Hi everyone! Welcome to Mamma’s Cooking. I wanted to create a place for moms/caregivers to talk about what they are cooking! I love to cook! It is my art, my hobby, my stress reliever. Even though I love to cook, I don’t always have the time or energy, so have found ways to make it faster, easier and more fun!
Mostly I like to cook simple, easy, healthy (or somewhat healthy) and cost effective meals. Food should taste good, so I don’t sacrifice taste to make something lowfat. EVERYTHING IN MODERATION! That’s what my mom always says. I sneak healthy things in where it doesn’t impact the flavor too much. Yes, everything tastes 
better with lots of butter and real cream, but using smaller amounts of those items or for some dishes using lowfat milk or neufchatel cheese instead of full fat cream cheese, doesn’t change the flavor. Anyway, I’m losing focus…basically this blog is about my love for cooking and sharing it with my friends and family and now new baby girl!
Figuring out what to cook for yourself for dinner is hard enough, so many new moms are daunted by also making their own baby food. It is an easy and fun way to get your child used to different textures and tastes, not to mention nutritious. I’m not saying that baby food in a jar is bad. Quite the opposite. It can be great! EVERYTHING IN MODERATION! Just like those nights you go to the freezer for the frozen Trader Joe’s meal, go to the jarred baby food. Or if you are eating on the run, the jarred baby food is easy to transport and you don’t need to refrigerate it. Or you don’t have anything else in the house and can’t stomach the thought of turning on an oven or pulling out a pan.
Ok, on to the reason for the blog…Since I love to cook, but have less time and more food to cook, I am searching for a way to keep my hobby alive and well! I have been making most of Karina’s food, but take short cuts where I can. She started on solids just before 6 months. We followed the guidelines giving her a new food every 4 days or so. (Check out this great resource – http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/)
- First we gave her plain rice cereal (Earth’s Best), which she loved.
- Then we moved on to peas (also Earth’s Best, since I had read somewhere that infants cannot digest the outer shell on the peas, so to make them I would have to remove them, which I did not have the patience for)
- carrots (Earth’s Best)
- squash (roasted butternut squash in the oven with a little water in the bottom of the pan)
- sweet potatoes (baked in the oven wrapped in tinfoil).
- I also baked apples and pears in the oven. I bake these things when I have the oven on for something else. For example, last week whole chickens were on sale at the grocery store, so I bought one to cook on a rainy Sunday (Stuffed chicken with leeks and quartered lemons, sprayed skin with “I can’t believe its not butter” spray, rubbed with lemon pepper, salt and rosemary. Diced some potatoes and put them underneath the rack the chicken sits on in the roasting pan. )
Karina likes mixtures of food cubes. ( I bake the food, use a fork if soft enough or immersion blender and leave it a little chunky, small enough so not a choking hazard though and then freeze
it in ice cube trays in the freezer). Her favorite is sweet potato and pear. We were mixing in Earth’s Best oatmeal (dulls the flavor a little while they are getting used to it and Karina liked the texture), but then she got really constipated, so we don’t do that so much anymore. Now we also give her prunes, which I don’t make because its easier to buy those in the store (Gerber, which also has an organic line if that is what you prefer).
So, this first blog has gone on long enough…I will keep writing (shorter blogs) about my search for how to best create meals for my new family, what I’ve tried that works and what doesn’t. Feel free to comment and add your own experiences so we can all learn from each other. I don’t claim to be an expert on anything, but just someone who loves to cook and wants to share it with her daughter from the start 🙂
