Futari-- pumpkin and yam stew for baby led weaning

In our final installment of Pumpkin Week, we've got another East African dish: futari. It's a wonderful stew of coconut milk, pumpkin, and yams. The pumpkin begins to fall apart and thickens the liquid a bit, while the yam retains its integrity a little better and prevents it from being entirely porridge-like. Serious comfort food! Not photogenic, however. No glamour shots this time. No photos at all, in fact: Mae took a late nap and the good light vanished before I could take a photo of her eating this. (There are leftovers; perhaps tomorrow).

There seem to be only one or two recipes for this out there on the web, and I used one of them. It does taste a lot like what I had when I visited Tanzania, so it works for me. The only change I made was to add peanut butter. The recipe I found suggests that if you don't have coconut milk, you can thin down some peanut butter with water and use that as the liquid. But seeing as I do have both, and I feel strongly that they would be yummy together, I added it in addition to the coconut milk. I was right: they are good together.  (Feel free to omit it if you want, though. I won't get mad.)

Futari

1 large onion
2 Tbs oil
2 lb peeled, chopped pumpkin
2 lb peeled, chopped yams/ sweet potatoes
2 cans coconut milk
1/2 tsp cloves
1 tsp. cinnamon
uninhibited spoonful of natural peanut butter
juice of 1 lemon
salt to taste

Heat oil in a large, deep pot. Throw your onions in and let 'em go till they're brown.  Add the cloves and cinnamon, fry briefly. Add remaining ingredients; cover and let simmer until vegetables are tender.

I think this would lend itself well to crock pot preparation, but I haven't tried it yet.

Kibbeh(-esque) Shepard's Pie recipe for baby-led weaning

Okay, I may as well tell you up front, I have never had real kibbeh. I've just read about it. It captured my imagination and I just had to give it a try. Middle-Eastern grandmothers the world over would weep if they heard me describe this dish as kibbeh, so I won't. But it is kibbeh-ish (kibboid? kibbehsque?), with its spiced beef filling and bulgur-based topping. Just simplified a bit, and made with spices that I have on hand.  Maybe someday I'll try one of the more labor-intensive variations (dumplings!), but for now, this is more my speed.

Mess-wise, it's a 3.  It definitely required more than three wipes to clean it all up. Between the bulgur and the ground beef, there are lots of little tiny bits for Mae to drop onto her lap, into the highchair, and onto the floor.  Quite a bit of it went into her mouth, too, though, so I'd call it a success.

Kibbeh(-esque) Shepard's Pie

1 1/2 lbs. ground beef (aka 'mince')
1 c. bulgur (cracked wheat)
2 Tbs flour
1/2 onion, pureed in a food processor
1 tsp zaatar seasoning
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
black pepper, salt to taste
1/2 c. pine nuts, chopped

Put your bulgur in a medium bowl and cover it with boiling water. Let it sit a while-- at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, brown the beef in a skillet, mixing in the cinnamon, allspice, ginger, cloves, black pepper, and pine nuts.  When it's cooked, turn a portion out into a little casserole dish for the baby, and add a bit of salt to the remaining beef if you like, and put it into a larger casserole dish.

Return your attention to the bulgur: pour it into a fine sieve and press down on it to squeeze out as much water as possible. Put it back in the bowl, mix in the onion, zaatar, and flour. It should clump together after the flour is added; use a bit more if necessary. Turn this out on top of the beef in the casserole pans and pat it down firmly. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes (perhaps a bit less for the baby casserole). It should be a bit brown around the edges when it's done.

Cinnamon-flavored black-eyed peas

I love black-eyed peas. Love them, love them. For dinner last night, I made this recipe (reproduced below for your convenience). The only adaptations I made were to use a yellow onion instead of red, and to leave out the cilantro (because I didn't have any). And to not add the salt until the very end after I had set some aside for Mae, of course.

This is not a tidy recipe. I give it a 3 on the messiness scale. Mae enjoyed practicing her pincer grip on the peas, but it manages to be a substance that both smears around and drops in small bits to the floor. It's a good time to use a plastic food-catching mat, if you have one.  I forgot, and regretted it.

Cinnamon-flavored black-eyed peas

1 c. dried black-eyed peas
1/2 small yellow onion, diced
3 Tbs canola oil
4 garlic cloves
2 Tbs tomato paste
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp turmeric
2 cinnamon sticks
2 bay leaves
2 cardamom pods

Thoroughly rinse the peas in water, and bring them to a boil in 3 cups of water. Simmer 35-45 minutes, or until tender. Heat 1 Tbs of the oil in a skillet and saute the onion until it's nice and brown. In a blender, puree the browned onion and garlic cloves with 1/4 c. water. Add tomato paste, ground spices, and another 1/2 c. water and blend. Put the rest of your oil in a skillet over medium-high heat; add the cinnamon, cardamom, and bay leaves. Cook for about 30 seconds, then add the spice slurry from the blender. Turn the heat down to low and simmer a bit. It'll thicken a little. Stir in the black-eyed peas, and simmer another 10 minutes or so. Remove the whole spices (good luck finding the cardamom), set some peas aside for the little one, and add salt to taste for the adult portion. Garnish with some minced cilantro if you have it on hand.  They suggest serving it over rice, but we thought it was fine on its own.

Roasted zucchini 'hummus' recipe for baby-led weaning

'Hummus' in quotes because I'm not sure what the necessary and sufficient conditions for being hummus are, but probably this doesn't really meet them. It's more of a family-resemblance sort of relationship. It's got garlic, it's got tahini, and you can dip it or spread it.  I just thought it might be good, and I was right. Mae agrees.  That cracker it's sitting on? Easier than you might think. Recipe for those tomorrow.

Roasted zucchini 'hummus'

4 medium zucchini (~6 inches)
4 cloves garlic
2 Tbs olive oil+ additional if desired
black pepper
1 Tbs tahini
1/2 tsp sesame oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon

Heat your oven to 400. Quarter the zucchini lengthwise, and then cut into 1/2 inch pieces. In a bowl, toss them with the olive oil and garlic cloves, grind black pepper over them, and then turn 'em out onto a sheet pan (or trust iron skillet!). Roast them for 30 minutes, turning halfway through. When they're nice and soft and browned, they're ready. Let them cool a bit, then dump them in a blender with the remaining ingredients. Blend until reasonably smooth.  Mine still had bits of skin visible, and I thought that was fine; you do what you like.  Spread it on crackers, pita, toast, rice cakes, eat it with a spoon or, if it comes down to it (and it well may!) with your fingers.

Grilled chicken with tomatillo sauce-- recipe for baby led weaning

I bought some tomatillos at the farmer's market last weekend. I've never actually managed* to make anything with fresh tomatillos before-- I'd only had green salsa sorts of things at Tex-Mex places.  Let me tell you, the fresh ones are so different! They have a natural sweetness to them that I hadn't expected based on my prior limitd experience.  I will be buying more next week, and we will be broiling us up a mess of this sauce to freeze for later.

Anyway, this recipe is adapted from one I found on epicurious. We blackened the tomatillos and peppers on the grill, used non-spicy peppers, and grilled the chicken breasts too while we were at it. I also left the salt out until the sauce was done and I could set some aside for Mae.  I put aside a couple of tablespoons for her, to go with her own little piece of non-salted chicken we had grilled and cut up for her. It wasn't enough. I mean, there was enough chicken, but she wanted to eat the sauce by the spoonful.  Mae knows good stuff when she tastes it.

Grilled Chicken with Tomatillo Sauce

1 lb husked tomatillos
2 small sweet peppers (we used half a pimento and a little red one of unidentified variety that I thought was going to be hot but really wasn't. Probably a quarter cup of peppers altogether, and we agreed that a bit more would be even better)
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 Tbs olive oil
1 onion, chopped fine
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c. fresh cilantro, chopped
salt to taste

Grill the tomatillos and peppers on a hot grill until soft and skins are beginning to blacken a bit. Under the broiler works, too. When they're done, let them cool, remove the stems, and toss them in a blender to puree them.  Get the chicken breasts on the grill-- cook till brown and mostly done.

Saute the onions and garlic. I caramelized mine-- not strictly necessary, but I do recommend it. Add the blended tomatillo mixture to the pan and simmer briefly. Stir in the cilantro. At this point, set aside some sauce for the baby and then add salt to the rest if you want. Then add the chicken breasts to the pan and simmer until they're cooked through.

* I say 'managed', because I have bought them before, but then waffled about what to make out of them until they went bad. I am ashamed.  Stop yelling at me!

Garam masala roasted sweet potato fries recipe

I have come to believe that for any given vegetable, there's no better preparation than just tossing it with olive oil and roasting it. I'm beginning to wonder why I would ever want to do anything else, unless said vegetable is meant to be a vehicle for cheese, in which case you toss it with cream and cheese and then roast it. But I digress. 

I love love love roasted sweet potatoes. I like them roasted with just salt and pepper, I like them roasted with curry powder, I like them roasted with chile powder...and on and on. But I believe I have found my all-time favorite flavor to complement the sweet potato: garam masala, a warm Indian spice blend that involves cinnamon, cardamom, clove, nutmeg, mace, chile, cumin, coriander, bay... So much flavor when combined with the browned sweet potato that I honestly did not miss the salt. I know people say that all the time, but usually, I am the sort of person who misses the salt. So it really means something, coming from me.

And, oh yeah, you can give them to your little one, too. This is a relatively tidy one for Mae-- easy to grab and eat, yet nice and soft. They keep rather well in the fridge for a couple of days, and as such lend themselves handily to grabbing if you're eating out. Case in point: some friends invited us over for dinner, and we snagged a leftover container of these (and some roasted eggplant) on our way out the door. Although we brought the plastic mat for under the highchair, we may as well not have, because nothing got dropped. I mean, her face and hands were orange (and eggplanty), but the mess was largely contained. And most of it made it into her mouth.  So go ahead and make a large batch, is what I'm saying.

2 large sweet potatoes
1/4 c. olive oil
1 Tbs. garam masala

Preheat your oven to 400.  Peel the potatoes and cut them into 1/2 inch by about 2 inch long sticks. In a large bowl, toss them with the olive oil, and then the garam masala. Spread them on a large sheet pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, until tender and beginning to brown. Give them a stir halfway through and they'll be the better for it.

Messiness rating: 1 (1-2 wipes)

Rotini with Tuna and Garlic baby led weaning recipe

I decided that Mae should eat more pasta. I haven't hardly given her any, despite the fact that pasta shapes are very grabbable, and it's a pretty easy thing to whip up.  So here's the first pasta we tried, sort of a cross between the classic olive-oil-and-garlic-tossed-with-spaghetti and, I don't know, tuna noodle casserole.  (Ok, the only resemblance to tuna noodle casserole is that it's got tuna in it. And noodles.) Simple yet tasty in the way that things with only three or four high-quality ingredients can be. No picture for this one. I'll admit I'm an amateur photographer, and I'd need more food styling experience than I've got to make this one look good. But it does taste good! And Mae loved it. I think Mae loves anything with garlic in it.

1 1/2 c. tricolor rotini
1 can tuna in olive oil
1 tsp additional olive oil (optional)
3 cloves garlic, minced
black pepper

Cook your rotini in unsalted water until tender and drain (unsalted for the sake of the infant in question; you can add salt to yours later if you want, it'll be fine. Really.)

Drain the oil off the tuna into a small skillet, add the additional olive oil to it if you've decided to go with that, and heat the skillet up over medium-high heat. Watch out for spattering if any juicy tuna bits get into it. Toss in the minced garlic and saute until fragrant and just starting to brown; pull it off immediately before the garlic burns. Toss in the tuna and rotini in with the garlic and oil.  Black pepper to taste.

Messiness rating: 2 (2-3 wipes)

Crispy watermelon and apple salad infant fingerfood recipe

I haven't had good luck giving Mae raw apples or watermelon-- they're kind of hard, and when a chunk breaks off, it gives her trouble (usually ending with me freaking out and initiating rescue procedures).  Yesterday morning I had more success with the watermelon by cutting it into very thin, small slices. Then we went for a 2 hour long walk in the heat, and I started thinking about cool, crisp fruit for some reason. In particular, it dawned on me that raw apple could be treated in the same way, perhaps...and I started fantasizing about a crispy, cool salad of apples and watermelon until it officially became an obsession. This is the result. 

1 apple
1 slice watermelon (a 1 inch slice off a 8th of a watermelon)
1 tsp. minced fresh spearmint
1 lemon half

Squeeze the juice of your half lemon into 2 cups water in a small bowl.  Peel, core, and slice your apple into long thin matchstick-size pieces, about 1/8 inch thick. Put the apples at each stage of slicing into your bowl of lemon-juicy water to prevent browning. Slice off thin pieces of watermelon, and slice them into matchstick-size pieces as well.  Drain the apple slices well, and toss them together with the watermelon and minced mint. Discard the leftover lemon juice water, or save it and make it into lemonade. :)

This was so good, it was all we could do not to eat it all before even giving any to Mae. The recipe makes enough for one baby and one adult, and I think that if you doubled it, it would still make only enough for one baby and one adult.

As for Mae, she enjoyed it, although I have to admit that she might enjoy it more in a month or so when her pincer grip is more fully online. She was able to pick up the pieces, but they'd often break and she'd end up with a little piece in the palm of her hand that she couldn't get into her mouth. But if I held a piece for her, she'd lean forward and eat it out of my hand enthusiastically. So I'm going to call this a recipe for 8 month olds rather than 7, but she didn't have any trouble getting the fruit down once it made it into her mouth.

Messiness rating: 1 (one or 2 wipes'll do it)

Roasted eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers-- baby finger food recipe

It wasn't until adulthood that I really started to like eggplant. I chalk that up to our never having it in our house, very nearly continuing the the cycle of no-eggplant. At some point all that changed, and now it's one of my favorite things about summer. Eggplant, tomatoes, red peppers, tossed in olive oil and-- if the whim takes me-- some sliced basil, minced garlic, and mozzarella sprinked on toward the end-- I could eat it every day. The only thing that stops me is that I don't want to heat my oven up every day during the summer.

Eggplant, tomatoes, and red peppers are all things that cook up nice and soft-- perfect for Mae to nosh on. She tried it first a couple of weeks ago after being very receptive to some green peppers my aunt had roasted for Italian beef sandwiches. 'Receptive' is an understatement. She slurped those suckers down. So when we got home from our visit, I roasted up some peppers and eggplant and let her have a go at them. She loved them. Now they're part of the regular rotation. I make up a batch once a week and store the extras in the fridge for a few days-- they're pretty good to bring along for her when we're going out to eat.

I like these tiny little eggplant I get at the farmer's market, but any eggplant cut into appropriate size and shape will do. Sweet peppers of any color. Tomatoes, if you like. Basil and garlic if you've got them, would not be out of place. Add them in the last 10 minutes so they don't just burn.

2 pints small eggplant

6 or 8 Roma tomatoes

2-3 small bell peppers

It wasn't until adulthood that I really started to like eggplant. I chalk that up to our never having it in our house, very nearly continuing the the cycle of no-eggplant. At some point all that changed, and now it's one of my favorite things about summer. Eggplant, tomatoes, red peppers, tossed in olive oil and-- if the whim takes me-- some sliced basil, minced garlic, and mozzarella sprinked on toward the end-- I could eat it every day. The only thing that stops me is that I don't want to heat my oven up every day during the summer.

Halve the eggplants and tomatoes, cut the peppers into strips, and toss it all with a generous dose of olive oil. Pop it into a 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes, giving them a good stir once or twice partway through. The skins will loosen up nicely by the time everythings done-- slip the skins off the veggies before you hand them over to the little one. (They don't get digested anyway. Trust me on this.)

Stewed cinnamon apples recipe for baby led weaning

Fruit was one of the first things Mae went for when she started eating solids. Peaches and nectarines are her true loves (the first time she had a peach, she cried when it was all gone), and she's fairly enthusiastic about plums, bananas, and mango as well. Apples are a little bit more of a challenge for someone with no teeth-- left raw, they're a choking hazard. Stew 'em up in a pan with a little cinnamon, though, and you've got a winner-- nice and soft, easily grasped by little hands, and portable as well. I make up a batch and keep the slices in the fridge in a little container, ready to grab when we're going out to dinner or for a quick snack or breakfast.  She started eating these at 6 months old.

Stewed cinnamon apples

1 apple

sprinkle of cinnamon

 Cut the apple into 12 wedges. Remove core. You can peel it before cooking or if you're lazy like me, cook with the peel on and just pull the peel off before you give it to the baby.  (I find that if I leave the peel on, she can't chew it up and gags on it, so I do recommend removing it at some point). Put the apple wedges in a 12 inch pan (I like cast iron) with about 1/2 cup of water. Sprinkle each slice with cinnamon. (Ginger or cardamom would also be good!) Cook apples over medium-low heat, turning once or twice, until the water has evaporated and they're soft and cooked completely through.  If you wander off and forget about them, they'll get nice and caramelized. Even yummier!