This is a super puree to introduce beetroot to your little one! The pear gives it a bit of sweetness which offsets the earthy flavour of the beetroot. It’s so simple to make!
You will need:
2 beetroots – peeled and roughly chopped
1 pear – peeled and roughly chopped
Put the chopped beetroot in a saucepan and boil till soft. You could also steam or microwave – up to you. Reserve some of the cooking juices for later.
Blend the cooked beetroot and the raw pear until smooth, adding as much of the reserved cooking juice as necessary to get your preferred consistency. You could use a bit of water instead of the reserved cooking juices if you’d prefer.
Serve straight away, pop into freezer portions for later, or spoon as much as you need into a Super Squish pouch for a fabulous meal on the go.
I don’t think there is a ‘one size fits all’ approach to weaning. My little one is now 3 and a half, so I’ve left that stage long behind me but I remember it well. My son was one of those kids who would eat pretty much everything, a lot of it, and from a spoon. Friends of mine had little ones who wouldn’t. Plus, you also have to factor in the fickle nature of a weaning baby whose like (or dislike) for certain foods and they way they are fed to him/her seems to change with the wind direction! Random and unanticipated!
When I was weaning my son, I used a multi-prong approach which worked for both of us: sometimes chopped food for self feeding, sometimes food pouches, sometimes ice cubes of puréed food defrosted and mixed together etc.
I wish the Super Squish pouches were around then. Which lead me to have a think about how I would have incorporated the pouches into the weaning process, especially in the very beginning. If you go the puréed food route (which I appreciate doesn’t suit or work for everyone!), you typically introduce small amounts of food and different flavour combinations in the early weaning stages.
With this in mind, I puréed cooked apples and cooked pears separately then spooned them into ice cube trays. Each cube was about 15mls/ 1 tablespoon. This makes it easier to know how much your little one is eating.
Once they were frozen, I popped them out and decided that I wanted to mix the pear and apple flavours together. I put 2 of each into the Super Squish pouch and let it defrost. I then squished the pouch a bit to mix up the contents. Voila! Apple pear combo. Obviously you can add any number of ice cubes and combination of flavours as your baby’s appetite grows.
Remember to really make sure you seal the zipper – I didn’t the first time I did this and had purée everywhere once the cubes had defrosted!
Fantastic – now I had my choice of blended food in a pouch! Ready to go.
I stored the rest of the ice cubes in labelled ziplock bags and popped them in the freezer. I used to make lots of different types of ice cubed purées (fruit, vegetable and stock cubes) in advance, bag them and have them ready in the freezer when I needed them. Easy peasy!!
Obviously, you could also fill up the pouch with puréed food and feed it to your baby in a few sittings.
The pouches are versatile and you can make them work for you no matter which stage of childhood your little ones are in!
You will need:
