McCosker - Baby bowl: home-cooked meals for happy, healthy babies and toddlers

Thank you for purchasing this Atria Paperback eBook.

	Anton Avocado is a fruit, not a vegetable.
	Archie Apple Whats the old saying? An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
	Archie Apple Whats the old saying? An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Yet the average person eats only 65 apples a year... oops!
	Baby Blueberry Blueberries are incredibly high in antioxidants and are often referred to as the brainberry.
	Bella Banana offers a great source of dietary fiber. So easy to prepare: simply peel, mash, and enjoy.
	Benny Broccoli Super nutritious.
	Carrie Carrot Always in season.
	Carrie Carrot Always in season. Nutrient-dense, containing enzymes and minerals.
	Sally Squash Her vibrant orange color is a dead giveaway to the power of squash. Shes packed with nutrients.
	Pierre Potato The potato was the first-ever food grown in space, in1995. Potatoes are rich in complex carbohydrates that can supply energy for growing bodies.

Pablo Casals, Spanish composer, cellist, and conductor

I believe the heart of all homes is smack-bang in the kitchen. My hometown is Mundubbera, a small country town in Queensland. There were no twenty-four-hour grocery stores and any money that came our way was plowed (literally) straight back into our farmit was not to be wasted. So my beautiful mum learned to be very creative in the kitchen, making wonderful meals from minimal ingredients. Her mum, my grandmother, a widow way too early with four kids, was the same. I learned to cook from them, so to me, food means family.

My mum and grandmother made the dinner table a place to connect and communicate. It was a fun place where my brothers and I would try to create ways to get rid of peas other than by eating them (gross!). And so it is today in my house, although a lot, lot messier with my three boys (and its not the peas theyre protesting about, its the cauliflower and beets). I have a degree in international finance; Im an author and a businesswoman. Id like to play golf more, help in my boys classrooms more often, and read the paper from start to finish just once this year. I am a really busy person who works my life and schedule around my family.

I juggle many balls on any given day, doing the best I know how, sometimes successfully, sometimes dreadfully! But above all, I am just like you a proud parent wanting to learn how to start on the right path to feeding their baby. You may know the 4 Ingredients series I put together with my coauthor Rachael Bermingham. Actually, this book grew out of those. On tours around Australia in 2008 and 2009, doing lots and lots of author talks in hundreds of libraries, I would always ask the librarians, What books are you regularly asked for? The reply was often, A baby food book. What a great idea, I thought, and now here it is! Baby Bowl differs from 4 Ingredients in an important waymany of these recipes have way more than four ingredients in them. Why? you may ask.

Because, Mum and Dad, this is your moment! A stellar opportunity to offer your beautiful little babies as many vegetables and as much fruit and combinations of both as their little bellies will hold. This is the time your little angels are willing to try anything. Wait till they turn three, and the very minestrone soup they loved yesterday they completely reject today because its got that green stuff in it! What green stuff? you ask, astonished. Ohvegetables! When my boys were babies, I wouldnt serve dinner without at least four vegetables cooked, baked, or mashed into it. So there was my 4 ingredients quota gone in one food group! The recipes in Baby Bowl are simple, healthy ideas aimed at introducing as many flavors to your babys palate as possible, before it turns into the psychotic personality it may later become (the palate, that is!). They were developed to include the goodness of each food group along with their five veggies and two fruits a day.

I have been blessed with three absolutely beautiful boys, and no amount of reading or research could have prepared me for the reality of motherhood and the enormous responsibility that accompanies it. There is so much information available these days, and for the advice of every expert another will tell you why its wrong! I wrote this book based on what worked for me, on advice passed from my grandmother to my mother and now to me. And guess what? With this simple gift of good nutritional sense, I have managed to raise three happy, healthy boys. (Say a prayer that this now continues!) And if I can do it, anyone can. Where do you start when introducing solids to your baby? With Baby Bowl a practical, easy cookbook