Mommy Made and Daddy Too: Home Cooking for a Healthy Baby & Toddler Too

Just wanted to give my 2 cents. These reviews really help me. I carefully read the reviews for this book and I am glad I bought this book. I found it very easy. Most of the baby purees are probably common knowledge anyway, but I needed someone to spell it out for me and this book does. It has lots of good recipes for older babies and toddlers. Our family would eat several of the toddler recipes. I recommend it to everyone. Making my own baby food has been a wonderful experience. I find that it doesn't take much time. I will cook for about 3 hours on a weekend and it will last for 2 to 3 weeks and my baby is getting fresh preservative free food. The only reason I do this is because I didn't want my child to be a picky eater and I heard this helps him learn to appreciate real food. The book gives explicit instructions on everything from cooking to freezing, etc. I highly recommend it. Thanks.

I bought this book with Ruth Yaron's Super Baby Food book several months ago, and while the Yaron book is in mint condition from lack of use, this one is dog-eared and stained with pureed squash, peas, and apples.This book has a wonderful approach and gives great guidelines for preparing your own baby food. It's really very easy to do and doesn't take much time at all. I love knowing what my baby is eating and not being afraid to try to the food I'm giving him. We still have the jars of food for when we go out, but primarily he gets fresh fruits and veggies that I steamed & pureed myself.My husband was a little skeptical of my making our own baby food at first, but now he is a big fan. It is incredibly easy for him to take a couple of cubes out of the freezer, defrost & feed to our son (I make a batch and freeze them in ice cube trays, then put them in labeled freezer bags). Plus, unlike the jarred food, you don't have to worry about opening a jar & using it within 2 or 3 days; you can just defrost a cube at a time. It's also very cost-efficient to make your own baby food because whereas a jar of carrots may cost $$$ (if you get the organic kind), you can make the equivalent of 7 or 8 jars for less than $$$.One big difference we noticed was in the peas -- I bought an emergency jar of organic peas and it was a slimy olive green color (my friend's baby wouldn't touch the stuff). I then made my own from a bag of frozen organic peas and they came out bright green -- like they should be. And they're a thicker consistency that my son appreciates.Another difference we noted was in the squash- the jarred kind smells faintly of cinnamon. Supposedly it's just squash & water, but when I made my own it didn't smell that way. I don't 100% trust what's in the jarred foods. We tried one of the vegetable blends of jarred food and my son got a rash. So far he hasn't had any reaction to the fresh foods, though.I can't recommend this book enough! My son is 8 months old and I typically use this book 2 or 3 times a week -- even just to look for what new foods to give him. There are handy sidebars that list when you can start your baby on the food (e.g., primary puree, 7 months, 10 months, etc.) and things you can do later to make it into a toddler food.I only have one very, very small complaint about this book (not enough to decrease my rating): in the introduction area of the book it says to be careful when selecting carrots to cook because in some areas of the country the nitrates in the soil are high, so make sure to get carrots that are grown in low-nitrate soil. However, in the carrot-recipe section of the book, it doesn't say anything about the nitrates. Personally, I think it would have been helpful to reiterate the warning in the recipe section. But that's the only complaint in the whole book that I have and it's a minor one.

I love my Mommy Made book! I had every intention of buying commercially prepared foods for my baby, until I read this book! Mommy Made gave me the confidence and easy instructions to prepare more nutritious, less expensive food at home. I found an average savings of about 25% as compared to commercial food, it's healthier, and it's really easy! I've tried almost all the recipies in there and I like them all, and so does my son, who is now 16 months old. I think it made the transition to table food easier, as well, because he was already used to the taste of "real" food. I still refer to the section on "which foods are rich in what vitamin and mineral", I still find that information to be extremely helpful. I strongly recommend this book!

This book is now my standard baby gift to new parents. I used the original edition with all three of my children and 10 years later, I am still refering back to it. It gives guidlines on when to introduce new foods, what to watch for in terms of reactions, how to cook the food both stovetop and microwave, ways to store the baby food and make it easy to "travel with", saftey tips and recipes for the entire family to enjoy. The updated book just continues to improve on an already wonderful book.

I didn't know anything about making baby food before I bought this book, and it really helped with what solid foods to give when, as well as recipe, preparation and storage ideas. Thanks to the variety of foods I served our daughter when she was a baby, she is not a finicky eater at all. I'll be pulling this book off the shelf again for our second child!