Katie Ferraro (0s):

Okay. When it comes to pineapple, like I always thought you just throw the pineapple core away, but no, in this recipe you actually use the pineapple core. Combine it in the blender with coconut milk. This is going to blow your baby's mind. And you're going to love this recipe too. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian, college nutrition professor, and mama of seven specializing in baby led weaning. Here on the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (42s):

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. Today is chopped: baby-led weaning edition. I'm calling this baby led weaning edition part one, because I did not realize how many people love the show Chopped. A while back in a podcast review, someone said, and I get all of my best podcast episode ideas from the reviews that you leave. I read every single one. And this one's like, why don't you have a chopped episode? And then I had to ask the girls that work with me, what exactly that would entail because I've never seen the show. Like I get the concept of like, do I actually write the recipe? And they're like, no, just throw it out there. Tell me which ingredients you want. And I'll tell you how to make them safer for baby-led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 23s):

So that's what we are doing today, but I have to call it part-one because what I put it on Instagram that I was doing Chopped, like the responses that I got were like out of control, just the numbers. And I want to, I can't address every single one, but there were a lot of themes, but I don't have time to do them all in a relatively short Monday podcast. I'm going to come back with episode two, part two, but I'm going to start with like five of the weirdest, but also some of the most commonly asked ones. We'll do a little balance here on chopped baby led weaning edition part one. Back to the reviews, if you are enjoying the baby led weaning made easy podcast. I short of begging you are imploring you to please leave me a written review on apple podcasts.

Katie Ferraro (2m 4s):

You have no idea how much it helps the podcast get found. We launched in May of 2020. So kind of the height of the pandemic we launched at number two in the parenting category for apple podcast parenting. And we've been hanging in the top 20 consistently since the launch. And the only reason why we're in the top 20 for parenting is because of your fabulous written reviews. They're so important for helping other parents and caregivers find this information about safely starting solid foods with their babies. I personally read every single one, even the ones that aren't exactly glowing. I have a thick skin. I can take constructive criticism, but to be honest, most of your comments are so helpful. They're so insightful. I'm so happy to hear that you're liking the content that you hear here.

Katie Ferraro (2m 46s):

And on top of that, I get all of my episode ideas. So if there's an episode topic you want to hear, please leave me a review on apple podcast. I will record that episode for you, but with no further ado, I want to get started on Chopped: baby led weaning edition part one. So going through the responses, I picked five foods. I've been doing this episode. I'll do five different ones in the second one, right off the bat. Someone asked about tofu tofu. I'm gonna start easy. He's like the easiest food to feed your baby. I know it's confusing cause not a lot of people eat with tofu, but tofu is a wonderful way to introduce your baby to soy. Soy is one of the big eight allergenic foods. So those are the eight foods that account for about 90% of food allergy.

Katie Ferraro (3m 26s):

I did an entire episode on soy and how to introduce that safely to your baby that's episode 37. So if you go to blwpodcast.com/37, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about feeding your baby tofu. So I like to do it. You can actually just start it right out of the package. This is like the easiest one I do firmer extra from you can cut it into strips about the size of an adult pinky finger. You can also use a crinkle cutter. My friend, Ms. Dawn SLP taught me that one. It's kind of a cool way to mix up the texture. Make it a little bit easier for your baby to grip it up. But I, I do tofu slices, tofu doesn't taste like very much, but babies love it. It's a perfect textures to introduce to babies before they have teeth when they're just learning how to eat. And then again, you're exposing your baby to that very important allergenic food soy.

Katie Ferraro (4m 11s):

Now, another thing you can do with tofu is I love to blend it in a blender and make it a habit, a tofu pancake recipe that I'm be sharing with you guys on the, the first three. I actually have recipes for them. So if you go to the show notes for this episode, be blwpodcast.com/59. You can find the recipe for the blender tofu pancake. I know that baby led weaning. Fans love pancakes, but this one's a little different because it's got a different protein source and that's the tofu. So I like to mix the tofu in the blender. I'll use it as like a filling for manicotti or other stuffed pastas once the baby moves into combination foods. But if you're just starting out with solid foods at six and seven months of age, we don't do combination foods, but a food like a tofu pancake would be perfect.

Katie Ferraro (4m 55s):

So that's what I would do with tofu. That's food. Number one, food, number two, this was an interesting one. Parsnips. I think a lot of you get a farmer box. So I get a farm box as well. And it comes with breads fruits and vegetables and parents are always like, what do I actually do with these? So if you've got parsnips in your producer box, here's what I do with parsnips. Parsnips are like white carrots, basically, if you're not familiar with them, but I love to roast them. So peel them, cut them in about the size of that french fries put a bunch of oil on top of it. I like to use avocado oil. It's a good fat profile. Important for your baby's still developing brain also adds additional flavor and mouthfeel. Like let's be honest, roasted vegetables with lots of oil on them.

Katie Ferraro (5m 35s):

Taste amazing. Even if you don't add salt, which we don't add salt for the babies, but you could also add it for yourself later. I would cut it into matchsticks about the size of a French fry, pop it in the oven somewhere between 350 and 375 for 20 or 25 minutes until it gets up nice and soft, where it passes the squish test. That's where if you take that, that French fry size and you squeeze it between your pointer finger and your thumb. There's a little bit of give that, that the parsnip is cooked enough. Now parsnips are a great medium for adding flavoring and seasoning. So there are a root vegetable. They have kind of an earthy, I would say, almost meaty taste. As far as vegetables go. I like to use things like cumin to sprinkle on the top or I'll do margarine. I found mace in mace, not mace like pepper spray mace, but the seasoning mace the other day.

Katie Ferraro (6m 19s):

And I used that on parsnips. Didn't taste by tackler, but maybe cause my mace was like five years old. But regardless you can use the roasted vegetables as a medium to introduce your baby to other flavors from spices. And if you're like what babies can eat spices. I had no idea. They definitely can. And I've gotten an entire episode all about how to flavor and season and spice your baby's food conscious Coya who's at chief spice mama and wrote the cookbook spice spice baby. She came on that particular episode and she's got tons of great tips for how to make your baby's food, not bland or boring. So if you're just branching out into cooking for your baby, be sure to check out that episode about flavor seasoning and spicing your baby's food. That's at blwpodcast.com/48.

Katie Ferraro (7m 3s):

Again, I'll link all the recipes that I'm talking about today in the show notes for this episode as well, which is BLW podcast.com forward slash 59. But when it comes to parsnips, I love to make carrot parsnip soup. Again, I'm using the blender a lot for recipes at the beginning of baby led weaning not to feed your baby purees cause we can work them into other ingredients, but periods are an important texture for your baby to learn how to eat. It's just not the only texture your baby can eat. So I've got a great carrot parsnip, blender soup that I'm going to share with you again in the show notes for today's episode blwpodcast.com/59. Next up someone asked about the pineapple core. My sister is the only person I know who actually uses the pineapple core, but she used it.

Katie Ferraro (7m 46s):

Is it in the blender? So one time I was like, I use a pineapple cutter, which at first I thought was ludicrous. I was like, who needs a device to cut a pineapple? I have a knife. I can cut a pineapple, but my old opere gave me a pineapple cutter. She's like, it pains me to watch you cut a pineapple. This is a way more efficient device, fabulous kitchen tool. The pineapple cutter is amazing, but it always bugged my sister that it kept the core intact and you wouldn't use the core. And I was like, I just throw the core out. It's like the top and the sides you throw the core out. She was like, oh no, you don't put it in the blender and you can work it into a smoothie. Now. I'm not a huge smoothie person personally, for no reason. Other than I have so many kids that we never had any produce leftovers. So there's never like halfway rotting fruit around my house, which I know is what a lot of people put in their smoothies.

Katie Ferraro (8m 27s):

But I've got a great recipe for you guys using the core of the pineapple. Okay. The core of the pineapple with coconut milk in the blender that I think is going to blow your baby's mind and the rest of your family is going to like that as well. So those first three ones, tofu, parsnips and pineapple core. I've got that covered for you. I think someone must've heard me talking about the pineapple core, where they asked that question, because again, I've never heard anyone except my sister asked that. So onto number four, there were tons and tons and tons of messages about how do I cook greens. Kale, swiss, chard, cabbage, lettuce. So many is the point that we just put a future episode on the calendar. That's called green leafy vegetables, how to make these safe for my baby to eat. So I'm going to do a whole dedicated episode to this, but yeah, just reading one of the comments for the moms, her name's Lindsay.

Katie Ferraro (9m 13s):

Lindsay says, what about kale? And don't tell me pesto, like normally for the greens, you can make a pesto, make the pesto. If you buy commercial pesto, it's really, really high in sodium, which is not appropriate for babies. So you can make your own pesto with whatever green you have and a lot of oil and a little bit of Parmesan cheese, and then add salt for yourself later if you want. So it's a great way. If you feel like you're getting really reliant on like pasta and red sauce, you can do pasta and kale pesto if you want to. But Lindsay wants more than pesto. So I just want to mention that having raw green leafy vegetables are not safe for babies. So a lot of people put lettuce. How do I feed my babies? Let us, I don't feed my babies lettuce. It's not safe.

Katie Ferraro (9m 53s):

Nobody cooks lettuce. Okay. I guess sometimes you can make like a wilted lettuce salad with hot lettuce, but like you could feed that to your baby, I guess, safely, if you wanted to, I don't do raw lettuce, raw cabbage. I don't do a lot of raw vegetables prior to one, but I don't do any greens until after one. So what I do with the greens, if you were to cook them, it's all chopped them up, saute them and then include them in a fritter batter recipe. Nobody said, don't give me a fritter recipes. People love for your recipes because babies do so well with fritters because it makes a food that's otherwise hard to feed, easy for them to pick up. Cause you can fry the fritter. Again. I fry it in avocado oil. Now that I mentioned it and I say it a lot. I realized I do use avocado oil quite a lot, but that's because it has a very high smoke point.

Katie Ferraro (10m 36s):

So it's a great oil for frying foods for your baby. Like fritters, not to mention, as I said earlier, though, it has that good fat profile that's important for baby's brain development. So I'll fry the fritter in the avocado oil, and then you maybe can either eat the whole fritter and bite off the pieces that they want. Or you can cut it into strips, especially if it's a little bit early on. My typical fritter batter recipe is I'll do one cup of a dry cooked grain, a half a cup of a cooked vegetable. Let's say cooktop kale, or swiss chard. Or you could even do any other green that you have beet greens. Some people are cooking with the carrot tops. That's fine. Just cut it up. Really small, cook it half a cup of that one cup of a dried cook grain. So bulger or couscous or quinou or amaranth or spelt or any of the other 20 grains in my hundred first foods list work great when they're cooked and dried out, you don't want soupy grains, wet soupy grains are the bane of fritters existence because they make everything fall apart.

Katie Ferraro (11m 31s):

So if you cooked grains and you did like while yesterday with your babies, put some of it in the fridge, it's a great way. The fridge is like a desiccant. It kind of sucks all the moisture out of it, which is great for then making fritters. Like, you know how they say like day old rice is really good for making fried rice. It is day old. Grains are really great for making fritters and then woke up with the dried grain, one half cup of the vegetable, one egg. I combine those things together. So of course your baby will have had to have tried egg without an allergic reaction. A number of times before you would make this recipe. And for those of you that are maybe vegan families or baby has an allergy to egg, you can do a chia seed substitute. So that's where instead of one egg, you would do a tablespoon of chia seeds mixed with three tablespoons of water combine that throw that in the fritter batter recipe, it acts almost identical as a binding agent to keep everything together, fry it a few minutes on each side until it's done serve it to the baby.

Katie Ferraro (12m 22s):

They have, that's a great way to do grains for older babies. I will do kale chips. So for those of you guys are on Instagram, Instagram is where all of the highlights are located. And in the highlights there under kale, I have some more information. That's about how to feed your baby kale chips. If you make them yourself without added salt, they can be safe for babies to eat. But again, that's for older babies. I definitely don't do that for earlier eaters because they're a little bit on the crunchy side. Okay? So that's number four, all the greens. And I do have a future episode coming for you guys with more details on how to do greens, because I had no idea how many of you have so many greens at your house, the house, and you're not sure how to make them for baby led weaning. Last one, I want to tackle in today's episode, our bell peppers. Now raw bell pepper strips are not safe for babies to eat no matter how you cut them, whatever you do to them.

Katie Ferraro (13m 7s):

If they're raw and they're crunchy, raw crunchy vegetables are a huge choking hazard for babies. And if we look at the data per emergency department admissions for non-fatal choking events in infants, hard, crispy vegetables and fruits are always up there on the list. Obviously hard candies. And I know you guys don't like feed your baby hard candy, but other babies or other children in the house can give a baby hard candy or the baby picks it up off the floor. We know that the choking hazard foods for the most part, but please keep in mind that like apple slices and pears slices, if they're hard and crunchy or bell pepper strips can definitely be a choking hazard. So one thing I like to do for bell peppers is you can roast them yourself, right? You've probably all seen recipes and anytime I see a recipe, that's like take the bell pepper, put it in the oven for 30 minutes and then sweat it in a bag, like put it in a Ziploc bag and then peel the skin off and then slice.

Katie Ferraro (13m 57s):

And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm just going to buy jarred bell peppers and jarred bell peppers. You can find some that are really low in sodium are amazing because they've already had the skin removed. They're already roasted. They're already nice and soft and cooked. And they're not super salty feed those to your baby. Or if you're so inclined, roast your own bell peppers, but always make sure that the bell peppers are cooked and we don't do any raw vegetables like crispy crunchy foods like raw bell pepper chips until after the baby is one. So there you have it. That's the first five foods. It Chopped BLW edition. Part one. Thank you for all of your responses. If you responded to my call for foods for chop, I've got a lot more of these. This is a super fun format to do.

Katie Ferraro (14m 38s):

So I'd love to do another edition moving forward. I hope you guys find those first five foods helpful again, if you want the recipe for the tofu pancake, the parsnip carrot soup, as well as the pineapple core coconut milk smoothie in the blender. These are all three blender options. I've got those three blender recipes for you linked up at blwpodcasts.com/59. And I'll go ahead and link to all of the other episodes that I mentioned in today's chopped episode. Thanks for being here. Bye guys!