Starting All Over - Federal Way,WA

Almost anything they make into baby food can be made into home-made baby food, too. Get a magic bullet or food processor and start mashing. Avacado. Carrots. Or what about things like instant breakfast? Can you have that? Pudding? Fruit smoothies?

If you like the flavor avocados mash really well and you can add as much other flavor to them as you want like season salt or stuff to make them more like guacamole.

Avocados, peaches, hard boiled eggs, chicken breast in a food processor, and anything else you can put in the food processor.

banananananas.... LOL!! Good luck :)

Do you have a food processor or blender? We used to make our own baby food for my son, and we used to just mash all of our regular food in a food processor for him to eat. I don't know how sensitive your stomach is, or how sensitive you are to the taste of different foods, but there are a lot of vegetables that you could mash in a food processor....peas, cooked carrots, sweet potatoes, or squash for example. Cooked beans (like pinto beans or black beans) are easy to mash with a little water, and have protein. Pasta. Those are just some of the things I could think of.

Good luck. I can't imagine how hard this must be for you, and I really wish you the best. And good for you for trying to make yourself better and healthy again. Keep us posted on how you're doing!

Sweet potatoes by themselves or mixed with fruit. My kids loved sweet potatoes with applesauce, and I still make it even though they aren't babies. I also like cauliflower puree (there is a South Beach Diet recipe that is good, but it adds salt, milk, butter) but this needs to be well drained because of its water content.

3 cartons of yogurt, add a little milk to make it liquidy, put through a mesh strainer to get the fruit chunks out... Viola! Yogurt smoothie with roughly 7g of protein. Yogurt is in many different flavors, so you can mix up the taste.

Chicken broth and matzo ball soup (good protein since you make the matzo with egg). Add a splash of club soda to the matzo mixture before making the balls and boiling, and the matzo balls will be really soft instead of hard and dense. (I always boil the matzo balls separate from the chicken broth because the broth tastes too salty if you boil them together).

Other soup ideas: split pea, lentil, clam chowder (mash the potatoes up), cream of chicken, cream of tomato, Chinese hot & sour or egg drop soup.

Instead of doing this whole baby food diet, why not try modifying your eating habits. If you can manage to eat 5-7 smaller meals a day. Increase your fresh fruit and vegetable intake while decreasing your starches and meats. You can't help be feel full while shedding pounds.

Also cut out fried foods and fast foods. Discipliine yourself by eating your meals and snacks the same time every day. Drink plenty of room temperature or warmer water (helps with the digestion). Don't add creamy sauces to your veggies. And decrease your portions from what you are accustomed to along with cutting off all eating about two hours before you go to be. I can almost guarantee you the pounds will drop off. Have you ever seen an overweight vegetarian?

Protein drinks will work for the short term but will backfire in the long term.

Just another option you may want to try instead of the one you have choosen. I really wish you would consider giving this a try.

I agree with the smoothies. I make pumpkin smoothies that are phenomenal and great for you. In the fall I bought a bunch of sugar pumpkins & roasted them, let them cool & cut into chunks to put in freezer bags. A couple of them I mashed up totally before also putting in freezer bags. I use vanilla yogurt, pumpkin, wheat germ, a dash of cinnamon, 1-2Tbsp. brown sugar & sometimes some pecans then whirl it away!

How about smoothies. I have been making them for myself and my boys for the past 2 weeks every morning. I just throw in whatever fruit I have in my freezer, some yogurt and juice. You can make it as thick or as thin as you want. I bought some extra big smoothie straws from Bed Bath & Beyond because we make them a little thick and it helps to suck it up.
My boys have always loved fruit so I am not doing it to get more fruit in their diets but my next try will be adding veggies in somehow. I'm thinking starting off with steaming and mushing carrots then freezing them like the fruit.

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/
This website is great about baby food. It has how to cook and what to cook for early stages etc. You may find some wonderful ideas for yourself on there to help you through. So much of it is food you could cook for your family and set your portion aside for yourself unseasoned.
Sweet potatoes are a great source of nutrients. Bake one in the oven or microwave and mash it up, adding water to give it a smoother consistancy. That was my kids' first food, I skipped the rice cereal.
Good luck!

We made our own babyfood and put everything in the blender/mini food processor.

Squash.
Applesauce.
Frozen or canned fruit.
Frozen or canned veggies.
Cooked chicken with stock for fluids.
Ground beef or steak with stock.

Basically we blended everything we ate just seperately and without the spices so that Baby could get use to the flavors and textures.

~C.

@Kimberly F- She is not trying to lose weight. She is reconditioning her ability to process food with the help of a nutritionist because of an eating disorder.

@Mamatothreewee- I just saw your other post about your gallbladder, hope things go smoothly for you! You are in my thoughts!

I have not read the responses so sorry if this is a repeat, but what about getting the new baby food maker and a recipe book I am sure it will show you how to make nutritious food choices that can be pureed. Also, check out the library. Most have great cookbook sections. I am sure you can find something that sounds appealing.

Good luck!

avocado, squash, eggs, lentils, smoothies made with yogurt, yogurt

bone broth from quality meats (ie go to new seasons or your local butcher). I love carrot soup, use chicken broth to cook carrots till they are tender, then blend in blender or food processor, add whatever spices you like, I typically use ground corriander, ginger, curry. add to that some yogurt or sour cream and it makes it nice and creamy without being heavy. You can do something similar with asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms, zucchini's, squash, leeks, potatoes, just change the herbs for what you like or what sounds good. I strongly recommend making your own broth since you are trying to recondition your body into eating, and my making your own broth you are getting all the best stuff out of it.

To make your own bone broth, take filtered water in a pot to cover bones, cook till bones are so soft you can break them in half, pull out the marrow if using marrow bones, this can be done for chicken, beef, elk, rabbit, etc....

Good luck I hope this works for you.

S.

This is a very good question. Yes baby food it horrible stuff full of salt and the food is not organic unless you buy the organic one. You can buy a food mill (a small grinder) to grind up cooked carrots and many other things that you normally eat.
You can eat anything that is not fried. If you are having a gall bladder attack do what I did in late December. I took Silicia 200c three times a day for 3 days. Homeopathics can be purchased in many places. Call around and find one that sells 200's. If you are successful you won't need surgury. If not you can still have it.
I was in pain for six days but I am a very stubborn woman and I know my body can heal from most anything. When I had a giant fibroid I waited it out and if went away following menopause.
I won't give up an organ without a fight. Still have my uterus. It isn't some gyn's trophy because medicine doesn't know what to do.
All the stones dissolved and I am feeling super.

Sweet potato, butternut squash, spaghetti squash...peanut butter?

Super smoothie -- ice cream or yogurt, milk, banana, and peanut butter!

Here's what I did reteaching myself to eat (I was just thinking yesterday as I snitched McNuggets from my son of the days when it used to take me an hour to eat ONE McNugget, in about 14-17 "bites", and then I was "stuffed"):

- Indian Curries (I'd just eat the curry part, or "cheat" and eat peas or other veggies in the curries, but I had to chew and chew, and it didn't always go well... because of their casings/fibers. The spices in curries, would just leave me feeling human again - I prefer tomato curries, personally)
- Saag Paneer
- Hummus w/ extra lemon juice
- Soup (the liquid part in the beginning... I'll send you a recipe for my favorite if you like. It's a beef barley stew that the soup is quite liquid, but is also essentially 'complete'... packed with nutrients. You strain out the solids and let others eat those. Takes about 8 hours to cook. No protein powder necessary, it's packed, and is very dense in minerals, vitamins, proteins, fats, etc. MISO soup is also killer for calcium absorption if your bones are weak. The beef barley soup is expensive to make -about $30-$50 for a few gallons, but miso soup NOT the premade kind, only costs about $5 to make hundreds of bowls of it. I had to eat miso every day for weeks to get my fingers to stop breaking.))
- Boiling veggies (like carrots) in chicken stock and then either mashing them in the stock, or later eating them when they are at the stage of just mushing via your tongue... used that trick for when my son was a baby later on.
- Adding chickenstock to starchy veggies (like potatoes after you mash them) I STILL add chicken stock to mashed potatoes, delish.
- Add a spice or herb you like to most things in the blender. I ate a lot of cillantro flavored things those months.

There's others, but I'm spacing at the moment. If I think of them, I'll add them later.

Added

- Dark meat chicken processed with mayonaise in the blender to make a paste
- Corned beef processed with mayo and mustard to make a paste
- "avacado sandwiches" (use 2 slices of avacado to make a sammie -no bread, the avo is the 'bread' with something 'pasted' like above... graduate on to worthless white bread sammies)
- Peanut butter mixed 1/2 and 1/2 with honey (ewww, nasty stuff, I haven't been able to have PBH&B sammie since that awful concoction... but some people love it... I have issues with sweets, I don't like them, not even fruit)

Can you have smoothies? You can blend chopped apples (leave the skins on), pears, grapes, add a bit of water and then add whatever fruits and veggies you like. The apples pears and grapes are a good base because they are sweet. I like to add blueberries, mango, peaches, spinach, strawberries. You can also add kale, carrots, parsley.

Sweet potatoes are really good mashed up with some cinnamon or you could add cumin and salt. Applesauce is easy, you can also add other fruits and make apple-blueberry sauce etc. Carrot soup is healthy and easy, it is a pureed soup and is very basic (onions, carrots, broth, a few spices). Mashed cauliflower, spinach soup, baked spaghetti squash with some salt, pepper and garlic & maybe a few chopped tomatoes. Butternut squash is great mashed up or pureed with some agave nectar or honey and cinnamon. Can you have milk products at all? Mango or strawberry lassi's are so good. Puree 1 cup mango or strawberry, add 1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1/4 cup milk or almond milk, 1 tbs honey or agave nectar, 1 tsp cardamom and blend.
You can also grind up rice in a coffee grinder, add water and simmer till it makes a cereal, add some applesauce and cinnamon for flavor. Can you do oatmeal? It is easy to change up the flavor, add pumpkin puree, cinnamon and sugar, or peanut butter and chocolate chips, or any kind of mashed fruit. You can also cook quinoa and make it into a porridge and add fruit.
Good luck!

I don't know what your restrictions are, but what about yogurt, gazpacho, fruit smoothies, pudding, jello, soup? Almost any frozen cooked vegetable (carrots, butternut squash, spinach) can be pureed and eaten as is or with something else. Frozen fruit can be thawed and mixed with liquid.

If you are able to eat anything it just has to be mushy - you can always take the food everyone else is eating and put it into a blender/food processor. Then there is only one meal that needs to be cooked. In fact, my husbands first solid food (6 months old) was steak and potatoes that was pureed.

You know, it might be fun for you to take all the foods that you are allowed to eat and try to mash ALL of it in the food processor, one thing at a time, to see what works. I'm pretty sure you could mash practically anything unless it's hard. Any fruit or vegetable would work. Then mix things together that you like the flavors of. Good luck!

Hi Mama,

While I don't have experience with your medical issues, I made all of my first daughter's baby food. It tasted just like the real thing because I didn't have to process it for long term storage.

Bananas, avacados and hard-cooked egg yolks are soft enough to mash with a fork, no extra work needed. Add a little extra liquid if you need a smoother texture.

Soft, watery fruits like pears or melon can go in your blender or food processor. If you need things to be ultra smooth (like stage 1 baby food), you can press the mixture through a mesh strainer after you blend it to remove any leftover lumps or seeds.

Harder fruits (apples, less than ripe stone fruits) can be steamed for a few minutes to soften them, then blend.

Roast or steam veggies until soft, then blend. Add extra liquid (water, broth or milk, depending on your taste) to help smooth the texture. Watery veggies, like squash or zucchini, need very little liquid, if any. Stringy or hard ones, like asparagus or carrots, need more. Just go a little at a time. And until you get the texture right. I used a lot of frozen veggies, too.

Some work best in combination. Sweet potato and cauliflower or broccoli was pretty good, as was regular potatoes with spinach.

Meats are a little tougher, because the texture can be rough. Try combo meals for them. My daughter loved a beef stew that was cooked in the oven until it everything was soft and falling apart then pureed. Mixing chicken with root vegetables or pasta worked well. Lentils and bean soups work very well, too. Again, because I used fresh ingredients and prepared everything like I would cook for myself, only the texture was different, not the taste.

I would make big batches and freeze them in ice cube trays. After they were frozen, I'd pop the cubes into a ziplock bag. Each food cube is about 2 Tablespoons. It made them easy to thaw and measure serving sizes.

Finally, check out your library for baby food cookbooks. Annabel Karmel has some great ones for "meals" that puree well, including recommended liquid amounts. Super Baby Food is a great resource, and has a lot of good recipes, but it is organized poorly, and the author is vegetarian, so meat ideas are limited.

Best wishes for your health!

You can blend any veggie or fruit from cooked squash to cherries. I made most of my babyfood, except spinach, I bought that. You could even blend fruit (any fruit you want) with some greek yogurt and a little milk and/or ice to make a fruit smoothie. You can even blend meat, but to a liquid? don't know how good that would be. Just ground mine to a paste. Good luck.