Carlson - GROWING UP GOURMET: 125 healthy meals for everybody and every baby

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For my talented and loving little inspirations, Finley and Eamon... who ignited a passion within me that I did not know was possible. May your love of good food continue to grow.

I f you are picking up this book, chances are you are a new mom or will soon be a mom. Let me welcome you! You are entering a world full of wonder, for both you and your baby, and you are going to learn much as you explore it together.

Im sure youve heard of many of the ways in which your life is about to changethe scattered sleep schedules, the end of privacy, the complications of a night out (even to a movie!)but there are still other changes that are unexpected, revelatory, and highly personal. For me, the biggest surprise came when I realized how fulfilled I felt in coming up with delicious, wholesome, homemade meals for my baby, and for the babies of my friends. One thing led to the next, and before I knew it, I was feeding more babies than I could count through the Baby Gourmet stand at the Calgary Farmers Market. Today, the recipes I came up with for my own little ones can be found wherever baby foods are sold in Canada, to the same quality standard I held for what I fed to my own Finley and Eamon.

So how exactly did Baby Gourmet come to be? Quite simply, it came from love. When my daughter, Finley, was born ten years ago, the depth of love I felt for her overwhelmed me, and I wanted the best for her in everything. I felt the same way when my son, Eamon, was born a couple years later. You gain in knowledge and experience after your first child, but that surge of hope and love for your new baby is a transformative one, no matter how many times it happens.

And I suppose you could say it began in my own childhood, with my mom. When I became a mother, I started to see my own mothers actions in a clearer light. I understood in a more profound way what my mother felt for my sister and me, and how she showed us that love. My mom had a garden in the backyard and made everything from scratch, even our yogurt. From the very first, my sister Jill and I were raised with meals of the purest ingredients, made right in our home, from our own plants. To this day we both still love a huge variety of foods and spending time outside. We view the earth as both our breadbasket and our playground. I knew that when I had children of my own, I would want them to have the same experience so that from early on they would develop an appreciation for foodreal, whole food, where it comes from, and its importance in our lives.

I know what youre thinking: That sounds great, but our days are so busy, how do you find the time to make all of those meals from scratch? Trust me, this journey was not without heartache, mess, and, sometimes, hours of work that yielded nothing but a kitchen full of dirty dishes! But while most people leave the baby food stage behind pretty quickly, I have spent the last ten years obsessed with it, and I promise you there are shortcuts you can take to ensure the highest quality results in the most time-efficient way possible. Remember, gourmet does not have to be challengingit just has to start with the freshest, most wholesome ingredients available.

When I decided that I would make all of my daughters baby food, I read everything I could find on the topichow to introduce foods to babies, the best ways to prepare them for texture, and which foods to introduce when. In terms of nutrition, I relied generally on common sense: The more natural the foods, the better to ensure baby gets the essential vitamins and nutrients baby needs to grow and develop. A well-balanced menu for the day would include proteins, healthy fats, fruits, and vegetablesthe same, really, as you should do for yourself.

But the real learning came from old-fashioned trial and error. The trick I found was to develop recipes that work for the entire family, so that the whole days labor does not go into a single puree that feeds only the smallest member of the household. Once you have adult-friendly meals that complement babys food development schedule and translate into something baby will take readily and digest easily, youve struck gold.

I was part of a new moms group at the time I started experimenting with Finleys foods. (If you arent part of one yet, Id recommend looking into joining one, as I found it really valuable to be among so many women who were experiencing with their babies the same firsts as Finley and me.) We would get together with our babies, share stories, and swap tidbits and hints. Whenever it came to feeding time, the other moms would comment on Finleys meals, with some going so far as to say that Finley ate better than most of the adults in the room. It ended up that a few of the moms offered to pay me to make meals for their babies, too.

When I heard these requests, something clicked in me. I believe in my heart of hearts that every child should be exposed to a wide variety of healthy, delicious, homemade meals, so that they can develop a lifelong taste for foods that will form the foundation of a strong adulthood. Watching Finley eat so well with the meals I had made her was a very emotional experience for me; I felt so proud to have set her up with good habits for life. Every baby deserves that, and, frankly, every mother deserves to feel as good as I felt. From those simple requests in my moms group, I wanted to enable the widest access possible to first foods that were of the quality I would feed to my own child.

It didnt take long for word about Finleys meals to spread among the mothers in our neighborhood, and soon I had so many requests that it became clear my kitchen wasnt going to be big enoughand that I was going to need some help. My sister, Jill, immediately signed on, and we looked to move Baby Gourmet to the farmers market in Calgary.

The idea to move to the farmers market came to us in October, and by January, we had been approved for a stand. As someone who shops at the farmers market anyway, I knew before we even started on market research that this was my ideal location. Lots of moms take their little ones around a farmers market every weekend, and market culture encourages everything fresh, wholesome, and homemade. Around three hundred vendors had applied for spaces ahead of us, but our application was rushed to the top because the organizers recognized the value of what we were offering, and no one else was doing anything like it.

Jill and I were psyched. This was the opportunity we had hoped for, and we knew it would be a perfect match. The only downside to all this quick progress was that we were given three weeks to set up. Yes, just three weeks. I have to be honest: These were some of the longest, most labor-intensive days of my life. Jill and I laid the wood floors of our stall by hand and we rented a commercial kitchen in a community center for production, as there was no way either of our home kitchens would suffice. We fitted this commercial kitchen with several mini freezers, then hired my mom and some of her other retired friends to work with us, peeling vegetables and helping with prep. They were our chop-and-chat group. The days were long, but with my sister, mother, and family friends around, I knew we had something special.