Fork mashing is super easy.

You can take a banana and a ripe avocado, chop them up in a bowl and simply mash it up with a fork. It couldn’t be easier.

You can start by mixing this slightly more textured food with your purees – you can mix it with a little bit of yoghurt, or you can mix it with your baby rice.

Fork mashing is a great one for if you’re out on the go and away from home at a friend’s house and you don’t know what to feed your baby.

You can also fork mash anything that’s been steamed or cooked, such as parsnip or beetroot. It’s really easy and your baby will keen to try this new texture of food.

Sometime between 6 to 9 months, you should start gently introducing slightly thicker and lumpier textures.

Experiment!

Your baby will enjoy lots of variety, so use some fork mashed food and also offer finger foods that she can pick up herself.

Combination foods mean you can give your baby all the different food groups in one meal.

You’re aiming for a mix of the following groups:

• Fresh fruit and vegetables.
• Protein.
• Dairy.
• Good Fat.
• Carbohydrate.
• Starch.

Not necessarily everything at every meal, but mix it up.

So for example, you could mix cooked parsnip (fruit and vegetable group) with some cooked lentils (protein group) and some cooked couscous (carbohydrate and starch group). If you add some milk, you also have your dairy group.

Lentils are a great and inexpensive source of protein especially if you have a baby that’s a vegetarian. They’re also a great source of iron, which you need to be adding after 6 months. You can actually move to combination foods whenever you like.

You can microwave baby food to defrost it, but it’s really important that you mix it well and test it to make sure there are no hotspots. These can burn your baby’s mouth!

Homemade food for your baby is healthy, contains the right mix of food groups, doesn’t contain anything added and is cheaper than jars of food. Follow our simple guidelines for making perfect homemade food. If you are cooking for your whole family prepare meals without adding salt or sugar and then your baby can eat with you or you can freeze food for future use.

• Make up a batch of baby food and store it in ice cube trays or small weaning freezable pots with lids.
• Put the date on each batch – either pop out the frozen cubes and put them in a bag which you can write on with a permanent marker – or use a (clean!) band-aid stuck on the ice-cube tray and write the date on that.
• If you have simple, healthy family meals, you can puree and freeze leftovers for your baby too. Nothing with too much salt or sugar though – cook them with your baby’s kidneys in mind.
• If you defrost cubes for your baby in a microwave, mix the food well and check the food is not too hot for your baby’s mouth.
• You can freeze homemade food in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Freezing homemade baby food

It can really help you to give your baby a balanced diet full of wonderful flavours and nutrition if you make up a whole batch of your baby’s food at once, and then freeze it.

When mixing up homemade foods make a balanced choice for each meal and make a selection of different purees – including:

1. Fruits
2. Vegetables
3. Proteins like cooked and pureed meat or beans

then you can pop out a couple of different cubes to make up delicious combinations.

After you’ve made up your food and it’s cooled a little you need to quickly freeze it. There are lots of ways you can store your baby’s food:

• One meal freezer safe pots
• Ice cube trays
• Initially, freeze into ice cube trays and then transfer into freezer bags so you can choose e.g., 3 cubes of cheese sauce and 3 cubes of cauliflower and mix up with a carbohydrate like baby pasta shells.
• You can either pop your frozen cubes into a saucepan with a touch of boiled water to stop it burning or defrost it in the microwave.
• Until you know whether or not your child likes it, only pop out one cube at a time. If he loves it and gobbles it all up, you can always pop out another one.

This makes things just as quick as a jar of bought baby food as you just pop out the cubes you want to use, defrost and mix them. Always check the temperature is safe for your baby and dinner is served! You can freeze pretty much anything. Milk products are absolutely fine to freeze, combination foods, and family foods such as casserole or soup. It is not recommended to freeze rice.

It’s great to make homemade food for your baby since then you can be sure it:

• Is healthy;
• Contains the right mix of food groups, i.e. – carbohydrates, dairy, good fats & proteins;
• Doesn’t contain added sugar or salt;
• Is a lot cheaper than jars of baby food;
• Is nice and fresh!

First fruits may include apple, pear, and papaya with popular first vegetables being carrot, potato, swede, parsnip, butternut squash and sweet potato. Root vegetables are particularly favoured by babies due to their naturally sweet flavour and their lovely soft texture when pureed.

As babies get older, homemade baby food like scrambled eggs (where the yolk is completely cooked), mashed banana and mashed avocado are all healthy fast food options.

If you are concerned your baby may be prone to allergies, discuss the process of introducing new foods with your health professional – especially high risk foods like milk or eggs.

For a list of useful contact details for The Portland Hospital, please click HERE.