Kohley - Nourished beginnings baby food: nutrient-dense recipes for infants, toddlers and beyond inspired by ancient wisdom and traditional foods

There is something powerful about food and the company we share it with.

From as far back as we have recorded time, we see that food brings people together. It creates community, comfort and enjoyment.

Somehow, as time has passed, modern society has slowly taken a toll on how we look at food. Cooking has become a cumbersome task that takes time away from our busy schedule. We have birthed a generation of children who have lost the art of slowing down to create and eat a meal together.

The rise of the real-food movement, however, is changing the way we look at food. More and more people are asking great questions like, Where did this food come from? and Would my great-grandparents have eaten food like this? We are seeing with our own eyes the impact that processed food is making on a generation of children, and many people are standing up to make the processed-food trend a thing of the past.

But where do we begin?

When all you have ever known is food from a box, where do you even start?

This was me. That was my question 10 years ago when I started my real food journey.

It would be a few more years before I had kids of my own, but as a newlywed in my own home I could see how the habits we formed growing up stuck with us through adulthood. It was hard for me to try new foods.

It was hard to serve my husband vegetables he had never had before. It was hard to learn how to cook and I wanted it to be different for my own kids.

When I got back to the basics and really became interested in how my great-grandparents would have eaten, it became clearer. My great-grandma would have nursed her babies, and when they were ready, they would have eaten from the table that the family was sitting around. Plain and simple. There were no toddler puffs, baby cereals or brightly colored kid foods. These were generations that sat around the dinner table and everyone ate the same thing.

And when I researched further, back to what healthy traditional peoples would have been eating, it became clear that the focus was on nutrient-dense food from the land they were living on. They would have eaten meat and seafood from the area in which they lived. Mothers would pre-chew sacred, nutrient-dense foods like livers for their babies to eat as their first foods. They instinctively knew the nutritional benefits of how they fed their babies and passed these traditions down through each generation.

When I became a parent, I wanted to give my kids the best start I could. I wanted them to have a broader taste palate than I hadand I wanted them to enjoy real food. Because I was working a lot when I had my first baby, I didnt have time to create elaborate separate meals for her that fit my nourishing food goals. When we were ready to start solids with her, my husband and I finally jumped (with both feet) into eating real food. One meal; everyone shared. We sat around the table as much as we could with our busy schedules and everyone ate the same thing. Babys food would be adjusted to her needs by mashing or blending the food (think traditional peoples pre-chewing), and that was that.

It was a relief! I could cook for my whole family at the same time. To this day, as I now have 7-, 5- and 3-year-olds, we eat at a family table. All food at our house is kid food. It is family food.

I want to bring this to your home. You will create broad taste palates in your little ones so that they dont bat an eye at being served a plate of meat and vegetables, and light up at their favorite meal. You can make meal time a delight instead of a chore. And most importantly, you will be nourishing your family. We have a generation of children who have full plates but their bodies are literally starving for nutrients of real food that will make their bodies function right. You can raise a different generation, one that knows where its food comes from, and how it affects the body, one that has healed guts, functioning minds and solid health.

It all starts at the beginning. If you have babies ready to start solids at home, you can give them a nourished beginning. You will be rewarded with a child who is nourished from the inside out, one who is an adventurous eater as a toddler and big kid and truly enjoys sitting down at the table with the family to share a meal.

a quick note: if you already have toddlers and big kids at home who have their minds made up about what food they like and dislike, this book is for you, too. Take some baby steps. Start with making one meal a day a real-food meal, or something they havent tried before. You really can still transform those taste palates from craving processed food to craving real food. Slowly transition the kitchen away from housing the processed food. If it isnt there, it wont get eaten.