Start Fresh is chef Tyler Florence's new baby food cookbook with the tag line Your Child's Jump Start to Lifelong Healthy Eating. For me personally, this book could not have come at a better time: My mind has begun to turn toward making food for my son when he starts solids in the next couple of months. With a preview of Start Fresh, I'm all the more excited to introduce him to the wonderful world of food:
You may have heard of Sprout, a line of organic baby food that Florence introduced in 2008. Start Fresh is full of Sprout recipes and is similarly divided into stages that start with steamed vegetable purees at six months and build up to multi-ingredient meals for one-year-olds and beyond that the whole family can enjoy. I'm already planning to test some of these recipes myself. For example: My son won't be ready to try Stage 2's Roasted Broccoli with Parmesan and Olive Oil for at least another two or three months, but ever since Florence recommended it as a delicious pasta-topper I can't stop thinking about it! Or what about the step-by-step for making Homemade Almond Milk? It's suggested for introduction at Stage 4 but you can bet I'll be trying it as an alternative to the store-bought stuff long before my son's a year old.
As a new parent, my favorite element of Start Fresh is the practical information Florence was mindful to include for those of us who are forging new territory. For instance: He suggests a blender for fine purees (I probably would have used my food processor). He reminds of the importance of going organic for your child. Something as simple as roasting vegetables is described in steps and the technique's flavor impact is explained.
I was already excited about bringing solid foods into my son's life. This book is such a fun and useful resource that it has served to invigorate that enthusiasm, surely for years to come.
Start Fresh, published by Rodale Press, will be released tomorrow, June 7. Available at Amazon or ask for it at your local bookshop.
Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.
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that looks like a good book! since you are interested in feeding your baby healthy, whole foods, you might want to check out baby-led solids. i was so glad i found out about it before my first child was ready for solids. it worked out really well for both my boys!
here's the site where i read about it, but there's lots of info out there:
http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintroductie/blw/engels.html
just out of curiosity, why do you plan to introduce almond milk during infancy?
Oh, I am sooo looking forward to getting this! Already ordered...waiting.... Your review looks great! Thank you.
I'm with doubledutch, we skipped baby food all together and loved it.
@doubledutch: Oops! I re-read that sentence about the almond milk and realize it sounds like I'll be making it for my son at <1yr. What I meant is that I'll be making it for MYSELF long before he's a year old. I'll have to reword that.
I have read about baby-led solids and do like the sound of that approach. Thank you for the link!
I guess this is a good thing if you are eating fast food and just have no idea what how to prepare healthy foods and i certainly don't think it's harmful. But, if you already prepare healthy food for yourself and your family, I think baby cookbooks are not terribly useful. I have a 4 year old and a 1 year old. I started out steaming veggies and fruit in the microwave and pureeing with a hand blender, then freezing the food in glass jelly jars for individual servings. You introduce one food at a time and just stay away from the foods your pediatrician tells you to stay away from (citrus, nuts, eggs). Both of my kids got tired of purees pretty quickly, so I moved on to cutting up whatever we were eating for dinner into small pieces (again, staying away from potentially dangerous foods and choking hazzards like crunchy raw veggies). BTW, kitchen scissors make this task really easy. If I make something really spicy, I set aside the kids' portion before adding the spicy element for my husband and myself (I'm talking habaneros or something- my kids don't mind a little tabasco in their dinner). I might let their meat cook a little longer than the grown-ups' and don't give them raw fish, but that's about it. I think people underestimate what kids will eat and create too much extra work for themselves.
EK76 - You are very lucky to have had such an easy time with your children transitioning to solids. Not everyone is that fortunate.
We are very healthy eaters, but our son has been very particular about texture. At 16 months, we are still working on a lot of things. He loves sandwiches and baked sweet potato cubes and green beans (all in their whole form), but is not happy with food chopped down into chunky forms. He still loves purees (he is not particular about flavor and loves quinoa and salmon and beets) and we are working and working to move on up on other foods.
I ordered the book b/c we have used Tyler Florence's Sprout foods in a pinch and our son has always enjoyed them. I figure it never hurts to add some more information to our arsenal.
Lemanne, absolutely, every kid is different. I intended my post for people who's kids are not yet eating solids to encourage them to relax. This has been my experience and, it seems to me, most babies at my kids' daycare did fine with cut up solids. By all means, everyone has to figure out what works for their own family and if buying Tyler Florence's book helps with a challenging area for someone, that's great.
My baby's not even born yet, so this book was definitely an early purchase, but I love it. I cook plenty of healthy meals for my husband and myself, and I can certainly figure out how to steam carrots and turn them into baby food, but some of the combinations are really unique. I'm making a lot of the recipes for solid foods now, and adding chicken broth to the baby food recipes to make soup. Also, for what it's worth, it's just a beautiful book.