Freezer Aisle Finds for Baby-Led Weaning

Walt Disney World Resort (0s):

We are leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse, waving princess meeting and greeting lightsaber, clashing the Twilight Zone, tower of Terror, dropping Banse, flying Space Mountain, launching Galaxy rewinding. What's the network of Galaxy rewinding fireworks, igniting world of other worlds for whatever you love. Infinite Worlds await at the most magical place on earth. Walt Disney World Resort.

The UPS Store (30s):

This Valentine's Day, the UPS store certified packing experts are helping pack and ship all the ways we can from the lovey dovey. XOX XO gifts, gifts for your Valentine's gout pal, even pet gifts for doggy dearest. When you ship UPS air at the UPS store, your items arrive on time or your money back guaranteed at no extra cost. Exclusively at the UPS store, US retail location. Send your Valentine's on time at the UPS store, visit the ups store.com/air guarantee for full details, terms and conditions apply.

Katie Ferraro (1m 1s):

And these types of low sodium bread, you find them in the freezer aisle because A, they don't taste that great so they're not flying off the regular bread aisle. And If you freeze them then they don't go bad so they last for longer, right? 'cause I'm not gonna have a great shelf life because one of the things sodium does in bread is that it helps extend the shelf life. But another thing that sodium does is it provides moisture in baked goods. So If you take all the sodium out of the bread, you're also removing all of the moisture, right? So this results in a very dry product. So you or myself, as an adult, we're not gonna love a low sodium bread and the texture of it. But for babies it is a good option because it's so low in salt, but it's also going to be a choking hazard because it's so dry. So the way we remedy that is by adding a low sodium dipper or a topper to soften things up.

Katie Ferraro (1m 46s):

And then this is a really safe way to offer your baby the potentially allergenic food wheat in a way that's safe and easy for them. Plus it's accessible for you. You just grab it right out of The freezer aisle at your grocery store. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in Baby-Led Weaning. Here on the Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using Baby-Led Weaning. If starting solid foods feels overwhelming, the freezer aisle at your grocery store might actually be your secret weapon.

Katie Ferraro (2m 32s):

And I don't mean like the types of salty foods or stuff with added sugar today. We're talking about frozen foods that actually work for Baby-Led Weaning. And these are not foods that you cook and then put in the freezer, like you're literally at the grocery store and you're in the frozen food aisle. What foods can your baby eat? I like to start each of these mini training episodes with a Baby-Led Weaning tip of the day. And today's tip is when it comes to frozen foods, I do want you to be a sodium sleuth because the truth is the frozen foods aisle is packed with good and not so great foods for babies. Okay? We're gonna talk about the good ones in today's episode, but the not so good ones are not so good because frozen foods do tend to, for the most part, be convenience foods or processed foods that are really high in salt.

Katie Ferraro (3m 21s):

And as you know, we don't want a lot of added salt or really any added salt for the foods that babies are learning how to eat. So just keep an eye on sodium levels 'cause there's lots of grapevines in the frozen foods aisle. You just have to read your label. So when it comes to sodium, what are you looking for? There's no hard and fast rules about how much salt babies can have. My general rule of thumb though, is that if you're looking at the package on a packaged food, that you're gonna feed your baby. And most of the foods you're making with baby Led Weaning don't come out of a package. But if you're using frozen foods and they do look for less than a hundred milligrams of sodium per serving, that's what I do if I'm gonna offer it to a baby. Now, If you want more info about limiting sodium, check out episode 33.

Katie Ferraro (4m 2s):

It's called salt Three, Easy Ways to Minimize Sodium for Your Baby. But I want you to hang tight because In this episode I'm gonna send you guys five of my favorite Freezer Aisle Finds for Baby Led Weaning. Now maybe you guys have heard Michael Pollen, the esteemed food journalist, big fan. I'm a uc Berkeley grad. Actually one summer I was teaching summer school and I teach nutrition and I was teaching in the dietetics department, but they didn't have enough room. So somehow I got stuck in the journalism school and Michael Pollen, who was at the journalism school walked into the back of my nutrition class. Like you wanna talk about something like very intimidating when you are a very young new adjunct professor as Michael Pollen standing in the back of your nutrition class. And this was at the height of his like peak popularity.

Katie Ferraro (4m 44s):

So he wrote a number of, you know, food and nutrition related books. But the thing you might know Michael Pollen for was his whole thing was about shop the perimeter of the grocery store, right? Like the bad stuff, the processed food is in the middle aisles. And yeah, it's extreme. A lot of the fresher foods are located on the perimeter of the grocery store. But we recently did an episode on canned foods. Episode 75 is all about canned foods that can work well for baby led weenie. And let me tell you, there's a lot of great options in the canned food aisle that are gonna save you a ton of time when it comes to new foods your babies can eat. The frozen foods aisle also happens to be at least the way my grocery store is situated in one of those middle aisles. So I do love Michael Pollan, but I mean I do think there's a lot of great stuff in those middle aisles that can save you a lot of money too when you're looking for some new foods that your baby can eat.

Katie Ferraro (5m 30s):

So I have a mom in my baby-led weeding program who was telling me the other day, her goal is she only wants to go to the grocery store two times a month. And I love that 'cause it's someone who personally hates going to the grocery store. I'm like, if I could only go twice a month, I'm make my life awesome. But she's doing it because she wants to stay within her monthly grocery budget. So she said, I'll do your program, which is five new foods a week, but I'm only going to go to the grocery store two times a month. So basically, how am I gonna do this? 'cause every time I go to the store I'm gonna need to pick out 10 new foods, but I'm not going back into the store between that. So I went through the 100 FIRST FOODS list, that is the crux of my baby led weaning program. And there's five food categories in the 100 FIRST FOODS list.

Katie Ferraro (6m 12s):

So 20 foods in each one. There's a category of fruits, vegetables, starchy foods, protein foods, and allergenic foods. And I was like, listen, you can do this. Okay, So I picked out a food from each of the food categories and that's what's making up this training today. I'm gonna tell you the five foods that I told her that work really well from the frozen foods section. So I wanna start with the fruit. Now If you have my 100 FIRST FOODS list, there's a couple of berries on there. If you don't have my 100 FIRST FOODS list, I want you to have it printed out, put it on your refrigerator. I want you to be checking it off so your baby can eat all these a 100 foods before they turn one. I don't want you to ever have to worry about what foods your baby can eat.

Katie Ferraro (6m 54s):

Next, there's 20 fruits on the 100 FIRST FOODS list. The way you get the hundred First Foods list is I give it away to everybody for free on my online workshop called Baby LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS. This is a one hour video workshop. I just redid the whole thing. I redo it like a couple times every year 'cause I love teaching this stuff in long form. So it is an hour, but I think for like an hour to learn how to feed your baby, it's totally worth it. Plus it's free. And at the end of that workshop, I give everybody a copy of my original a 100 First Foods list. You can get signed up to take the workshop, Baby-Led Weaning.co/workshop. It's the best place to learn about baby Led Weaning. So on the 100 First Foods list are 20 fruits.

Katie Ferraro (7m 35s):

And there's some berries there like blueberries and strawberries and raspberries. But let's be real, those foods don't work for early eaters, right? In this particular mom in my program, she was in phase one. So phase one of Baby-Led Weaning is the first eight weeks of the program where we do foods one to 40, right? 'cause we're doing five foods a week. Okay? So in eight weeks you're doing 40 foods. Those are single foods. But with Baby-Led Weaning, the foods that the baby can pick up are about the size of your adult pinky finger, right? 'cause your early eater does not have their pin or grasp, okay? So they can't pick up a small piece of food like a blueberry or a strawberry or a raspberry. They could technically pick up a strawberry, but depends how big it is, right? And then if it's too big, then it's not safe. So we have a lot of recipes in our program for for every food, how to make the food safe for phase one.

Katie Ferraro (8m 20s):

And I also have recipes for phase two and phase three along with videos and instructions and all the recipes for the different phases. If you wanna check out the program that's at Baby Led Weaning.co/program and podcast listeners can get $50 off when you sign up for that program using the code BLWPod50. So If you have the 100 First Foods list and now you need help making all the foods on the list, that's what you do inside of the program. I also have my 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan inside of there. So it's 20 weeks of done for you meal plans. If you don't wanna pick the five foods you feed your baby each week, I did all the legwork for you, literally down to every single meal. Here's what you make, here's how you make it. And your baby gets to those a hundred foods and it's, sorry, for lack of a better word, it's brainless.

Katie Ferraro (9m 2s):

All right? So check that out at baby led weaning.co/program. And again, that code BLWPOD will get you $50 off when you sign up at Baby-Led Weaning.co/program. So back to the berries. You've seen all the memes on social media about how expensive berries are. Don't sleep on frozen berries. Frozen berries are amazing. Okay? So we've got, we've got some great recipes in our program that utilize frozen berries. And I'm not talking about just making your baby a smoothie, okay? I think smoothies are sometimes kind of parents projecting their really weird diet culture onto their babies.

Ezpz (9m 35s):

Now If you baby's teething and they like colder foods, I love to use those little tiny pops from easy peasy. They're little tiny Popsicle molds that your baby can pick up and feed to themselves. Sure, If you got a smoothie as long as it has ingredients in it that are safe for your baby, pop it into the tiny Popsicle molds. Frozen berries work great for that. We've got a couple of paleta recipes in the program for phase one and I love frozen berries for those. If you haven't checked out the easy peasy tiny popsicles, they are fabulous. You get 'em even early on. They're great for breast milk or formula popsicles. They also work for any purees if you're doing any meats, always pure up some meat. Always got meat popsicles. My kids are like, what are these popsicles in the freezer? Like try 'em. It's pure lamb, you'll love them. The easy peasy tidy popsicles. You could get 15% off all the easy peasy feeding gear. I my easy peasy affiliate discount code is baby lead. So if you're checking out some of these products for Easy Peasy, I love them 'cause they're all designed by Miss Dawn SLP, who's the easy peasy feeding expert. You go to easy peasy fun.com/baby lead. And that is where you can find all my favorite baby Led Weaning gear. But the tiny pops are at the top. And again, that code baby lead gets you 15% off at easy peasy.

Katie Ferraro (10m 47s):

So for blueberries we have this blueberry kota lemon pancake recipe and sometimes parents are like, I mean I'm not paying full price, but blueberries are not available in my area. Definitely check out frozen berries like frozen blueberries, frozen strawberries, frozen raspberries. But here's a tip from the frozen food section. Some of the frozen berry options in the freezer aisle are like they're marketed as smoothie bags, just frozen fruit. But a lot of times it will have added sugar on it. So you need to read your labels. What we're looking for in the ingredient list, just the berries. Okay? Occasionally you'll see ascorbic acid in the ingredient list and someone's like also social media education about nutrition.

Katie Ferraro (11m 27s):

Oh my gosh, there's ascorbic acid in this. Ascorbic acid just means vitamin C people. Vitamin C is an antioxidant. It helps prevent against browning. Okay? 'cause for some of these cut fruits, If you have cut strawberries, the exposed side when exposed to air is going to turn brown. Now obviously they're flash freezing your frozen fruits, so sometimes they won't have vitamin C added to 'em because they're frozen right away, so they won't turn brown. But sometimes some of the brands will add vitamin C. So If you see the fruit and vitamin C in the ingredient list, that's fine, but you wanna see zero grams of added sugar in the ingredient list. 'cause we don't want any added sodium and also no added sugar for a baby.

Katie Ferraro (12m 7s):

So get yourself some frozen fruit If you're gonna be making those blueberry ricotta, lemon pancakes. Another one of the recipes that I love that we use the frozen strawberries for to make a strawberry french toast recipe using low sodium Ezekiel bread, which I'll talk in a second about what that is. Fresh or frozen. Strawberries you can make fresh or frozen strawberry strips, even just frozen strawberries if they come in strips, depending upon the size of the berry, it can be big enough. It's that pinky finger size that your baby can pick up and feed to themselves. But again, the goal is to just make sure that we don't have the added sugar in them and you're not buying the actual smoothie bags, which we just mark the price up on.

Katie Ferraro (12m 48s):

It's like literally frozen fruit with added sugar and then it costs a whole bunch more. And you don't have to buy any fancy brands. Like I know the biggest grocery store in my town is Walmart And you just buy the generic brand. There's a lot of organic options there as well If that suits you. So first food is technically three foods from the hundred First Foods list. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, get 'em frozen, save some money and they're available year round.

Hungry Root (13m 9s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back. This episode is sponsored by Hungry Root. You know that saying about the cobbler's kids never having any shoes? I feel that to my core because I cook and prep food and tweak recipes for babies all day long in my business. But then the burden of trying to figure out what to feed my actual family for dinner, it just looms large at the end of every workday. And I know I sound like a broken record going on about Hungry Root, but it is one of the things that has truly simplified my life lately. It's been extra helpful 'cause I feel like Hungry Root finally gets me. Here's what I mean. Hungry Root is a personalized grocery and recipe service that plans your food for you. So it fills your cart with meals and groceries that fit your health goals, your food preferences, and your budget. And then delivers everything right to your door. So the mental load relief is real. Like even if I only use Hungry Root for one or two dinners a week, that's a few nights where I know I don't have to do the like what are we eating? Do we have the ingredients? Is anybody gonna complain? Like spiraling outta control? I've just opened the app. I pick what looks good, it's basically handled. Plus, there is so much variety. There are over 50,000 chef crafted recipes with many ready in 15 minutes or less. Plus there's over a thousand grocery items now too. I know you're gonna love Hungry Root as much as I do for a limited time. You can get 40% off your first box plus get a free item in every box for life. Go to Hungry Root.com/weaning and use the code weaning. That's Hungry Root.com/weaning code weaning to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life.

Katie Ferraro (14m 57s):

Next up. Number two, moving down the hundred First Foods list. The next category are the vegetables. I love frozen spinach. Now, raw leafy greens are not safe for your baby to eat, right? Huge choking hazard. But spinach, you're probably aware from your Popeye watching days. Very nutritious. Okay, lots of other reasons to eat spinach, very cool texture, opportunity for your baby. Love the bright green color unless you cook it to death and it turns dull, ugly, dark, disgusting green. But again, we can't do raw leafy spinach for baby. So no spinach salad, your spinach salad. Eating baby does not impress me. One of my favorite recipes in our program though is a pollock paneer recipe.

Katie Ferraro (15m 38s):

So pollock paneer is like so paneer. If you like Indian food, it's like Indian spiced cream spinach dish. And sometimes parents are like, oh my gosh, I need like three pounds of spinach to make this. But we have variations of the recipe that utilize frozen spinach. 'cause even if I would want to buy three pounds of fresh spinach, it would cost so much. I'm like, it's not worth it. Frozen spinach, incredibly affordable. Also gotta be a little bit on a lookout though because the cream spinach variety that you buy sometimes will have oftentimes added salt to it. So we're just looking for plain spinach And you can do the leaf spinach if it's frozen. A lot of times, especially for the Pollock paneer recipe, we use the frozen chopped spinach.

Katie Ferraro (16m 19s):

But don't forget that spinach also has a decent amount of iron. Now of course, the type of iron that's in non-heme foods. So plant foods is non-heme iron rather it's in plant foods. It's not as well absorbed by the baby's body as the iron that we find in animal foods. But it doesn't really matter if you're offering a variety of plant and animal foods. If your family eats animal foods, your baby's body is going to become efficient at absorbing both types of iron. And if you're offering other vitamin C containing foods like I don't know, the frozen berries that you got for the other recipes, the vitamin C in there helps your baby's body absorb the iron. So you don't just have to do meat to get iron as part of the weaning diet can also do some of the plant-based sources of iron.

Katie Ferraro (16m 59s):

And especially in that Pollock pier recipe, it uses quite a bit of spinach. It's a really nice thick puree so your baby can practice dipping and scooping using their spoon. One of my favorite recipes in our program, that Pollock pier recipe, it's also a phase one recipe. So it works for early eaters. A lot of families are like, okay, I never cooked Indian food before, but my baby, my whole family loved that recipe. And again, If you wanna check those recipes out, they're all inside the program. Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro, sign up at baby Led Weaning dot co slash program. The code is BLW pod 50 and it gets you $50 off. Alright, so we've got the berries for the fruit, we've got the frozen spinach for the vegetables. As I looked at the starchy food section of the hundred First Foods list, let's be real.

Katie Ferraro (17m 42s):

There are not a lot of whole grains that you're gonna find in the frozen foods aisle because whole grains don't generally freeze well now after you cook them, we do have lots of tips for cooking and storing the majority of the foods and the recipes inside of the program because that's the goal, right? It's not have to cook every day. So a lot of these recipes store really well once they're prepared. But one of my favorite foods to find in the frozen foods aisle that works well and comes off the starchy foods list is a type of bread. Now, bread is not on my hundred First Foods list because to be honest, bread is not a great food for early eaters because bread tends to be too high in sodium, right? Look at the sodium levels on a loaf of like commercially prepared bread at your grocery store.

Katie Ferraro (18m 25s):

There'll be like 300 milligrams of sodium. So it's blowing that a hundred milligram recommendation outta the water, but also especially refined white breads that are pure endosperm, okay? Just pure starch, especially for your early eater, that balls up and it forms a bolus that can get stuck on the roof or the sides of the mouth and can be very challenging for your early eater to clear. So don't love bread for early eaters. If you go to episode 180 3, it's called bread. When can babies safely eat bread? You can learn more about why bread's not my favorite, but we do have wheat on the hundred First Foods list and that's one of the top nine allergenic foods. So you wanna get that in early and often. Ezekiel bread, okay, it's from a brand, I think it's called Food for Life is the like parent brandand.

Katie Ferraro (19m 5s):

But Ezekiel bread is a low sodium bread. Now it doesn't taste awesome to you and me because one of the things that salt does in bread is it provides moisture. So when you take all the salt out, guess what? The bread's really dry. So we always add like either a lot of butter or a dipper or a topper. And again, if you're adding butter to the bread for your baby, butter is a cow's milk protein containing food, right? 'cause it's dairy, so that's a different allergen. So you wanna make sure your, you already know your baby's not allergic to cow's milk before you offer them the Ezekiel bread. But I love Ezekiel bread because it's low in sodium, but you do have to moisten it up for early eaters because it's going to be to dry And you cut it into little strips about the size of your adult pinky finger, put all sorts of the other things you're trying out.

Katie Ferraro (19m 45s):

It's like a great vehicle for trying other foods and your baby can pick it up and feed it to themselves. But If you regular grocery store, like the low sodium bread is not flying off the shelves, okay? So that's why they put it in The freezer aisle. So it doesn't go bad, doesn't do so great to begin with. But if you're looking for low sodium bread, that's where it is. Boom. Protein tip. Alright, moving on to the protein section of the a100 FIRST FOODS list. When I did the a 100 First Foods list, 20 proteins, I made it 10 plant proteins and 10 animal proteins. The number one animal protein that I always have to go to the frozen food section to find is duck. I live in San Diego and duck is not available year round at most of the grocery stores.

Katie Ferraro (20m 25s):

And I go to some of the Asian grocery stores, I can find it if I go to Hispanic grocery stores, I generally do not find it at Ralph's. The grocery store has it in the frozen foods aisle sometime, but it's frozen. And so when it's frozen you need a couple days to defrost it. So usually I usually defrost it in the refrigerator, takes about five days. Now why do you have duck on your a hundred First Foods list? Well, first of all, you try to find 10 different types of protein to make safe animal protein that is for babies. But I love duck because it is a fatty type of poultry and the more fat in the meat for your baby the better because when you cook that protein, the fat lubricates, the protein strands, it makes it easier for the baby to swallow. So we've got a couple of different ways that we make duck inside of the baby led weaning with Katie Ferraro program.

Katie Ferraro (21m 11s):

So when I get the duck, a lot of times I just do a roasted duck. We got a very easy roasted duck recipe. It does have to be defrosted to do it. You can all my recipes for the meats too, they have an instant pot version. I have a multi cooker version, which is basically an instant pot, a crockpot. If you have like an old school ceramic crockpot version, I do a stove top recipe and I do an oven recipe. You basically don't have an excuse, you have to make the duck okay, because you, you have all the kitchen equipment to do this and If you don't have it all, there's one reason or one version that will work for you. We also have a duck meatballs recipe, which is really easy If you can grind the duck up yourself once it's cooked and make it into really easy little meatballs and make that for your baby. But if you're looking for duck to knock it off your a hundred First Foods list, again, that's gonna be in the frozen foods aisle.

Katie Ferraro (21m 54s):

Alright, moving on to the fifth food that I love from the frozen foods section. This one comes from the allergenic foods section of the hundred First Foods list. So it's fruits, vegetables, starchy foods, proteins in the bottom has 20 different allergenic foods. Fish is one of the top nine allergenic foods, and I have a variety of different ways that you can safely offer your baby fish. White fish is on there now. We've got white fish, we've got fatty fish, we've got sardines. There's a bunch of different ways to do it, but whitefish is a really good find. From the frozen foods aisle. You oftentimes can find different filets that are individually packaged of whitefish, so you don't have to go buy it fresh if you're not so inclined to do that or you can't find it or it's too expensive.

Katie Ferraro (22m 35s):

Inside of the program, I've got a halibut with chimney cherry sauce recipe. I've also got cod cakes with aioli, dipping sauce recipe. I know a lot of families love that one. The good thing about whitefish is 'cause it's so sorry, boring. You basically can interchange any of the types of fish for all of these different fish recipes that are there in the program. So next time you're in the frozen foods aisle, check out the frozen berries, but stay away from the added sugar. Check out the frozen spinach, but make sure you're not getting it with added salt. Check out the Ezekiel bread, but if you're doing it, make sure you moisten it up because that no salt bread will be dry. Check out the duck. All right, but give yourself a couple days to defrost it and then get yourself some white fish and pick one of those recipes from the program if you're in there to make it for your baby.

Katie Ferraro (23m 16s):

Depending upon what age and stage you are in, I will put all of the links to the different references that I mentioned today on the show notes page for This episode, which you can find@blwpodcast.com/89. And a special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave Media or online@blwpodcast.com. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time. Bye now,

‎The Past and the Curious (23m 51s):

Grownups, if there's a child in your life who is interested in curious about or fascinated by people in places from history, then my podcast, the past and the Curious might just be a hit in your home. From the invention of microscopes to world, traveling dogs to fashions of the 1890s Gold Rush ghost towns and audiences going wild for walking competitions, we've got a little bit of it all hosted by children's author and museum educator m Sullivan, that's me. The show is fun, funny, engaging, honest and beloved by kids and parents alike. Find the past in the Curious at all. The usual podcast places.