organic food - toddler & beyond
After 12 months, baby can join with most family meals but
obviously avoid very high fibre foods or spicy meals.
Family meals often enjoyed by toddlers include pastas, rice or couscous
based dishes, tortillas (use organic mountain bread), pizzas, soufflés as well
as traditional meals like meat and vegetables.
Remember that children often prefer vegetables raw, so raw tomatoes, grated
carrot, cucumber slices and mushrooms to name a few make great snacks. as do
cold cooked potato, pumpkin or yams.
Sippy Cup Safety:
What's all the fuss about Bisphenol-A? See the further reading box for
information on the safety of plastic sippy cups.
The best solution is to use BPA-free Sippy Bottles or Eco Tanka bottles
with a sippy adaptor.
Visit our webstore
to view these products.
Milk:
Baby can now drink cow's milk and eat eggs (both white and yolks), providing
no allergies run in the family.
Please read our disclaimer.
Organic milk is available in supermarkets but the whole (unhomogenised
version) is best. All milk sold in NZ and US supermarkets is pasteurised.
Of course, whole organic milk does not contain added iron like
infant formula brands. You may prefer to use organic milk - it's your choice. It
possible to give liquid iron supplements instead (available from your
supermarket).
Cooking with organic ingredients:
Depending where you live, it is nearly impossible to buy all organic
ingredients and you may not be able to afford to buy everything organic. So you
will definitely need to make some compromises.
Start by buying what's in season (organic produce
is alot more seasonal than conventional produce).
Organic cooking involves using natural, whole ingredients ie leaving out all
those instant stocks, packet mixes and meals in a jar. These are made from
inorganic ingredients and contain plenty of additives.
You can easily adapt your usual recipes by leaving out these ingredients and
replacing them with organic alternatives.
Stock:
You can replace instant stocks in recipes with ones you have prepared and
frozen earlier. It is also very handy to have a jar of organic vegetable stock
in the pantry (like this
Organic Pathways article suggests).
Natural yoghurt:
You can replace ingredients like sour cream, buttermilk, cream and custard
with natural yoghurt.
Biofarm make an excellent natural yoghurt and have a useful recipe book
(which can be ordered on their
web site).
Tofu:
Tonzu make an organic tofu which they say may be substituted for cottage
cheese, cream cheese, sour cream or yoghurt in any recipe. It is also an
excellent cheese and meat protein substitute.
Tofu takes on the flavour of whatever it is cooked with. It
is easy to cook - You can bake it, grill it or boil it.
To prepare Tofu for babies, put a small
piece of soft tofu in a boiling water for a
couple of minutes. Take the tofu out of the water and mix it
with little hot water and mush it until it is the required
consistency for the babies age.
Serve when cooled down. You can also add mushed cooked
carrots..
For a soup variation, try miso soup with tofu cubes.
References:
1. Ministry of Health, Eating for Healthy Babies &
Toddlers. Revised December 2005.
2.
Commonsense Organics - Guide To Food for Children.
Further Reading:
For more organic cooking tips and recipe ideas, read this
Organic Pathways article.