Tamika L Gardner - 201 Organic Baby And Toddler Meals: The Healthiest Toddler and Baby Food Recipes You Can Make!

AVON, MASSACHUSETTS

This book is dedicated to my loving family,

Troy, Nikai, and Troy II

-and

To my grandparents,

Catherine Eggleston, and Joe and Arrie McCullar.

Its amazing how children can change your life. Even though I considered myself a fairly healthy person, I was not an ingredient scrutinizer like I am now. I realized that the food I thought was healthy was actually laden with flavor-enhancing chemicals, pesticides, and consisted of a laundry list of ingredients I couldnt pronounce.

You can see the effects of unhealthy eating all around you on a daily basis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 12.5 million children and adolescents are obese. Its no wonder, when processed food has been the primary source of consumption for decades.

When I found out I was going to be a new mother, I immediately headed online to research foods that I should eat to provide optimum nutrition for my unborn child. I learned how to read the ingredients on packaging and figured out which ingredients to steer clear from. Eventually, more and more items I used to buy disappeared from my kitchen. My husband would ask me, Honey, didnt you go grocery shopping today? Where is all the food? I told him how the snacks and prepared foods he loved had so many unhealthy ingredients I couldnt bring myself to use those items in our home anymore. He totally supported my new approach, and the mental shift we made changed us for the betterforever. Surprisingly for me, I realized I had a lot more money to spend on healthier items because I wasnt purchasing the more expensive prepackaged, processed items. It was time to learn how to make real food for my familyfrom scratch, with real ingredientsand it started with making homemade baby food.

After our daughter was born in 2006, I wanted her to have the best nutrition that money could not buy. So, I produced my own milk via breastfeeding and made her baby food with some of the ingredients I grew in my own small garden. After our son came along 18 months later, I became a pro at making baby food and I had three organic vegetable beds right outside my doorstep. I didnt know a whole lot about the adverse affects of pesticide use at that time, but my natural instincts would not allow me to buy chemicals to spray my plants that I would later harvest and give to my babies. Back online I went, researching natural ways to deter insects from eating at my collards and tomatoes without using chemical products.

I found that making homemade meals wasnt as expensive or difficult as I feared. By planning ahead, using local ingredients, and finding uses for leftovers, I was able to make most of our familys meals (my husband also chipped in). You can do it, too!

As my infants became toddlers, I was faced with a new challenge of offering them new, interesting dishes and coming up with organic meals and substitutes for items that I could not find in organic (or that were too expensive). Toddlers can eat more of a variety of foods than infantsbut they can also be pickier eaters. In this book, youll find delicious, healthy recipes that you can make using whole ingredients, including organic, homemade versions of popular store-bought items such as salad dressing, toaster pastries, bread crumbs, and sauces. Your toddler will love eating the meals, and youll love serving them.

I wont have you spending time making funny faces and dinosaur shapes with food. However, I will show you how to make good meals with ingredients you can actually find, and feel good about feeding to your family.

Cheers to raising a healthy eater!

The time has come for parents to get back in the kitchen and start cooking for their families again. Now that your infant has graduated from my first book, 201 Organic Baby Pures, here are 201 more organic meals that you can make for your child from 9 months to 3 years old. Being an active chef in your household means that you get to make healthy decisions and use the ingredients you feel are the most nutritious for your children. Gone are the days when you could blindly buy processed or chemical-rich foods. Now we know the benefits of whole foods to give your children the nourishment they need for healthy brain development and strong immune systems.

Today, organics are everywhere, and there are more organic farmers than ever before. You dont have to drive 30 miles one way to reach the only health food store in town anymore. Now you can walk to your favorite farm stand on the corner, or take a short drive to a farmers market or national grocery chain, where youll find a variety of organic foods.

Stocking your kitchen with organic fruit, vegetables, and lean meat means your family has a lower risk of exposure to pesticides and other harmful chemicals that are found in conventional and processed foods. When you stock your kitchen with natural, whole ingredients, you can create an endless number of delicious, healthy recipes. The recipes in this book include a larger assortment of fruit and vegetable recipes to encourage children, at a young age, to eat more produce.

When you embrace cooking family meals, you will see it is not as hard as you thought and you might even get your creative juices flowing and come up with healthy family recipes that can be passed down for generations. As you create the recipes in this book, you will connect more with food. Even though its easy enough to spend a few dollars on a bottle of honey mustard dressing and call it a day, you will gain new insights from making your own honey mustard dressing and you will start to look at all packaged foods differently. These recipes are all easy to make, and will appeal to everyone in your familytoddler or not. Even though toddlers can be picky, their palates are also a blank slate. Offer them a variety of textures, flavors, and consistencies, and see which they prefer. In this book, youll find simple but sophisticated dishes, from Chilled White Grape Peach Soup (). The toughest part will be deciding which recipe to try first!

Making meals from scratch can seem like a daunting task, especially if you feel like there is not enough time in the day to accomplish everything. Just like with baby pures, many of the meals in this book can be made in larger quantities, frozen, or made in advance on days when you have more time to spare than others. The following icons will help you quickly identify recipes that might appeal to you and your family:

Freezer-FriendlyThese recipes can be safely frozen for up to 2 weeks for the best quality.