Katie Ferraro (1s):

So pumpkin is an awesome food to serve babies because of vitamin a and the fiber and the carbohydrate. You want to steer clear of the pumpkin seeds. Those can be a choking hazard for your baby. And I've got five BLW pumpkin recipes for you lined up in this episode. 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. Today's episode is all about pumpkins. We are at the peak of pumpkin season, and if you've been seeing pumpkins all over and you're like, how can my baby get a piece of that pumpkin action? I've got five easy ways that your baby can safely eat pumpkin. And before we dive in, I like to start each episode with a baby led weaning tip of the day. Pumpkins are totally safe for your baby to eat. I'll show you how to do it, but too much beta carotene. So if you fed your baby a ton of like dark orange fruits, like pumpkin or vegetables like carrots, it can actually end up turning your baby's skin orange. It's true. It's super weird. Look up pictures online. Like every introductory nutrition textbook. I teach college nutrition as well.

Katie Ferraro (1m 22s):

They always have a picture of a baby with a lot of, who's eaten a lot of orange vegetables whose skin is orange, like kind of on the inside of the palms of their hands. It's totally harmless kind of wild looking. It's again, not a big deal, but it can happen. So we like to remind parents and caregivers too much of any good thing is not a good thing. We don't want to go way overboard and overdo it with the pumpkin, but I will be sharing. If you hang tight five safe ways your babies can eat pumpkin, just don't like, you know, really overdo it on the portion sizes. So I have kind of a love, hate relationship with pumpkin. I was a peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, following college, and in Nepal, there's a monsoon or rainy season. And so during the dry season grow and store as many vegetables as you can, because there's like not a lot of variety during monsoon.

Katie Ferraro (2m 4s):

And pumpkin is one of the vegetables that you eat over and over and over again. So like I love pumpkin from a nutritional standpoint. It's great. It has vitamin a and fiber and carbohydrate, but it kind of brings back memories of eating pumpkin Curry, like day after day after day with my Nepalese host family, which I love pumpkin Curry, but like after a few weeks of it, you're kind of like Jonesing for a different vegetable. So, you know, put it into the rotation for your babies, but it's not something you have to feed all day, every day they might burn out on it. So a few more pumpkin facts if you're in the United States, 80% of the U S pumpkin supply is available during October. So like you seeing pumpkins all the time in October, but don't forget about canned pumpkin being an excellent option for your baby for baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (2m 45s):

Now a little caveat there. If you're not a big pumpkin purchaser and you're at the grocery store, you might notice that the cans of pumpkin there's pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie mix, and they look really super similar, but they're totally different. Pumpkin puree is what we want for the five recipes I'm going to be talking about today and how you can safely sort of pumpkin your baby. You don't want to do pumpkin pie because that has added sugar. And of course babies should not have I have added sugar. And I'm talking about pumpkins, you know, in a vegetable Curry, but pumpkins are technically a fruit. So if you're doing the hundred first foods approach to baby led weaning that I teach, sometimes parents will message me and be like, what's up with pumpkin? Is it a fruit? Or is it vegetable? I mean, I, you know, categorize it as a vegetable from a nutritional standpoint, it's not entirely very sweet, but botanically, it's technically a fruit if you want to get into it.

Katie Ferraro (3m 32s):

And if you are listening me United States and you're possibly in the great state of Illinois, Illinois is actually the largest producer of pumpkin. So now we got a little bit of pumpkin knowledge under our belts. Let's talk about the five ways that we can safely feed pumpkin to babies. And this is not exhaustive. I like it was hard for me to narrow it down to five, but otherwise the podcast episodes go on and on. So I'm gonna link all of the recipes. I've got a brand new download with these five recipes already for you guys on the show notes page. For this episode, if you go to BLW podcast.com forward slash six nine, you can find the download that has all of these recipes. So I'm going to run you through the ideas real quick, but if you're not like right, writing them all down, go back to the show notes page BLW podcast.com forward slash 69.

Katie Ferraro (4m 20s):

Get the download with the five recipes and make these for your baby. So let's start out with way. Number one, this is super easy doing roast pumpkin. Now the other four, I'm going to cheat and use it canned pumpkin. It's not cheating. Like I made all of these recipes with both canned pumpkin and regular pumpkin for you guys. But the first one's roast pumpkin. So you can't do that with canned pumpkin. If you just have a pumpkin, like I bought two pumpkins at the grocery store and one of them, I let my family car. If I always let my husband do that, it's not my favorite parenting job. So he carved the pumpkin with the kids and then I roasted it. The other one to make all these recipes for you guys. So you can use a regular pumpkin, just like you would, right? Any squash? I like to cut the top off, cut the bottom off, cut it in half, take the seeds out. And then I put it in the oven at about 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Katie Ferraro (5m 2s):

I'll slather it in oil. I like to use avocado oil is a great one. I slathered the flesh side with a lot of oils. Additional fat is great for babies to remember their brains are still developing. Avocado oil has a super mild flavor profile. It's got a good fatty acid profile, mostly unsaturated fats and avocado oil has a really high smoke point. So I use it a lot in baby led weaning. The brand that I like is called primal kitchen. I buy like the big bottle of it in bulks. I feel like I use so much of it making baby led weaning, right? But you can get 10% off at primal kitchen with the code for Ferraro10. If you want to check it out, it goes great on roast pumpkin, pop it in the oven 90 minutes about or until it's fork tender and with squash and pumpkin.

Katie Ferraro (5m 43s):

When I take it out of the oven, I'll let it cool until I can handle it. So I'm not super hot, but you want to try to remove the skin before it gets super cold. So we don't want to serve any skin or rind to babies when they're doing baby led weaning, but you can peel the skin off, cut it into strips about the size of your adult pinky finger. Put a few of those like French fry shaped sizes into a little bowl for baby. The baby can see hoop it up and feed it to themselves and roast pumpkin. There. You have it super easy first way that your baby can safely eat pumpkin. The second way I love to do pumpkin for babies is pumpkin oatmeal. Now, if you're not familiar with feeding your baby, okay, oatmeal, go back and listen to episode 47. It's called oatmeal. How your baby can safely self feed oatmeal.

Katie Ferraro (6m 24s):

I've got tons of tips in there, all about the different ratios and how we make oatmeal. But what I like to do for pumpkin oatmeal is taking one quarter to half of the liquid and just replace it with canned pumpkin puree. Again, not the pumpkin pie mix, the pumpkin puree. It makes a nice, beautiful light orange color. It's a very subtle flavor. You're not adding any added sugars. There's no added sodium in the canned pumpkin. So it's a great addition to go into oatmeal. If that's already a familiar food for your baby. And again, I'm going to have recipes for all of these five ways to do pumpkin linked up for you at the show notes, which is BLW podcast.com forward slash 69 third way to do it. I love pumpkin hummus. Now there's all sorts of variations on pumpkin hummus that you can do.

Katie Ferraro (7m 7s):

But if you haven't tried Sesame seed for your baby yet, Sesame seed is not one of the big eight allergenic foods, but to tahini, which is Sesame seed paste is a great one way for you to introduce your baby to Sesame seeds. Sesame allergy is on the rise, even though it's not one of the big eight allergenic foods. So if you want to learn more about Sesame episodes, 49 was called Sesame. How to introduce your baby to this potentially allergenic food. If you haven't done Sesame yet, go listen to that. But once you're comfortable with make your baby a pumpkin hummus, keeping in mind that dry bread products like crackers and toast can certainly be choking hazard early on in baby-led weaning. So we want to moisten things up with a dipper or a topper and hummus is a great one, except commercial hummus tends to be really high in sodium.

Katie Ferraro (7m 52s):

So we don't want to buy hummus for babies. You can make it on your own. Super easy to do the pumpkin hummus recipe. I'm sharing with you is just tahini, which is the Sesame seed paste, pumpkin. You can do a can of white beans, a bunch of olive oil, and then some seasonings makes a great dip. You can try it yourself. You probably gonna want to add a little bit of salt to it. After for yourself, just don't put any added salt in the babies. And that's the third way to do pumpkin as pumpkin hummus. Now, the fourth way I selected for you guys today is pumpkin Curry. I was searching for recipes for the new pumpkin recipe, download that I have coming out in conjunction. Yeah. With this episode. And like so many pumpkin recipes are desserts, right? Like I know I love pumpkin scones and pumpkin cookies, but it's kind of hard to find savory recipes, but pumpkin Curry is fabulous.

Katie Ferraro (8m 37s):

I put together a recipe for you guys. That's a combination food recipe, meaning it's not ideal for early eaters at six or seven months of age, but once you're baby babies moved onto the combination foods, generally around the eight or nine month mark, especially if they've already tried foods like garbanzo beans and they can handle build those more complex textures, go ahead and check out this pumpkin Curry. It asks coconut milk in it. It has a variety of different seasonings and spices. You can serve at a top rice, or you can choose another whole grain and serve the pumpkin Curry. That way it makes kind of a nice thick flavorful stew. It's delicious. Everyone in your family will love it, but it's a super easy way to serve your baby pumpkin as well. So that's the fourth way, pumpkin Curry. And then the final way I put together this recipe, I'm so excited about for you guys.

Katie Ferraro (9m 20s):

It's a blw pumpkin roll. Now, I don't know, like growing up, if you guys have ever had like the traditional Libby's pumpkin roll, which is like pumpkin cake with a cream cheese frosting thing in the middle and you roll it all up and then you slice it into pinwheels. It's one of my favorite desserts. I have a sister who makes it like nonstop during pumpkin season, but of course for babies, the cake has too much added sugar. And then the frosting on the inside is too much sugar. So I made a modified version of the pumpkin roll recipe. And this is a super cool recipe because the batter that you make the cake with has no added sugar and it does have unsweetened applesauce in it. It definitely does not taste like cake. It tastes more like a bland muffin, but you can take the cake batter part of the recipe and just make it into muffins if you wanted to.

Katie Ferraro (10m 1s):

So if you weren't like up to making the whole pumpkin roll, you could just stop, take the batter, put it in your muffin, tins or mini muffin, tins, and make muffins for your baby and do pumpkin that way. So I basically have, it's like a recipe that does double duty because it give a, make a full-blown pumpkin roll for your baby. Or you could just do pumpkin muffins with this pumpkin roll recipe. And then the inside of it and the frosting, instead of doing confectioner's sugar, butter, and cream cheese, I did butter cream cheese and ricotta cheese and with a little bit of vanilla. So it has like the air of being a dessert, but without the added sugar and ricotta is of surprisingly low sodium cheese option, which works great for baby led weaning. So you spread the low sugar cake, pumpkin roll, like flat cake thing with this frosting thing, and it doesn't have added sugar in it and then roll it up and slice it and serve it to baby in these little pinwheels.

Katie Ferraro (10m 49s):

It's a cool way for them to have a variety of different textures. There's no added sugar. There is a little bit of sodium in the cake side. It just as a leavening agent, but it's significantly less than if you were to like go buy some commercial pumpkin bread product for your baby. So again, if you want to grab the recipe for the BLW pumpkin roll, pumpkin Curry, pumpkin hummus, pumpkin oatmeal, and roast pumpkin, go check out the show notes for this episode, which is at blwpodcast.com forward slash 69. Happy feeding, good luck with the pumpkin. Let me know if you guys like the recipes and I'll do more episodes like this. See you later!