 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Hi, I'm Mary Meyer with the New Mexico Department of Health WIC Nutrition Program. I'm excited and proud to be here today to introduce our Family Health television series. The WIC Nutrition Program provides nutrition education, supplemental food and health referrals for pregnant, breastfeeding, postpartum women, infants and children up to the age of five for moderate to low income families. Our Family Health series is a collaboration between the WIC Nutrition Program and New Mexico State University. These television programs provide support for families to develop lifelong healthy habits. If you're participating in the WIC program currently, let your local WIC office know if you have watched this episode today. Hi, I'm Deanna Torres and this is my daughter, Donnie. She's 19 months. She's ready for her nap time. Mom, can you take her down for her nap? As parents, we want to provide the best start in life for our babies. There are so many questions when it comes to starting solid food. Like, when do you start? What do you start with? I knew that I wanted to make Donnie's baby food and it was just such a wonderful experience for me. It just made me feel so good knowing that I was providing added love and attention to her feeding. And I found that it was very economical. For the price you pay for one jar of carrots, you can buy a whole pound of carrots and make several servings. And it made me feel good knowing that I knew exactly what was going into Donnie's baby food. A lot of the jar foods have added fat and sugar and salt and I didn't want her to have any of these additives. So I had such a good experience with making Donnie's baby food that I'd like to share the process I used with you and also with a friend of mine who's coming over for lunch, Andrea and her son, Isaac. Come on in, Andrea. Isaac, eating now. Well, he's still eating baby food, but he's really wanting to eat more table foods now. Is he? When did you start him on baby food? I think it was around when he was six months old. The nutrition recommended that we started him then. Oh, good. That's a pretty good age. A lot of times you look for things that they're doing. Things like leaning forward and opening their mouths or sitting with a little support. It's real important when they're full to be able to turn away from the spoon. So, yeah, he looks very good. Have you made your own baby food? No, I didn't. I'm a working mom and I didn't. Well, I'm so glad you came for lunch today because I'm going to show you how easy it is to make baby food. That sounds good. And how fun it is, too. Okay. So are you ready to get started? Yeah, let's get cooking. Okay, great. I'm going to set him down. Okay. Wash my hands. The first thing we do is wash our hands. We need to make sure that our hands and all our utensils are very clean. Chicken salad for lunch today. And we'll just make a little bit different. We'll prepare it a little bit differently for Isaac. Okay. And Donnie's going to be joining us for lunch also. I really like that the babies can eat the same things that we do. Now, what I would like for you to do is finish peeling the carrots and then bring them over here to cut. I started, look at how good this looks. I started a whole chicken so that we can use for several purposes. I like to have the stock for soups later. And we're going to use some chicken for our salad. We're also going to use some chicken for Isaac's baby food. I do want to show that another option is to use the boneless, skinless chicken breast. But this is so much more expensive. Using a whole chicken, you can get so much more meat for the value. Plus, you have the chicken stock you can use for a variety of things. But when you are cooking and you're cooking with meat and vegetables, it's very important to keep them separate, to use two separate cooking boards. I usually use the colored for my meat and the white for my vegetables. There's a lot of bacteria that gathers on the meat, and you do not want to get any of that on the vegetables. Once the meat is thoroughly cooked, it's fine. But you just want to make sure that they are separate. I'm going to just save this for later, and go ahead and use the chicken that I started this morning. Okay, go ahead and start. Yeah, those look great. They are nice. Go ahead and cut them in small pieces. And then we can get started. I'm going to make some extra carrots so that we can have some food, free some food for Isaac for you to use later. That sounds great. Okay, just little pieces are fine. And then we do want to cook in a small amount of cooking water. We don't need to actually cover the carrots with the water, but we just put a small amount to cook until they are tender. Oh, those look great. We usually boil them just until you can stick a fork in, and it's kind of tender. Okay, I'm using fresh carrots, but you can also use canned vegetables. What you want to be careful with is the salt. There is so much salt in canned vegetables. You can either buy the vegetables without salt, or if you buy the ones like this can, it does have salt in it, you want to make sure that you rinse them and drain them really well. Okay, carrots are ready. Okay, great. We'll just put them to boil. I also wanted to talk about introducing different foods to your baby. When you introduce foods, you want to introduce foods one at a time. There could be an allergic reaction to some of the foods. So you want to introduce one, wait two or three days, and if there's no allergic reaction, then introduce a new one. So we'll just wait for these carrots to finish boiling, and I believe our chicken is done. Let's see if these carrots are done. You just pierce them with a fork, and if they're tender, which these ones are, looks like they're done. Okay, go ahead and bring them over, and you can start putting them in the blender with a little bit of the cooking water, and I am going to start taking some of this chicken off the bone. You always put either a little bit of cooking water, or you can add some breast milk or formula to make the consistency really smooth. Oh, this chicken is very tender. Wow, it's just coming off with a fork. I want to make sure that I'm not adding any of the fat, taking all the fat out, so that I won't include any in Isaac's food. Okay, yes, go ahead. You may need to stop it and put a little more water in it, and maybe scrape the edges also. Oh, that looks good. Oh, that looks very good. He likes to chew. Yeah, well, Isaac's age, I think he could handle this consistency. If the baby's six months, you want to make it a little more pureed and add a little more water to it, but I think Isaac can handle this. I think he'd like that. This looks very nice. It smells good too. So should I put it in the tray? Yeah, why don't you grab a tray? Let me first puree some of this meat also, okay? Could you grab me a little bit of the cooking water? Sure. And I do want to add some of that to the chicken also. I cook this chicken without any salt. For the adults, you may want to add a little bit of the salt, but it's better just to cook it without the salt for baby food. Just make a little bit of that. All you have to do is just take a few extra steps and you can have your baby food. I really like having the babies eat the same thing that we do. Okay, this just looks like we need a little more water also. Thank you. Although Isaac might be able to handle that consistency. Yeah, let's puree it a little more. Oh, that looks perfect for him. Okay, we'll go ahead and I'll put this in a little container. And why don't you leave a little bit for lunch today and just put these in the ice tray. It's really nice. These ice trays are about one ounce serving. So you put the carrots into the ice tray, freeze them, and then you have your servings, either one or two ounces, whatever babies need. Can you freeze the meat too? Yes, you can. I just made a little bit because I do want to use the rest of the chicken for our lunch and for dinner also. Okay, great. Just go ahead and kind of pour it in there and then just smooth it out. Does Isaac like carrots? He loves carrots. This is nice because you can take these little cubes to daycare. You can cook them or thaw them out immediately and use them immediately. Okay, good. Now, you can either cover it with a plastic or aluminum foil. If you're going to store, they last in the freezer about, oh, about a month. But if you're going to use them immediately, you don't need to cover them. Or if you're going to put things on top of it, like with my freezer, you like to, it's pretty full, so I usually do cover it. Then you just freeze it and it takes not too long for it to freeze. And then you can put them in a plastic bag or you can use them right away. Sounds good. Okay, I'll just pull our carrots out of the freezer. They look very good. Okay, and it's very simple. You just take the top off, get your plastic bag, and they just come right out. Now, there's several options that you can do. You can either freeze them all like this for later, or you can put them in smaller containers, which is very nice to take to daycare. But if Isaac just wants one serving, or you can add a couple, put in a couple of cubes, they're about an ounce serving. And then you just put this in the diaper bag, take it to daycare. And by lunchtime, they're pretty much thought out. You just stir it a little and they'll be ready for him. What I'm going to do now for you to take later is just freeze the rest of these. Actually, I do want to show how you can heat one serving up right away. So I'm going to take one and put in a jar. Then seal the rest of them. And you want to write what it is and the date that you put it down to put in the freezer. It's good to use them in about a month, within the month. But if Isaac eats, I know that won't be a problem. So go ahead and put those in the freezer. And I'm going to heat this serving up, which you just put in a jar, and just heat it in some water on the stove. And it doesn't take long for it to boil and heat up. And heat in the microwave, we don't recommend it, but if you do, you want to make sure that you stir it very well. Because what happens in the microwave is there's parts that get hotter than others. So you want to make sure that you stir it very well and always test it. Because you may think it's okay for him and it may just be a little hot. So it's very good to test it before. Okay, this did not take long to thaw out. I think what we'll do for lunch today is we'll actually use the fresh carrots that we made. They're room temperature, but if we were going to use these carrots, we'd want to make sure that we test it before we give it to Isaac. Sometimes they're just too hot coming even from the stove. I know you talked about the microwave being how it heats up in some places greater than others. But even with the stove, you want to stir it and test a little bit. Also with the chicken, the chicken is room temperature. So I don't think we actually need to do that. Why don't you go ahead and put Isaac's food in his bowl and I can start making Donnie's food. Now, have you seen at the grocery store the junior foods for older kids for Donnie's age? They are so expensive. They're very expensive and she basically eats everything we do. All I do is I just cut it up a little bit more. I just chop it a little finer, but she loves to eat with her hands. So I just chop things up a little finer and then she just grabs it with her hands. How's that doing? Does he like mixed foods or does he like to eat them separate? He likes them separate. Okay, okay. When you make your baby food, you can try different combinations of food. Okay, we got this stuck right in the... There we go. Okay, here I'll just hold that and pour that out for Isaac. I think chicken and carrots are a really good combination. You can mix quite a few different foods together. You can mix vegetables and meat or different vegetables together. Have you seen the dinners on the shelf, the baby food dinners? What that is, is vegetables and meat mixed up, but there's a lot of other things and they're like starch and just so many other things and they're very expensive. What you do is you're paying for meat. You're paying for quite a bit and you really don't get that much meat. So if you ever want to try mixing foods up for him, just do it yourself. It's a lot less expensive. Okay. Okay, wow, this looks very good. I might want to eat some of Isaac's baby food. Yeah, Donnie's going to like this chicken. And she actually likes salad also. So I may give her some lettuce just chopped a little fine, too. Well, you know, he is getting hungry, huh? Now, we've prepared the meal and we've made food for our children and it's just been a lot of fun. Now, there's something that we call the division of responsibility and that is that the parents are responsible for what food and when to give it to their children. And it's actually the child's responsibility as to if they're going to eat and how much they're going to eat. Sometimes have you noticed that Isaac just eats and eats and eats and then sometimes he doesn't eat? Yeah, I noticed that a lot. I know when Donnie was that age, I used to get worried when she wouldn't eat but really it's your responsibility to just prepare the food and what food it is and then it's hers to eat and she'll eat as much as she wants. Sometimes they go through a growth spurt and they'll eat more than others but he's starting already. That's good. And sometimes they'll just, they won't want to eat but it's really their responsibility. And so I'm just chopping this lettuce up and I think I'm going to actually give her a salad to eat just the way we do. Meal time is such a good time to teach new colors and new textures. You can introduce new foods and just it's such a good time to have a conversation with your children. It's really fun to eat meals together. Sometimes we get really busy and we may want to just sit the kids down and have them eat while we're doing our other things but it's so nice just to take your time and just sit and talk with them. Is he saying, is he talking now? No, he's just making his little sounds. Now this is the same chicken that we used for Isaac's food so I didn't put any salt on it. So if you want salt you may want to add a little bit yourself. Let's see, I think I'm going to get Donnie a glass of milk to drink with her meal. Is Isaac on the milk yet? Actually I don't know when to start yet, I was going to ask the doctor. Usually at about 10 to 11 months you can start giving him a little taste of milk but it's so important in the cup to give him milk from the cup and as they're getting older they can start having a little more but still up until a year they need either breast milk or formula as their primary source and then you just add more foods, add more texture, add more foods. Let's see, we talked about the first food being rice or iron fortified cereal and then we moved to vegetables. Vegetables are probably the second food to add. I know we did that with Donnie and it worked really well because once we introduced fruits she really liked that sweet so it was good to introduce vegetables first and then go on to fruits because she still continued to eat her vegetables. Then we went on to some of the meats and then we went on to some of the dairy foods like he's hungry, we need to get the meal prepared. We went on to some of the dairy foods like milk or some of the soft cheeses like ricotta cheese or mashed cottage cheese and Donnie really loved mashed cottage cheese and some yogurt. I'm going to put some crackers on a plate. These are Trisket low sodium. Anytime we can reduce our salt intake it's a good idea and I think Donnie might even want a slice of cheese. I'll just let her grab it itself. She's so independent and eating time is a good time to allow them to show their independence. You'll see as Isaac grows older he'll want to be independent and he'll want to start feeding himself and that's really important to let him start to feed himself. You'll get things on the floor, you'll notice it's very messy but it's important to their development to allow them to feed themselves and it's fun, it's fun to watch too. So anytime I can I let Donnie get her own food and feed herself. So let's set this on the table. Go ahead and set that on the high chair for Isaac and I think I'm going to have Donnie just sit on my lap and here's our salad. Okay, go ahead and get Isaac in the high chair and I'll run up and get Donnie. Oh boy, how does Isaac like his food? He likes it. Donnie likes her food too. She loves salad, huh? Yeah! Let's see, is he eating the carrots also? He does like it. It's so much fun to eat with your kids. To eat meals as a family and just sit down and relax and with the TV off, all distractions, they really do eat a lot better when you do that. You like your salad, huh? You like your salad. Here, you want some cheese? You want cheese? Hold that, okay. Are you going to eat your salad with your hand now? Yeah. How's he doing over there? They're actually eating the same thing we did. Yeah, so isn't it nice? She does eat some raw carrots too, so I might just give her some from our salad. And Isaac's not ready yet, pretty soon. Little while, he'll be ready for raw carrots. Now they're cooked. Look at Isaac eating, remember? Mommy used to make your food like that, huh? That food came out with some good texture to it. Yeah, he likes it. Some of the foods are real runny. Some of the foods are real runny, but that food came out with some really good texture. Yeah, I think he likes this chicken a lot. Oh, look at here. Hello again. I hope you've enjoyed the show today. If you have any questions regarding information you've heard today or would like information about the WIC nutrition program, please call 1-800-280-1618 and do join us for other family health episodes in the future. The preceding was a production of New Mexico State University. The views and opinions in this program are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the NMSU Board of Regents.