Coconut wheat pancakes

So Simple!

Take a cup of whole wheat flour.
Mix in enough water to make it pasty and batter-like.
Add Agave nectar or sugar if you are not so health-conscious or obsessive. :)
Add 1/4 cup of grated coconut (either fresh or thawed after frozen will do)

Pour batter over hot pan, spoon in some coconut oil or ghee or raw butter to prevent sticking, and sprinkle some more grated coconut on top while the pancake is cooking.

Your baby will love this. Serve it with fresh fruits, cottage cheese, and more agave nectar for some dunk-n-eat fun.

Parmigiano Reggiano Mac and pan-sauteed veggies with cumin

Today I quickly boiled some macaroni in some sea salt water and let it become very very soft and tender.

Then in a flat pan I sauteed small diced carrots and zucchini with some olive oil and a sprinkle of himalayan salt and cumin.

Arnav simply loved it and preferred to eat it with his own hands. And that's where you want to be mommies when your little one is about a year old. You want to train them to eat on their own and this peaks their interest too and keeps them occupied enough for you to sneak in a few more bites of those nutritious meals..:)

I didn't get to take any pictures. When you are a mommy and your house is on sale and you have re-entered the work force and the house hasn't been vaccummed - you do what I do. You skip the photographing! :)

Hope you mommies will just take the recipe this time. 

Sweet Potato Coconut Soup

You know we always think of adding cream and milk to our soups that we forget there is another great ingredient we can use instead and give our baby soups a little of that exotic touch.

I always keep a can of organic coconut milk in my pantry.

One day I am going to make a list of all the neat little grocery essentials and desirables that you might like to stock up on for your baby's food.

Ingredients
Butter; Diced Onions; pinch of Pepper (optional); pinch of Dry Ginger powder; Organic Coconut milk (desired amount - if you want more of the coconut flavor add more of the milk); Mashed Sweet Potatoes; Lemon; Salt; Filtered water

Cooking
On low heat warm butter and saute some diced onions in a saucepan.

Add Coconut Milk and all the spices. Bring to a light boil. Add in your sweet potatoes and water. Let it cook for 5-10 minutes on low heat.

At last garnish with a wedge of lemon that you can squeeze over the soup right before serving.

 

Your baby might not care for these little chunks of onions but it's always good to experiment. Usually they are so soft that they just swallow it with the soup and don't even know it. But sometimes they make cute little 'I hate this' faces and you pretty much decide NO MORE ONIONS from next time onwards. :) 

 

Dry ginger powder is a really good spice to have around the house for soups and tea and even coffee. It also helps when you have a cold. Just add a few pinches in your hot drink.

 

I melded everything together with a masher again.

 

You can even garnish with some more fresh organic coconut milk right before serving.

Confession
I have been experimenting with the whole pepper powder (hand ground) and it's not flying so well with Arnav so I have decided to stop it for now. Instead I just add a little paprika or cayenne pepper into this cooking dish. That way he gets heat but doesn't keep coughing on small pieces of pepper.

Zuccinni and Lentil Rice

This is the easiest dish to make for your lovey. This is my go-to recipe when I am out of ideas and just want to make something quick because I have laundry to fold, errands to run,  and my own lunch awaiting me. :)
Okay so do you stock lentils? Lentils are so healthy and super fast to make. They taste amazing especially when you season them with sauteed cumin. I have an entire shelf of different kinds of lentils and I use this recipe with any one of them. Today I used a kind of a round brown lentil.

Ingredients
Brown Lentils; Zuccinni; Brown rice; Cumin seeds; Ghee;


Cooking
Take a small steel bowl. Add in diced zuccinni. Throw in a tablespoon (desired amount) of brown rice and brown lentils. I like to keep them in proportion meaning if I put in 1 tbsp of lentils then I add in 1 tbsp of brown rice. 


Have you pressure cooked things? Do you own a pressure cooker? I have to tell you that it's the easiest and fastest way to cook lentils. If you don't own one, no problem, just take a deep saucepan and add enough water for this steel bowl of baby food to float in. You don't want to get the water level too close to the rim of the steel bowl because water may seep in your food. So just add enough so your bowl actually becomes buoyant. :)


Then close the lid and cook on high heat. This is indirect gentle way of heating baby food. Again this helps keep the nutrients of the cooked food.


Once your lentils are mashable and 'done' go ahead and heat up some ghee in low to medium heat. Add a few sprinkles of hand crushed cumin and watch it sizzle. It's the pretties sight and don't even get me started on the aroma that fills your kitchen at this point.


Be careful not to burn the cumin. You will see the sizzle and just turn off your stove and once the sizzle calms down - add this to your baby food. Just pour it over your love's food and that's it.


Mix it all well. Blend it if you like. 

You can use any type of lentil or even white rice if you like. Brown rice just has more fiber.

The brown rice has settled all the way down here.

I like to hand crush my baby's spices right before his meal because the aroma and spice release right then and there.

Actually I give Arnav a variation of blended food and 'adult food'. I don't want him to think that food is always 'mashed' or in some goopy liquid form. So I take great care to give him a variety of food. This one I just mashed with a fork. This way he can entertain texture in this mouth which is very important to their food experience. Remember they too get 'bored' of eating the same thing. Like us they want food excitement.

Aspotatoragus Cream soup

Okay so I made up that name.

It's a beautiful asparagus and potato cream soup made within 15 minutes.

We were rushing out to our chiropractor and I needed to pack Arnav's (he is 9 months old now) food since we were going to eat our lunch out. I knew that I didn't have to worry about carbs since he could munch on some pasta at the restaurant. So I decided to make a yummy soup for his lunch.

Needless to say he loved it so much that before I could dip the spoon in the soup he'd open his mouth and ask for more.

I am just not fast enough for him.

Ingredients
4 sticks of asparagus; 1/4 of any potato; salt to taste; garlic powder; butter; milk; cream; whole white peppercorn

Cooking
Boil the asparagus and potatoes for 10 minutes after chopping/dicing them up roughly. I used the end stalks for flavor. Since these tend to be tough I remove them at the end before blending my soup.

Add a dash of garlic; hand ground whole white peppercorn; salt; butter; cream; milk

Now just let it cook in very low heat. Once the spices and flavors have infused let it cool before blending it all up with a hand blender.

Molasses Oatmeal with fresh pear

This breakfast is so simple that it literally takes only minutes more than opening a jar of baby food.

Boil some water and sprinkle some whole oats in there.
Add a drop of molasses because if you add more your oatmeal will appear very dark.
And now drop in a few fresh cut pears.
On low heat boil this away for about 10 minutes or so until the pear becomes soft.

That's it!

You can either mash up the pear with a fork or you can blend it in a mixer for a creamy texture. They will gobble it up.

Optional: I added a pinch of sugar right before serving and this can be an option.

Sweet Potato Cream soup with a side of honey greek yogurt

Today I tried the whole 'make it now but can use it later too' type of recipe. I usually tend to make everything super fresh. That means cutting the veggies right before cooking and perhaps even grinding my spices while the butter is melting over the hot stove.

I had bought some organic sweet potatoes which I ended up freezing due to a long overseas trip. So finally that I am back and don't want to waste these sweeties what I ended up doing was pressure cooking all the potatoes by drowning them in water over high heat and giving them two whistles. Once they were done I just jarred and refrigerated it.




Cooked sweet potato jarred away for later use



Fresh cream, Cinnamon powder, and butter



Himalayan salt or sea salt



Less than a pinch of cayenne paprika powder
It's very important to expand a baby's palette by offering him various spices in mildness and this will help him later in developing tastes for different cuisines.



Less than a pinch of powdered peppercorn



On low heat warm some butter and add chopped onions.



Add the dash of cream, cinnamon powder to taste, salt, the rest of the spices and heat up the soup in low to medium heat.



Keep some yummy honey greek yogurt out of the refrigerater (so it's not too cold for baby because overly hot or overly cold food can become hard on the taste buds - we want baby to distinguish flavors in warm or room temperature food).



Beautiful sweet potato cream soup with your side of greek yogurt



And a VERY HAPPY BABY!