, either alone or mixed with potatoes.

Watermelon, Mint and Feta Salad

Here is another recipe we enjoyed camping last weekend. Our mint is abundant right now and there are only so many mint cocktails one can drink. I thought this simple little salad would be refreshing camping and easy to throw together.

Packing for the trip, I cut several stems of mint, washed them and then stored them damp, wrapped in a paper towel, in the fridge (and then the cooler). This, by the way, is my favorite way to store herbs and lettuces from the garden. Except at home I just as often use a clean kitchen towel instead of a disposable one. I also packed up the last of my homemade feta. (The feta is another recipe I plan to share, so feel free to subscribe to follow.)

This salad is great with figs, too. This year a little birdie we call Baby eats our figs as fast as they come off the tree. She has even full on shoplifted a fig! We were in Whole Foods and she was sitting in the cart. I turned my back for a second to pick out a peach and when I looked she had grabbed a fig out of a basket on the display and had started eating it! Baby also got into a shopping bag today, found an avocado and bit into it as though it were an apple.

Anyway, she loved this salad. It is a great way to showcase fruit at it’s peak. For babies, watermelon is a great first solid once they are ready to try venturing past purées since it is so easy to “bite into” with just gums.

Watermelon, Mint and Feta Salad Recipe

  • A large bowl of watermelon cut into large bite sized chunks, chilled
  • Mint, ripped or cut into smaller pieces
  • Crumbled feta
  • Balsamic vinegar glaze or reduction
  • Squeeze of lime juice (optional)
  • Salt and pepper (optional)

I don’t have measurements for this salad, so just eyeball it. Cut up the watermelon and chill, if it isn’t already cold. Then add the rest of the ingredients, mix and serve immediately.

Three Sisters Succotash

Sufferin’ Succotash! (I just like to say that.)

Sylvester aside, when I think of succotash, I picture a bad cafeteria steamer filled with a blend of frozen peas and carrots.

Then I saw an episode of Chow’s Go To Dishes where Jonathan Waxman made a succotash that looked amazing.

So when Papa Bird’s corn ripened at the same time as the zucchini and green beans, I had to give it a try! It turns out it is so simple and so yummy. This is a dish that truly tastes much better than it sounds, so I had to share it here. The quality of your succotash will be directly related to quality of the vegetables you use. Because the recipe is flexible and you can use any vegetables you have on hand, it is an ideal recipe for backyard garden bounty. Our tomatoes weren’t ready last month when we made this, but they would also be great in it. Our garden gave us corn, green beans, zucchini, onions and cilantro, so that’s what went in. :)

three sisters succotash

Corn is notoriously difficult to grow organically, but Papa Bird had good luck this year growing corn with summer squash and green beans, following the Iroquois tradition of the Three Sisters. Since I’m one of three sisters, I’m kind of fond of the idea. Renee’s Garden has a nice article on the legend of “three inseparable sisters who only grow and thrive together…

Corn provides a natural pole for bean vines to climb. Beans fix nitrogen on their roots, improving the overall fertility of the plot by providing nitrogen to the following years corn. Bean vines also help stabilize the corn plants, making them less vulnerable to blowing over in the wind. Shallow-rooted squash vines become a living mulch, shading emerging weeds and preventing soil moisture from evaporating, thereby improving the overall crops chances of survival in dry years. Spiny squash plants also help discourage predators from approaching the corn and beans.”

Three Sisters Succotash Recipe

Adapted from: Calabacitas Con Elote by Fork Fingers Chopsticks

Makes 4 servings

  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil
  • 4 cups zucchini, diced (aim for about 1 inch thick pieces; too small and they will turn to mush)
  • 1 1/2 cups corn, cut fresh off the cob
  • 1 cup fresh green beans, cut into ¾ inch pieces
  • 1/2 cup onion, diced
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 – 2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped

In a large hot skillet or wok, sauté zucchini in coconut oil. Allow to cook evenly for 3 minutes, turning occasionally to prevent over cooking. Add the corn, green beans and onions, stirring and sautéing for another 5 minutes so that the zucchini begins to soften and barely turn golden. The zucchini should be slightly crisp. Add the water and cover with a lid at any point if anything is starting to burn, and after a few minutes in any case. Simmer on medium heat covered for about 5 minutes. Add the cumin and adjust the seasoning to your taste. Cook for an additional 3 – 5 minutes, until the vegetables are cooked but slightly al dente. Serve hot.

Tips for cooking for baby:

You can reserve some for baby before adding the cumin and cilantro if he/she has not yet had spices or herbs, but don’t be afraid of introducing them, either! Puree the succotash or grind in a small food mill and add a good amount of breast milk or water. Baby Bird at 8 months liked it soupy with a lot of milk.

Variations:

Use any vegetables you have fresh and in season! I don’t ever follow a recipe to the letter, more as inspiration and structure. Try adding tomatoes, garlic, chile peppers, etc.

We added leftover chicken to the succotash the second day for a complete meal.